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HUNGARY WATER. To one pint of highly rectified spirits of wine, put an ounce of the oil of rosemary, and two drams of the essence of ambergris. Shake the bottle well several times, and let the cork remain out twenty-four hours. Shake it daily for a whole month, and then put the water into small bottles for use.
The ambergris may have proceeded from a sick cachalot that had wandered into the Mediterranean. The north-east passage around the north of Asia and Europe, which is adduced by the commentator, in Harris's Collection, is now thoroughly known to be impracticable.
The past year of six hundred and two, some natives found in the island of Sebu a good-sized piece of ambergris, and when their encomendero heard of it, he took it, and traded with them secretly for it, on the account of their tribute. It is said that it weighed a good number of libras. Afterward he brought it out and sold it by the ounce at a higher rate.
Then on the bottom of the nest he laid, bit by bit, a pile of sweet-smelling gums, cinnamon and spice, spikenard, myrrh, camphor, ambergris, and frankincense, with no meaner choice. All night he labored, beak and talon, until the nest was ready.
Good hath been born of Evil, many times, As pearls and precious ambergris are grown, Fruits of disease in pain and sickness sown, So think not to unravel, in thy thought, This mingled tissue, this mysterious plan, The Alchemy of Good through Evil wrought. Tupper.
Zouns! sir, we would slit any nose that was turned up at us honest fellows. Ay, sir, we would slit it up to the gristle, though it had smelt nothing all its life but musk, ambergris, and court-scented water. Rabbit me, I am a soldier, and care no more for a lord than a lamplighter!"
The wind which commonly blows upon the sea of Herkend is from a different quarter, or from the N.W.; but this sea is likewise subject to as violent agitations as those just mentioned, and there ambergris is torn up from the bottom, particularly where it is very deep; and the deeper the sea so much the more valuable is the ambergris which it produces.
It was evident that no precaution had been neglected to protect him from maleficent influences and the danger that walks by night, for his frail neck and wrists were hung with innumerable charms: Koranic verses, Soudanese incantations, and images of forgotten idols in amber and coral and horn and ambergris.
M. Pomel, whom I cited above, believed it to come from the brain of the whale called "cachalot." No one would have dreamt in the sixteenth century of mixing this precious stuff with beeswax for modelling purposes. At that date one would as soon have mixed amber with pitch. That reminds me that "grey amber" or "ambergris" is also a product of the sperm whale not to be confounded with spermaceti.
The ineffectual exertions of the Mameluks and Turks, instigated by Venice, to obstruct the Portuguese trade in India, will be afterwards mentioned. It is difficult to say what is meant by a cantarus in the text; perhaps a quintal or 100 pounds. The castor of the text, and other perfumes, may mean musk, civet, and ambergris.
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