_ 234 _ by two, with teeth like a saw, which revolved; and with the speed of the horses’ gait for they goaded them greatly, they cut the ears from the wheat, which was like our kind from Galicia, and made straw finer than ours, and the wheat threshed and clean in a very short time. I saw here a fruit like small almonds, with a very thin shell and a kernel of very excellent flavour, green in colour, with an appearance of our pine-nuts, which the Persians call pistu, and which are very plentiful throughout Persia. From a city in Syria called Sarmin, a day’s journey from Aleppo, a great amount goes to the island of Cyprus, and to Venice. They also exist in Rome, and are expensive, and greatly prized by the gentlemen and cardinals, who call them pistache. I found all the fruits along this road superior to ours, except the melons, which are white and very bad. There was also another type which they call batecha and carpuz, with large kernels like pumpkins, some black, some white and very sweet, which melted to water in the mouth could never eat them, and the Moors and people of the caravan left them all. They told me that throughout Persia and Turkey they were given to people sick with fevers.
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