GALABAT, Gallabat, or Metemme, a town in the frontier district of Egypt and Abyssinia, near one of the western sub-tributaries of the Atbara, about 100 miles W. of Gondar, in 13° N. 1at. and 36° E. long. Most of the houses are built in the Abyssinian style, with conical roofs of grass, and the place would be of little importance if it were not the staple market for the exportation of Abyssinian produce across the Egyptian frontier. Beeswax, coffee, cotton, and hides are the principal articles of legitimate trade 7-but as recently at least as 1873 the traffic in slaves was quite as important a department of its commerce. The town and district form a small ethnographical island, being peopled by a colony of Tokrooris from Darfur, who, finding the spot a convenient resting-place for their fellow-pilgrims on their way to Mecca and back, obtained permission from the king of Abyssinia to make a permanent settlement. They are an industrious race, and grow a considerable quantity of cotton. When Sir Samuel Baker was at Galabat in 1862, the sheikh refused to recognize the authority of the viceroy of Egypt; but when De Cosson passed through in 1873, the Egyptians had a camp, with a strong stone wall, on the top of a hill commanding the town, and acted as masters of the place. The population of the town and district, which have an area of about 40 square miles, is estimated at 20,000. Galabat is the proper name, and Metemme is really the native word for a capital.
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GALANGAL, formerly written “galingale,” and sometimes “garingal,” rhizoma galangae (Arabian, Kholinjan; x German, Calgantwurzel ; F ren ch, Racine de Galanga), is an aromatic stimulant drug. Lesser galangal root, radix galangoe minoris, the ordinary galangal of commerce, is the dried rhizome of Alpiηiα officinarum, Hance, a plant of the natural order Zingiberaceoe, growing in the Chinese island of Hainan, where it is cultivated, and probably also in the woods of the southern provinces of China. The plant is regarded by Dr Hance as closely allied to, but as perfectly distinct from, the Alpinia calcarata of Roscoe, the rhizome of which is sold in the bazaars of some parts of India as a sort of galangal. Its stems attain a length of about 4 feet, and its leaves are slender, lanceolate, and light green, and have a hot taste; the flowers are ebracteate, white with red veins, and in simple racemes; the roots form dense masses, sometimes more than a foot in diameter; and the rhizomes grow horizontally, and are f inch or less in thickness. The drug occurs in short, cylindrical, or somewhat tuberous, often forked pieces, which have a fibrous structure, and externally are reddish-brown and marked with fine longitudinal striations, and with transverse rings showing the points of attachment of scales or leaves, and internally are of a light-brown, becoming darker at the centre. It has a warm, aromatic taste, resembling that of mingled ginger and pepper. On analysis it yields, among other constituents, much starch, an essential oil of the composition C 10 H 16 ,H 2 O (Vogel), and a crystalline body, kαmpferid (Brandes). Greater or Java galangal, radix galangae majoris (French, Galaηga de l , Inde), the rhizome of Alpinia Galanga, Willd., is a drug rarely now imported ...into Europe. It is mentioned by Marco Polo (ed. Yule, ii. p. 217) and Garcias da Horta as a product of Java, and the latter distinguishes it from the Chinese or lesser galangal, from which it is known by its larger size, orange-brown exterior, and feebler and less aromatic odour. The seedcapsules of Alpinia Galanga are believed to be what are termed “galanga cardamoms,” which have the properties of cardamoms and ginger combined, and in China are used for various medicinal purposes. (See Hanbury, Science Papers, pp. 107-9, and 252, 253, 1876; and F. P. Smith, op. cit.) Galangal seems to have been unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and to have been first introduced into Europe by Arabian physicians. It is mentioned in the writings of Ibn Khurdâdbah, an Arabian geographer who flourished in the latter half of the 9th century, and “gallengar” (galingale or galangal) is one of the ingredients in an Anglo-Saxon receipt for a “wen salve” (see O. Cockayne, Saxon Leechdoms, vol. iii. p. 13). In the Middle Ages, as at present in Livonia, Esthonia, and central Russia, galangal was in esteem in Europe both as a medicine and a spice, and in China it is still employed as a therapeutic agent. Its chief consumption is in Russia, where it is used as a cattle-medicine, and as a flavouring for liqueurs. By the Tartars it is taken with tea (see Hanbury, op. cit., p. 374). The exports of galangal from Shanghai, in China, amounted in 1869 to 370,000 fi>, value £3046, 16s. 9d. Chinese or lesser galangal was in past times commonly known as “Cyperus Babylonicus,” from its resemblance to the tubers of plants of the genus Cyperus, which apparently served as a substitute for it (c∕. Fuchs, Op. Didactica, pars ii. p. 28, 1604, fol.; and Avicenna, ed. Plempii, lib. ii. p. 297, 1658, fol.). Gerarde {The Herball, p. 28, 1597) terms the species Cyperus longus “English galingale.” - -
See Ρhαrm. Jourη., ser. i., vol. xiv. p. 241, and ser. ill., vol. ii. p. 248; Pereira, Materia Medica, ii., pt. i., p. 257, 4th ed., 1857; O. Berg, Anatomischer Atlas zur Pharmazeutischen JVaaren-kunde, p. 37, taf. xix., Berlin, 1865; H. Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. ii. pp. 181, 182, &c., 1871; H. F. Hance, “On the Source of the Radix Galangae minoris of Pharmacologists,” Journ. Linn. Soc., Botany, vol. xiii., 1873, p. 1; Fliickiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, 1874, and the above quoted Science Papers of the latter author, pp. 370-375; Bentley and Trimen, Medicinal Plants, pt. xxxi., tab. 271; and Histoire des Drogues, vol. ii., 7th ed., 1876.
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GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, an archipelago of five larger and ten smaller islands, situated in the Pacific Ocean exactly under the equator, about 500 or 600 miles W. of Ecuador. They were discovered about the beginning of the 16th century by the Spaniards, who gave them their present name from the numerous galapago or giant tortoises they found there. The larger members of the group, several of them attaining an elevation of 3000 to 4000 feet, are Albemarle (75 miles long and 15 broad), Narborough, Indefatigable, Chatham, and James Islands. The total area is estimated at 2250 square miles....
The extraordinary number of craters, a few of them still active, “in size from mere spiracles to huge caldrons several miles in circumference,” to be found throughout the islands, gives evidence that the archipelago has been the result of volcanic action. It stands in very deep water, and Mr Darwin thinks that it has never been nearer to the mainland than it is now, nor have its members been at any time closer together. None of the islands are inhabited, with the exception of Charles, Chatham, and Albemarle, which, since 1829, have been used by the Government of Ecuador as a penal settlement for political offenders, who find an easy subsistence on the bananas, Indian corn, and sweet potatoes which readily grow in the black fertile mud of the higher parts, and on the large herds, now become wild, of cattle, swine, and goats. The principal settlement, founded by General Vilamil in 1832, is situated in Charles Island, and bears the name of La Floreana, in honour of Floris, the president of Ecuador. At one time it contained 200 or 300 inhabitants; but when the United States steamer “Hassler” visited the Galapagos in 1871, there were little more than a dozen. In 1872 about 2000 cattle had perished in the island. The archipelago was formerly a frequent resort of vessels in quest of turtle; and it is still visited by parties from Guayaquil in quest of a species of moss, which is sent to the English market under the name of orchidia.
Though the islands are under the equator, the climate is not intensely hot, as it is tempered by cold currents from the Antarctic Sea, which, having followed the barren coast of Peru as far as Cape Blanco, bear off to the N. W. towards and through the Galapagos. Very little rain falls, < except during the short season from November to January. The clouds indeed hang low, and the nights are misty, but this benefits those districts only which attain a height of over 800 or 1000 feet and enter the moist upper air; so that there alone, and chiefly on the side from which the winds oftenest blow, is there anything like a luxuriant vegetation. The low grounds are entirely parched and rocky, presenting merely a few thickets of Peruvian cactus and stunted shrubs, and a shore as uninviting as it well can be.
The greatest interest attaches to the study of all the oceanic islands, for the elucidation of the origin and development of their fauna and flora has an important bearing on the question of the genesis of species. The Galapagos archipelago possesses in this respect a rare advantage from its isolated situation, and from the fact that its history has never been interfered with by any aborigines of the human race, and that it is only very lately that the operations of man or of animals introduced by his means have disturbed, and that to a very limited extent only, the indigenous life. Many of the more remarkable animal and vegetable forms are confined to one islet of the group, and are represented on the others by allied but different species. Of the indigenous gigantic tortoises there are five species at present known, each of which is an inhabitant of a different island, and it is believed that many others have become extinct. There are two species, one terrestrial, the other marine, of a peculiar genus of lizard. Nearly all the land birds are peculiar to the archipelago, and of these more than half belong to peculiar genera. The flora of the Galapagos is most remarkable; it differs by upwards of one half of its species from that of the rest of the globe. Both the fauna and flora indicate affinity with the South American continent; and the peculiarities of their distribution can be explained only by the supposition that species were transported to the islands by some accident at very rare and remote intervals, and have become changed through natural selection under the new conditions to which they have been exposed. That there should be so few species common to the different islands is accounted for by their separation from each other by deep channels scoured by rapid currents, the direction of which, and of the winds, rarely violent in this region, does not favour inter-migration. Many of the islands are yet but imperfectly known.
For more detailed information the following works may be consulted Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle·, O. Salvin, “On the avifauna of the Galapagos Archip.,” Trans. Zool. Soe., part ix., 1876, p. 447; Sir J. D. Hooker, “On the Vegetation of the Gal. Arch.,” Trans. Lin. Soe., voL ∑x. p. 235; Dr A. Günther, “Description of the living and extinct races of Gigantic Tortoises of the Galapagos Islands,” PhU. Trans., vol. clxv. p. 251; A. R. Wallace, Geographical Distribzιtion of Animals·, Villavicencio, Geografia de la Rep. del Ecuador, 1858.
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