Part 15 (2/2)
Jonas Dryander, with a plate, in Volume 77 page 307 of the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1787.)
MODE OF PROCURING IT.
When the trees have attained the age of about seven years, and are six or eight inches in diameter, incisions are made in the bark, from whence the balsam or gum (as it is commonly termed, although being soluble in spirits and not in water, it is rather a resin) exudes, which is carefully pared off. The purest of the gum, or Head benzoin, is that which comes from these incisions during the first three years, and is white, inclining to yellow, soft, and fragrant; after which it gradually changes to the second sort, which is of a reddish yellow, degenerating to brown; and at length when the tree, which will not bear a repet.i.tion of the process for more than ten or twelve years, is supposed to be worn out, they cut it down, and when split in pieces procure, by sc.r.a.ping, the worst sort, or Foot benzoin, which is dark coloured, hard, and mixed more or less with parings of the wood and other impurities. The Head is further distinguished into Europe and India-head, of which the first is superior, and is the only sort adapted to the home market: the latter, with most of the inferior sorts, is exported to Arabia,* Persia, and some parts of India, where it is burned to perfume with its smoke their temples and private houses, expel troublesome insects, and obviate the pernicious effects of unwholesome air or noxious exhalations; in addition to which uses, in the Malayan countries, it is always considered as a necessary part of the apparatus in administering an oath. It is brought down from the country for sale in large cakes, called tampang, covered with mats; and these, as a staple commodity, are employed in their dealings for a standard of value, to which the price of other things have reference, as in most parts of the world to certain metals. In order to pack it in chests it is necessary to soften the coa.r.s.er sorts with boiling water; for the finer it is sufficient to break the lumps and to expose it to the heat of the sun. The greater part of the quant.i.ty brought to England is re-exported from thence to countries where the Roman Catholic and Mahometan religions prevail, to be there burnt as incense in the churches and temples.** The remainder is chiefly employed in medicine, being much esteemed as an expectorant and styptic, and const.i.tutes the basis of that valuable balsam distinguished by the name of Turlington, whose very salutary effects, particularly in healing green and other wounds, is well known to persons abroad who cannot always obtain surgical a.s.sistance. It is also employed, if I am not misinformed, in the preparation of court sticking-plaster. The gum or resin called dulang is named by us scented benzoin from its peculiar fragrance. The rasamala (Lignum papuanum of Rumphius, and Altingia excelsa of the Batavian Transactions) is a sort of wild benzoin, of little value, and not, in Sumatra, considered as an object of commerce.
(*Footnote. Les Arabes tirent beaucoup d'autres sortes d'encens de l'Habbesch, de Sumatra, Siam, Java, etc. et parmi celles-la une qu'ils appellent Bachor (bakhor) Java, et que les Anglois nomment Benzoin, est tres semblable a l'Oliban. On en exporte en grande quant.i.te en Turquie parles golfes d'Arabie et de Perse, et la moindre des trois especes de Benzoin, que les marchands vendent, est estimee meilleure que l'Oliban d'Arabie. Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie page 126.)
(**Footnote. According to Mr. Jackson the annual importation of Benzoin at MoG.o.dor from London is about 13,000 pounds annually.)
Ca.s.sIA.
Ca.s.sia or kulit manis (Laurus ca.s.sia) is a coa.r.s.e species of cinnamon which flourishes chiefly, as well as the two foregoing articles, in the northern part of the island; but with this difference, that the camphor and benzoin grow only near the coast, whereas the ca.s.sia is a native of the central parts of the country. It is mostly procured in those districts which lie inland of Tapanuli, but it is also found in Musi, where Palembang River takes its rise. The leaves are about four inches long, narrower than the bay (to which tribe it belongs) and more pointed; deep green; smooth surface, and plain edge. The princ.i.p.al fibres take their rise from the peduncle. The young leaves are mostly of reddish hue.
The blossoms grow six in number upon slender footstalks, close to the bottom of the leaf. They are monopetalous, small, white, stellated in six points. The stamina are six, with one stile, growing from the germen, which stands up in three brownish segments, resembling a cup. The trees grow from fifty to sixty feet high, with large, spreading, horizontal branches, almost as low as the earth. The root is said to contain much camphor that may be obtained by boiling or other processes unknown on Sumatra. No pains is bestowed on the cultivation of the ca.s.sia. The bark, which is the part in use, is commonly taken from such of the trees as are a foot or eighteen inches diameter, for when they are younger it is said to be so thin as to lose all its qualities very soon. The difference of soil and situation alters considerably the value of the bark. Those trees which grow in a high rocky soil have red shoots, and the bark is superior to that which is produced in a moist clay, where the shoots are green. I have been a.s.sured by a person of extensive knowledge that the ca.s.sia produced on Sumatra is from the same tree which yields the true cinnamon, and that the apparent difference arises from the less judicious manner of quilling it. Perhaps the younger and more tender branches should be preferred; perhaps the age of the tree or the season of the year ought to be more nicely attended to; and lastly I have known it to be suggested that the mucilaginous slime which adheres to the inside of the fresh peeled rind does, when not carefully wiped off, injure the flavour of the ca.s.sia and render it inferior to that of the cinnamon. I am informed that it has been purchased by Dutch merchants at our India sales, where it sometimes sold to much loss, and afterwards by them s.h.i.+pped for Spain as cinnamon, being packed in boxes which had come from Ceylon with that article. The price it bears in the island is about ten or twelve dollars the pecul.
RATTANS.
Rattans or rotan (Calamus rotang) furnish annually many large cargoes, chiefly from the eastern side of the island, where the Dutch buy them to send to Europe; and the country traders for the western parts of India.
Walking-canes, or tongkat, of various kinds, are also produced near the rivers which open to the straits of Malacca.
COTTON.
In almost every part of the country two species of cotton are cultivated, namely, the annual sort named kapas (Gossypium herbaceum), and the shrub cotton named kapas besar (Gossypium herboreum). The cotton produced from both appears to be of very good quality, and might, with encouragement, be procured in any quant.i.ties; but the natives raise no more than is necessary for their own domestic manufactures. The silk cotton or kapok (bombax) is also to be met with in every village. This is, to appearance, one of the most beautiful raw materials the hand of nature has presented.
Its fineness, gloss, and delicate softness render it, to the sight and touch, much superior to the labour of the silkworm; but owing to the shortness and brittleness of the staple it is esteemed unfit for the reel and loom, and is only applied to the unworthy purpose of stuffing pillows and mattresses. Possibly it has not undergone a fair trial in the hands of our ingenious artists, and we may yet see it converted into a valuable manufacture. It grows in pods, from four to six inches long, which burst open when ripe. The seeds entirely resemble the black pepper, but are without taste. The tree is remarkable from the branches growing out perfectly straight and horizontal, and being always three, forming equal angles, at the same height: the diminutive shoots likewise grow flat; and the several gradations of branches observe the same regularity to the top. Some travellers have called it the umbrella tree, but the piece of furniture called a dumb-waiter exhibits a more striking picture of it.
BETEL-NUT.
The betel-nut or pinang (Areca catechu) before mentioned is a considerable article of traffic to the coast of Coromandel or Telinga, particularly from Achin.
COFFEE.
The coffee-trees are universally planted, but the fruit produced here is not excellent in quality, which is probably owing entirely to the want of skill in the management of them. The plants are disposed too close to each other, and are so much overshaded by other trees that the sun cannot penetrate to the fruit; owing to which the juices are not well ripened, and the berries, which become large, do not acquire a proper flavour. Add to this that the berries are gathered whilst red, which is before they have arrived at a due degree of maturity, and which the Arabs always permit them to attain to, esteeming it essential to the goodness of the coffee. As the tree is of the same species with that cultivated in Arabia there is little doubt but with proper care this article might be produced of a quality equal, perhaps superior, to that imported from the West Indies; though probably the heavy rains on Sumatra may prevent its attaining to the perfection of the coffee of Mocha.*
(*Footnote. For these observations on the growth of the coffee, as well as many others on the vegetable productions of the island, I am indebted to the letters of Mr. Charles Miller, entered on the Company's records at Bencoolen, and have to return him my thanks for many communications since his return to England. On the subject of this article of produce I have since received the following interesting information from the late Mr.
Charles Campbell in a letter dated November 1803. ”The coffee you recollect on this coast I found so degenerated from want of culture and care as not to be worth the rearing. But this objection has been removed, for more than three years ago I procured twenty-five plants from Mocha; they produced fruit in about twenty months, are now in their second crop, and loaded beyond any fruit-trees I ever saw. The average produce is about eight pounds a tree; but so much cannot be expected in extensive plantations, nor in every soil. The berries are in no respect inferior in flavour to those of the parent country.” This cultivation, I am happy to hear, has since been carried to a great extent.)
(PLATE 2. THE DAMMAR, A SPECIES OF PINUS.
Sinensis delt. Swaine Sc.
Published by W. Marsden, 1810.)
DAMMAR.
The dammar is a kind of turpentine or resin from a species of pine, and used for the same purposes to which that and pitch are applied. It is exported in large quant.i.ties to Bengal and elsewhere. It exudes, or flows rather, spontaneously from the tree in such plenty that there is no need of making incisions to procure it. The natives gather it in lumps from the ground where it has fallen, or collect it from the sh.o.r.es of bays and rivers whither it has floated. It hangs from the bough of the tree which produces it in large pieces, and hardening in the air it becomes brittle and is blown off by the first high wind. When a quant.i.ty of it has fallen in the same place it appears like a rock, and thence, they say, or more probably from its hardness, it is called dammar batu; by which name it is distinguished from the dammar kruyen. This is another species of turpentine, yielded by a tree growing in Lampong, called kruyen, the wood of which is white and porous. It differs from the common sort, or dammar batu, in being soft and whitish, having the consistence and somewhat the appearance of putty. It is in much estimation for paying the bottoms of vessels, for which use, to give it firmness and duration, it ought to be mixed with some of the hard kind, of which it corrects the brittleness. The natives, in common, do not boil it, but rub or smear it on with their hands; a practice which is probably derived from indolence, unless, as I have been informed, that boiling it, without oil, renders it hard. To procure it, an incision is made in the tree.
DRAGONS-BLOOD.
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