Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

inferior quality. The gardens where the best cinnamon is grown are managed on the coppice system, the tree being cut down almost to the roots, and the young shoots, some six or eight only, allowed to grow. At the age of two years the shoots have reached a height of about six feet, with a diameter from one to two inches. These are cut, and the bark peeled off, being afterwards cleaned and scraped, when it is rolled and dried, tied in bundles, and is then ready for the market.

The ordinary cinnamon as we find it in the marts of America, is cassia bark, a species of the cinnamomum, grown extensively in China, Japan and all the islands of the Eastern Archipelago. It is sold in immense quantities, particularly after it has been ground, when it is hard to distinguish it from the true spice.

INDIGO.

Another of the valuable plants having indigenous growth in the island groups of the Pacific, particularly in Japan, the Phillippines and Java, is indigo. Derived from the maceration in water of the leaves and twigs of the plant, Indigofera tinctoria, and the Indigofera Anil, with its after precipitation from the liquid form into that met with in commerce, it may be justly termed one of the valuable island products. The indigo from the island of Java, the result of the rude methods of manufacture resorted to by the natives, is the finest in the world, the plant seeming to thrive best when of island growth. Its manifold uses as a drug, as well as in the arts, together with the rather complicated processes necessary for its extraction from the plant, would require at least a sepa

rate chapter. As a product of the island world, it is of considerable importance.

TEAK WOOD.

Among the many valuable trees, growing so profusely on the Islands of the Pacific, may be cited Teak, or Indian Oak, the product of the Tectona grandis, a large forest tree, growing in the dry and elevated districts in the south of India, the Burman empire, Ava, Siam, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, New Guinea, etc. Teak is by far the best timber in the East; it works easily, and though porous, is strong and durable. It is easily seasoned, and shrinks very little. It is of an oily nature, and therefore does not injure iron. Mr. Crawford says that in comparing teak and oak together, the useful qualities of the former will be found to preponderate. It is equally strong, and somewhat more buoyant. Its durability is more uniform and decided; and to insure that durability, it demands less care and preparation, for it may be put into use almost green from the forest, without danger of dry or wet rot. It is fit to endure all climates and all alternations of climate. The teak of Malabar, produced on the high table land of the south of India, is deemed the best of any. It is the closest in its fiber, and contains the largest quantity of oil, being at once the heaviest and most durable. This species of teak is used for the keel, timbers, and such parts of the ship as are under water; owing to its great weight, it is less suitable for the upper works, and is not at all fit for spars. The teak of Java ranks next to that of Malabar, and is especially suitable for planking. That of Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea,

etc., are of equal value, and their great forests teem with such an abundance as to be able to supply the ship-building material for the navies of the world. The Rangoon or Burman teak, and that of Siam is not so close grained and durable as the others. It is, however, more buoyant, and therefore, best suited for masts and spars. Malabar teak is extensively used in the building-yards of Bombay. Ships built wholly of it are almost indestructible by ordinary wear and tear, and instances are not rare of their having lasted from eighty to a hundred years; although they are said to sail indifferently, but this is probably owing to some defect in their construction, and not to the weight of the timber. Calcutta ships are never wholly built of teak; the timbers and frame-work are always of native wood, and the planking and deck only of teak. With this timber, in combination with the pine of Oregon and the redwood of California, vessels could no doubt be constructed superior to anything being built in our ship-yards at the present time.

RICE.

One of the great food staples of India, China, Japan, and the westerly islands of the Pacific, is rice. It is among the most valuable of cereal grasses—the oryza sativa of botanists. It forms the principal part of the food of the most civilized and populous Eastern nations, being more extensively consumed for that purpose by the people of those countries, than any other species of grain. It is too well known to require more than a place here as a product. The quality of the grain grown is not equal to that produced on the low, marshy grounds in the Carolinas of America—it having no equal.

SILK (SERICUM).

The art of rearing silk-worms, a species of caterpillar or larvæ of the genus phalana, and of unraveling the threads spun by them in forming their cocoons, dates away back in the dim pages of Chinese history. Its first introduction from China into Rome was about the time of Pompey and Julius Cæsar. The great distance of China from Rome, the journeys of the caravans overland through the Persian Empire, caused a high price to be placed on silk, bringing in the earlier periods its weight in gold. The art of rearing the worms gradually extended over the countries of Europe, being introduced in France under the reign of Louis XI in 1480, and into England at about the same period. The manufacture of silk was begun in Lyons in 1520, under Francis I. The art gradually extended itself over France, and in such esteem were its promoters held, that silk manufacturers who had pursued the trade for a period of twelve years were rewarded with a patent of nobilty by Henry IV.

Rearing the silk-worm, with the cultivation of the mulberry (moracea) tree in its many varieties-the leaves of which serve as food for the worm-has been reduced to a fine art in India, China, Japan, the Phillippines, and some of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, and other islands of the South Sea, forming one of the most valuable productions of those places, and forms no inconsiderable portion of our commerce with the localities named.

PINEAPPLE (ANANASSA SATIVA).

This delicious fruit is native to most of the tropical islands of the South Sea, and like that grown in

the hot-houses of England and America, its quality as a fruit is altogether dependent upon the care exercised in its cultivation. In its wild state, about the only condition in which it produces a reproductive seed, it is hardly ever sought after as a food, but rather for the long, fine fiber contained in the leaves. There are as many as fifty varieties, not all of them bearing a palatable fruit, even when cultivated. That thought the most of, in the Phillippine Islands—not as a fruit, but for its fiber-producing qualities-grows in the wild state, and is known to botanists as the Bromelia pinguin. This particular plant throws out leaves from three to sometimes eight feet long, which abound in fiber of great strength and durability in the older plants, while in the leaves of the younger growth a

fiber is found that the natives work into all the delicate forms, gossamer and cobweb like, and in such delicate and beautiful designs as not only to always astonish the traveler, but to invariably bring, when in the form of veils, handkerchiefs, etc., many times their weight in gold.

MANILLA HEMP.

The textile fiber of the abaca palm, of the family of musas, to which the banana and plantain belong, is found native in a great many of the island groups of the South Sea, but probably is better known and grows in greater luxuriance in the Phillippines, where the manifold uses the fiber is put to, in the manufacture of the most delicate laces, veils, handkerchiefs, to the coarsest cables used by ships, has made the name of the hemp world-wide. The thousands of tons of the raw material shipped from the Phillippines every year, and to nearly every part of the world, bear evidence

« ZurückWeiter »