_ THE CAMPHOR-TREE OF SUMATRA. 71 
said, at from fourteen to eighteen feet above the ground. The others are 
engaged in gathering the camphor from the trees which have been cut 
down. From the extraordinary thickness of the trunks, it often happens 
that a whole day is employed in felling a single tree. 
On his second expedition from Loemoet to Pertibi, in the year 1841, 
Dr. Junghuhn visited the bivouac of such a company in the neighbour- 
hood of Hoeraba, and by this means became acquainted with the method 
by which the natives obtain camphor or camphor-oil from the tree. 
The oil is collected in the following manner :— 
1. Incisions are made through the outer and inner bark, at the lower 
part of the trunk close to the root, chiefly where the tree produces the 
before-mentioned woody radiations, which alternate with vertical ca- 
vities, which are also observed in other trees growing between the tropics. 
` The clear, yellow, balsamic, oily juice, which is discharged very slowly, 
is collected in a half-cylinder of very thin bamboo, cut longitudinally. 
According to the observation of Junghuhn, who witnessed it, half a day 
was scarcely sufficient to half-fill a small tea-cup with this liquid, and 
even this small quantity was mixed with fragments of bark and other. 
impurities. The collected juice is purified by pouring it through a 
kind of sieve, made from the fibrous tissue of the sheathing footstalk 
of a palm-leaf (kindoe). 
The camphor is found as a varnished, gluey, and clammy covering, re- 
sembling turpentine, or in a solid grainy state, in the fissures of the bark, 
and in the laminary prominences. The surface near the root has chiefly 
a white covering, which is rarely thicker than one or two millimètres. 
This substanee is highly estimated by the Battas, and fetches a high 
price. : : 
Colebrooke, and many other authors who have written on this sub- 
ject, have said that the camphor is obtained from the middle of the 
trunk, and that every tree should produce a quantity of eleven pounds; - 
the camphor being found in the heart of the tree in such a quantity as 
to fill a cavity of the thickness of an.arm. This is quite exaggerated, - 
and must be founded ou an error. If it were true, the price of cam- — — 
phor would be lower than it is now. At Padang and at Tapanuli the —.— 
price of a hundred pounds of camphor is nearly £250. Such a quan- - 
tity would in that case be obtained from nine trees. That proportion 
is highly improbable, and suffices to show the inaccuracy of the ac- 
count. On the contrary, the camphor only occurs in fissures of the 
