114 PHYSICAL GEOGEAPIIY. [Paet I. 



tlian tills practical combination of antacid, the tonic, and 

 carminative. 



The custom is so ancient in Ceylon and in India that 

 the Arabs and Persians who resorted to BLlndustan in the 

 eighth and ninth centuries carried back tlie habit to 

 their own country ; and Massoudi, the traveller of 

 Bagdad, who wrote the account of his voyages in A.D. 

 943, states that the chewing of betel prevailed along the 

 southern coast of Arabia, and reached as far as Yemen 

 and Mecca. ^ Ibn Batuta saw the betel plant at Zahfar 

 A.D. 1332, and describes it accurately as trained hke a 

 vine over a trelhs of reeds, or chmbing the stems of the 

 coco-nut palm.^ 



The leaves of the coca^ supply the Indians of Bolivia 

 and Peru with a stimulant, whose use is equivalent to 

 that of the betel-pepper among the natives of Hindustan 

 and the Eastern Archipelago. With an admixture of 

 lime, they are chewed perseveringly ; but, unlike the 

 betel, the colour imparted by them to the sahva is 

 greenish instead of red. It is curious, too, as a coin- 

 cidence common to the humblest phases of semi-civlhsed 

 hfe, that, in the absence of coined money, the leaves of 

 the coca form a rude kind of currency in the Andes, as 

 does the betel in some parts of Ceylon, and tobacco 

 amongst the tribes of the south-west of Africa.^ 



Neither catechu nor its impure equivalent, "terra 

 japonica," is prepared from the areca in Ceylon ; but the 

 nuts are exported in large quantities to the Maldive 

 Islands and to India, the produce of which they excel 

 both in astrlngency and size. The fibrous wood of the 

 areca being at once straight, firm, and elastic, is em- 

 ployed for making the pingoes (yokes for the shoulders), 



Massoudi, Moroudj-al-Btchcb, I America when Virginia was colonised 

 as translated by Eeinatjd, Memoire \ in the early part of the 17th centuiy ; 



snr rimh, p. 230. 



2 Voyages, c^'-f. t. ii. p. 205. 



^ Erythroxylon coca. 



'^ Tobacco was a currency in North 



debts were contracted and paid in 

 it, and in every ordinary transaction 

 tobacco answered the purposes of 

 coin. 



