114 



PHYSICAL GEOGEAPHY. 



[PABT I. 



than this 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 Hindustan in the 

 eighth and ninth centuries carried back the habit to 

 their own country ; and Massoudi, the traveller of 

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

 943, states that the chewing of betel then prevailed along 

 the southern coast of Arabia, and reached as far as Yemen 

 and Mecca. 1 Ibn Batuta saw the betel plant at Zahfar 

 in 1332, and describes it accurately as trained like a 

 vine over a trellis of reeds, or climbing the stems of the 

 coco-nut palm. 2 



The leaves of the coca 3 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 saliva is 

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

 cidence common to the humblest phases of semi-civilised 

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

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

 the betel does still in some parts of Ceylon, and tobacco 

 did formerly amongst the tribes of the south-west of 

 Africa. 4 



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 

 in astringency and exceed in 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), 



1 MASSOTTDI, Moroudj-al-Dzclieb, 

 as translated by REINATJD. M&moire 

 sur Vlnde, p. 230. 



2 Voyages, fyc. t. ii. p. 205. 

 8 Erythroxylon coca. 



4 Tobacco was a currency in North 



America when Virginia was colonised 

 in the early part of the 17th century ; 

 debts were contracted and paid in 

 it, and in every ordinary transaction 

 tobacco answered the purposes of 



