510 



THE TKOPICAL WORLD. 



spathes of the unopened flowers a delicious '* toddy " is drawn, which, drunk at sun- 

 rise before fermentation has taken place, acts as a cooling, gentle aperient, but in a few 

 hours changes into an intoxicating wine, and may be distilled into arrack. The strong 

 tough foot-stalks of the fronds, which attain a length of from eighteen to twenty feet, 

 are used for fences, for yokes, for carrying burdens on the shoulders, for fishing-rods ; 

 the leaflets serve for rooffing, for mats, for baskets, for cattle-fodder : and their mid- 

 ribs form good brooms for the decks of ships. Cooked or stewed, the cabbage or 

 cluster of unexpanded leaves is an excellent vegetable, though rarely used, as it neces- 

 sarily involves the destruction of the tree ; and even the tough web or network, which 

 sustains the foot-stalks of the leaves, may be stripped ofi* in large pieces and used for 

 straining. After the cocoa-nut tree has ceased to bear, its wood serves for many val- 

 uable purposes — for the building of ships, bungalows, and huts, for furniture and 

 farming implements of every description ; and, as it admits of a fine polish, and its 

 reddish ground color is beautifully veined with dark lines, it is frequently imported 

 into England under the name of porcupine-wood. When we consider the many bene- 

 fits conferred upon mankind by this inestimable tree, we cannot wonder at the anima- 

 tion with which the islander of the Indian Ocean recounts its hundred uses," or at 

 the superstition which makes him believe that by some mysterious sympathy it pines 

 when beyond the reach of the human voice. 



In every zone we find nations in a low degree of civilization living almost exclu- 

 sively upon a single animal or plant. The Laplander has his reindeer, the Esquimau 

 his seal, the Sandwich Islander his taro-root ; and thus also we find the natives of a 

 great part of the Indian Archipelago living almost exclusively upon the pith of the 

 Sago palm. Of this tree, which is of such great importance to the indolent Malay, 

 as it almost entirely relieves him of the necessity of labor, we shall speak hereafter, in 

 connection with its use as furnishing nutrition to man. 



The Saguer or Gomuti, the ugliest of palms, but almost rivaling the cocoa-nut tree 

 by the multiplicity of its uses, is likewise a native of the Indian Archipelago. On 

 seeing its rough and swarthy rind, and the dull dark-green color of its fronds, the 

 stranger wonders how it is allowed to stand, but when he has tasted its delicious wine 

 he is astonished not to see it cultivated in greater numbers. Although the outer cov- 

 ering of the fruit has venomous qualities, and is used by the Malays to poison springs, 

 the nuts have a delicate flavor, and the wounded spathe yields an excellent toddy, 

 which, like that of the cocoa-nut and the palmyra palm, changes by fermentation into 

 an intoxicating wine, and on being thickened by boiling furnishes a kind of black sugar, 

 much used by the natives of Java and the adjacent isles. The reticulum or fibrous net 

 at the base of the petioles of the leaves constitutes the gumatty, a substance admirably 

 adapted to the manufacture of cables, and extensively used for cordage of every de- 

 scription. The gumatty is black as jet, the hairs extremely strong, and resembling 

 coir, except that they are longer and finer. The small, hard twigs found mixed up 

 with this material are employed as pens, besides forming the shafts of the sumpits, or 

 little poisoned arrows of the Malays, and underneath the reticulum is a soft silky ma- 

 terial, used as tinder by the Chinese, and applied as oakum in caulking the seams of 

 ships, while from the interior of the trunk a kind of sago is prepared. 



The Areca palm (Areca Catechu) bears a great resemblance to the cocoa-nut tree, 

 but is of a still more graceful form, rising to the hight of forty or fifty feet, without 



