The Romance of Plant Life

Some 12,000 people on the slopes of the Balkans, at Kerzanlik and other places, entirely depend upon their rose plantations. These are on light soil, fully exposed to the sun, at over 1200 feet above the sea. It is interesting to find that the pure mountain air strengthens the perfume, for these Balkan roses are fifty per cent. richer in essences than those of lowland plants.

Another interesting plant much cultivated in the Riviera is the Cassier (Acacia farnesiana). It is really a native of India, but was introduced from the West Indies to Europe in 1656. Cannes, Grasse, Antibes, and Nice are the places where it is most cultivated. Its flowers appear from July to November. An old tree may yield as much as twelve to twenty pounds of flowers, worth about five to six francs. But 116 pounds of flowers only yield about a pound of essence, so that it is not surprising that this last is worth £60 the pound.

The cultivation is a little uncertain, for a temperature of three or four degrees below the freezing-point kills the trees.

The pomades made from many of these flowers are produced as follows: A series of trays are covered with fat or grease; the petals are placed on the grease and replaced by fresh petals every twenty-four hours or so; in the end the grease is so saturated with scent that it forms pomade or pomatum.

Thus these half-desert countries are by no means without interest from a botanical point of view. The conditions of life are no doubt hard both for plants and animals. The scent so richly produced depends upon the strong sunlight and pure air. It is very useful, partly because it attracts those useful insects which carry the pollen, but also because such odours are distasteful to grazing animals. The gums, incenses, thorns, and spines are all of great use to the plant in its dangerous struggle for existence with hungry camels and thirsty soil.

When men understood how to irrigate the soil, and before they were foolish enough to cut down the forests which once guarded the mountain springs, these half-deserts were exceedingly prosperous; they were full of vigorous intellectual life, and of strong, hardy, and industrious peoples. Asia Minor, Turkey, Greece, and the Northern Coast of Africa from Morocco to Egypt, were rich and wonderful countries.

But it was not only the destruction of the forests that has ruined them. The curse of Mohammed, the fatalism produced by his religion, and the slavery which is a necessary part thereof, have destroyed the people in mind, body, and spirit. Even in Greece, Algiers, and Cyprus there has been as yet but small recovery.

In the future, not merely these countries, but Northern Nigeria, British East Africa, and South-west Cape Colony, may have as rich a history as Greece, if British brain and energy are helped by the strong muscles of the African.

CHAPTER IX

ON TEA, COFFEE, CHOCOLATE, AND TOBACCO

English tea-drinking – Story of our tea – Assam coolies – Manufacture in India and China – Celestial moisture – Danger of tea – The hermit and his intelligent goat – Government, coffee and cafés – Chicory – Chocolate – Aztecs – Kola and its curious effects – Tobacco – Sir Walter Raleigh – Great emperors and tobacco – Could we grow tobacco? – Story of a Sumatra cigar – Danger of young people smoking tobacco.

ON every day throughout the year English people drink about 600,000 lb. of tea. That is about 270 tons, which would form, when made into the beverage, a lake quite large enough to float a man-of-war! No other civilized nation takes its tea in the reckless way that we do. Yet our fellow-subjects in Australia drink even more than ourselves.

Almost the whole of this tea is grown in British colonies or possessions, manufactured by British subjects, and imported in British ships.

The coolies who work in the tea-gardens of Assam and Ceylon, the Englishman who manages them, the engineers in Glasgow and Newcastle who made the machinery, the shipbuilders, shipowners, and crews, are all fellow-countrymen of those who drink the cup that cheers. Every sixpence in the £8,000,000, which is our yearly account for tea, finds its way into the pockets of our fellow-subjects either at home or abroad.

Every one would suppose that a trade like this, which benefits everybody, would be very carefully fostered by Government.

Far from it, for this is one of those articles that are always being attacked by Chancellors of the Exchequer, who seem to have a special ill will against tea.

Indeed, it is so heavily taxed that it is extremely difficult to make a profit on tea-gardens. Elsewhere in this chapter some other very curious facts will be found illustrating the extraordinary habits and methods of the British Government.

The author does not try to explain these facts, but only points them out; a nation that can manage to exist at all when such things are done by its Government is a nation to which one is proud to belong.

The Tea-plant is a native of China and Assam. It is a very handsome shrub resembling a camellia, with dark, glossy, green leaves and beautiful flowers. It is said to have been used in China about 2700 B.C., and the first plantations in India were made with Chinese seed. But a Mr. Bruce reported the presence of an indigenous wild tea in Assam.57 Three botanists who were sent to investigate the question suggested that this Assam variety was only the Chinese plant run wild, and advised the introduction of Chinese seedlings. This was a very unfortunate mistake, for the wild Assam plant gives much better results.

The jungle is first cut down and cleared away by the native tribes, with the help of elephants. Then at the right season, i.e. after the rains begin, the Indian women and coolies go into the plantations. They carry on their backs a basket supported by a band across the forehead. These women nip off the first two leaves and a bud with their finger and thumb and throw them into the basket over their shoulders. When the basket is full they take it back to the factory, where their gatherings are weighed. The actual manufacture is, in India and Ceylon, all performed by machinery. The tea is first emptied on to trays in a shallow layer: a pound of tea when so spread out covers more than a square yard. These trays are then placed in a room which is heated to a high temperature, for "withering." After six hours it is passed through a machine which "rolls" or gives a twist to the leaves. It is then "fermented" on cement floors, where the tea is covered by strips of moist muslin. It is again rolled and afterwards dried or "fired." The sifting out of the different sorts or blends, and also the packing of the tea in chests, are done by machinery.

That is the Indian system of manufacture, in which there is scarcely any hand-labour.

In China the rolling, and indeed every stage of the process, appears to be done by hand. It is obvious that in the handling, pattings, and rollings of the tea by Chinese coolies, "celestial moisture" may be imparted to it. In spite of this, however, the export of Chinese tea is steadily diminishing. In the old days, the Liverpool "tea clippers," fast and beautiful sailing-ships, raced each other home from China in order to get the first tea upon the market.

Tea is sometimes dangerous, and especially when it is allowed to stew on the fire for hours at a time. Besides theine, which is the stimulating, active part of it, and which is a bracing tonic to the nerves, tannin is also found therein. When meat is taken with a large amount of tannin, the latter acts on the meat exactly as it does on hides in a tanning factory. It forms a substance resembling leather, which taxes the powers of the strongest digestion.

Once upon a time in those fertile mountains of Abyssinia which have never yet been explored by the white man, there was a very holy and pious hermit. He used to live entirely on the milk of a few goats which he carefully tended with his own hands. One morning he noticed that one of these goats showed signs of unusual excitement. It was frisking about, and obviously was exceedingly well pleased with itself.

That was not a usual experience with the holy recluse, who watched the animal carefully. He soon discovered that it was in the habit of grazing on the bright red berries of a very handsome shrub in the hills. The anchorite tasted those fruits and discovered that he also became both pleased with himself and somewhat excited.

His disciples soon discovered a brightness and exhilaration, an unusual "snap," in the good man's sermons, and they watched him and also discovered Coffee!

The author refuses to take the responsibility of more than the discovery of the above story. Coffee was, however, introduced into Arabia by the Sheikh Dabhani in 1470. It was taken to Constantinople about 1554, and about a hundred years later coffee-houses and cafés were regular and habitual daily resorts in London and Paris.

As usual with stimulants of all kinds, the watchful eye of a moral Government discovered something objectionable in coffee, and Charles II in 1675 imposed heavy taxes, or rather forbade the use of it altogether.

There was in 1718 a coffee-plant in the botanical gardens at Amsterdam, and in that year some of its seeds were sent to Surinam, in Dutch Guiana. Apparently the millions of shrubs in the enormous coffee plantations of the New World are all descended from this particular Amsterdam plant.

This New World coffee is by far the most important supply. Brazil alone exports about £19,000,000 worth of coffee, and that from the New World forms about 82 per cent of the total world's production.

The story of coffee in Ceylon is a tragedy. There happened to be in the jungle a particular fungus (Hemileia vastatrix) which got its living on the leaves of wild plants belonging to the coffee order (Rubiaceæ) and others. When Arabian coffee was introduced, the fungus began to attack its leaves. The result was the utter ruin of the industry. It is said that about £15,000,000 was lost by this Hemileia disease in Ceylon.

The plantations require a great deal of care. The shrubs have to be carefully pruned, and the preparation of the coffee bean is not a very easy matter. It is really the seed of a bright red, fleshy berry. The pulp or flesh has to be removed, and also both a horny skin, the "parchment," and a thin delicate membrane, the "silverskin," in which the seed is enclosed. Coffee is not nearly so much used in Britain as in some other places, and particularly in Holland, for the Dutch drink about twenty-one pounds per head in the year, whilst we in Great Britain only use about three-quarters of a pound.

It is in fact not very easy to make good coffee, and it is absolutely necessary to grind and roast the beans just before using them. Very often also too little coffee is used.

Tinned coffee is often adulterated with either Chicory or Endives, but those are only the two most important impurities, for burnt sugar, biscuits, locust-beans, date-stones, rye, malt, and other substances are ground up and mixed with coffee.

The use of chicory is, however, more or less recognized. It is the roots which are ground up and mixed with it. They contain no caffeine, which is the active part of the coffee bean, and are quite harmless. At one time chicory was grown in Essex and other English counties, and was a distinctly profitable crop.

Here again come in the mysterious ways of the British Government. The cultivation of chicory was absolutely forbidden by the Inland Revenue Department; but a considerable amount is still grown in Belgium and is imported to this country. Those who prefer chicory with their coffee have to pay a heavy duty; but the Belgian farmer is allowed and the British farmer is forbidden to take up a paying and profitable industry! The plant is allied to the dandelion. It occasionally occurs in this country as a weed, and is a rather striking plant with bright blue flowers.

Another of these useful productions which also suffers from a heavy duty is Cocoa or Chocolate. There are a great many different plants called Co Co, or by some name very similar to it. The Cocoanut Palm furnishes not only the nuts but the fibre or coir enclosing them, as well as a great many other useful substances. The cocaine used by dentists, and which deadens or stupefies the nerves of the teeth, is derived from the leaves of a Peruvian shrub, "Coca" (Erythroxylan Coca). These leaves are chewed in the mouth and have very extraordinary effects, especially on the Indian labourers. They are a strong nerve stimulus and take away any feeling of hunger or fatigue. It was by the use of coca leaves that the postmen of the Inca emperors in Peru were enabled to carry messages at the rate of 150 miles a day. Then again the Cocoes of the West Indian Islands is a sort of Yam (Colocasia antiquorum). Coco-de-mer is the fruit of a palm common in the Seychelles Islands (Lodoicea Seychellarum).

The cocoa which gives the ordinary chocolate and cocoa of the breakfast table is the seed of a tree (Theobroma cacao). The name is derived from θεος, god, and βρωμα, food. It may be translated, "That which the gods browse upon."

This plant is one of those which were cultivated by that ancient, powerful, semi-civilized nation, the Aztecs of Mexico. They have almost entirely vanished; at any rate their descendants, if they have any, exercise practically no influence in the world, but they have left us chocolate. They fully appreciated the plant, and even more than we do, for they worshipped it with grateful and superstitious awe.

In their tombs, chocolate flavoured with vanilla was placed, in order to provide the ghost with sufficient sustenance for his or her aerial flight to the Land of the Sun. Columbus brought home some cocoa on his return from his first voyage. The Jesuit fathers in Mexico greatly helped in developing the plantation of cocoa in the days of the Spaniards. At present the largest amount comes from Ecuador, which produces about 50,000,000 pounds weight.

It is a small tree, twenty to thirty feet high, growing in the warm, moist, and sheltered forests of Central and South America. It has a large fruit, within which are the numerous cocoa beans, "nibs," or seeds. The tree does not bear until it is five years old. The fermentation and drying of the beans require some care.

Chocolate is made from the powdered cocoa mixed with sugar and other materials. Chocolate, like tea and coffee, depends for its effect on an extremely powerful drug, theine or caffeine, of which it contains minute proportions. There are very few other plants known which possess this powerful substance. Amongst these is the Kola nut, which is everywhere regularly employed in West Africa. On the way up to the barracks at Freetown, Sierra Leone, natives were always to be seen seated by the roadside; they sold kola nuts to the soldiers, who were thereby enabled to walk steadily and uprightly past the sentry, and to return his challenge in a clearly articulate voice, although they might previously have been somewhat injudiciously convivial in the town. This kola is one of the very strongest nerve tonics; under its influence men can endure severe physical and mental strain. Like the others, however, a depressing reaction inevitably follows, accompanied by insomnia, headache, and other evil effects.

When one comes to ask, Why do those few plants out of all the vast multitude of the vegetable world possess such extraordinary virtues? it is difficult to find an answer. Possibly some obscure insect or fungus enemy finds caffeine poisonous.

Nor can one find any reason for the curious properties developed in the Tobacco leaf by fermentation, except a possible protection to the leaf from the attacks of insects. No doubt the leaf, even in its natural state, would be too strong for them.

Tobacco is a native of Central America. The name Nicotiana tabacum is derived (the first) from a certain Jean Nicot, Ambassador to the King of Portugal, and the second from the Haytian name for a pipe.

On Columbus's voyage in 1492 the use of tobacco was noted. The story of Sir Walter Raleigh's servant, who threw a bucket of water over his master when the latter was smoking a pipe, is not supported by much evidence, but it seems to be probable that Sir Walter did smoke his pipe on the way to the scaffold.

At any rate it was cultivated in Europe by the year 1570, and Spenser speaks of the "soveraine Weed, divine Tobacco."

From the first it was detested by all governments and authorities. James I published a very intemperate Counterblast against Tobacco. It was prohibited by the Czar of Russia in 1635, and by the King of France. The great Sultan Jehanghir in India, Sultan Amurath II in Turkey, Shah Abbas the Great in Persia, and the Emperor Kang Ching in China, all prohibited the use of tobacco in their respective dominions.

Yet none of these great rulers were able to check its progress. The "Herb of Amiability," or the "Queen Herb of the rude Barbarian" as it is described in Chinese, prevails almost over the whole earth. There is scarcely a people or tribe in existence which does not use it.

But almost everywhere it is either heavily taxed or a Government monopoly; in the latter case it is always exceedingly bad. We ourselves import tobacco worth about £4,500,000 in the year, and pay a heavy duty. The world probably smokes from 1,800,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 pounds of tobacco every year.

The plant is a very pretty one, with large leaves and long pinky or white flowers, which are open and strongly scented at night. It is an annual, and is not at all difficult to cultivate. There is an impression in this country that it is a tropical plant, but by far the greatest amount of our tobacco comes from temperate countries. Large quantities are grown in Germany, in Hungary, and in other parts of Europe. As a matter of fact tobacco was once cultivated in both England and Scotland.

There is evidence to show that in 1832 it was successfully grown in Roxburghshire, where 1000 pounds an acre was obtained. The land was let at about £5 to £6 per acre. Experiments of recent years have also proved very encouraging, and in fact it is difficult to see how any reasonable doubt can exist as to the fact that it would be perfectly easy to grow plenty of that sort of tobacco which we now obtain from Holland and Germany. A prominent Irish statesman has admitted this: "There was no doubt but that tobacco could be grown in Ireland, but whether there are Irishmen patriotic enough to smoke it, is very doubtful."58

Of course every one knows that the differences in tobacco depend chiefly on the preparation, but the Constitutional objection to tobacco, illustrated by the above remark, is the real reason why it is not grown.

Oliver Cromwell sent his troopers to ride down the growing crops. Charles II imposed a penalty of £1600 per acre. Modern statesmen are flippant and unfair.

The reason of course is that a large income is cheaply obtained by taxing imported tobacco. If this were at all interfered with, new taxes, which would certainly be unpopular, would be required.

There is a good deal of interest in the story of the tobacco plantations. Many prisoners of the Civil War in England were sold to Virginia and other places. Even nowadays there is some romance in the history of a cigar. In the Dutch island of Sumatra the jungle is cleared away by the natives under the orders of an English manager. Chinese coolies are then imported. The estate provides each coolie with tools, tea, a barber, and sufficient cash to buy rice, fish, or pork, as well as a little over for his opium, to spend in fireworks, and to propitiate his demons.

The coolie grows the tobacco, which is bought from him and manufactured by the estate. Some of it goes to India, where it is used as the outer wrapper of cigars.59

For adulterating tobacco all sorts of leaves are occasionally employed, such as those of the dock, chicory, burdock, foxglove, comfrey, elm, coltsfoot, plantain, beech, cabbage, lettuce (steeped in tar oil), etc., etc.

The substance nicotine is a deadly and dangerous poison. When young people smoke tobacco, it has been quite conclusively proved that they will very probably not reach their full growth, but be miserable weaklings, stunted, half-developed, and below the proper standard of a man.

This is not surprising, if one reflects on the constitution of tobacco smoke. This contains "nicotine, empyreumatic resin, oil, ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, hydrocyanic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, carburetted hydrogen, and paraffin."60

CHAPTER X

ON DESERTS

What are deserts like? – Camel-riding – Afterglow – Darwin in South America – Big Bad Lands – Plants which train themselves to endure thirst – Cactus and euphorbia – Curious shapes – Grey hairs – Iceplant – Esparto grass – Retama – Colocynth – Sudden flowering of the Karoo – Short-lived flowers – Colorado Desert – Date palms on the Nile – Irrigation in Egypt – The creaking Sakkieh – Alexandria hills – The Nile and Euphrates.

ACROSS the whole of Africa, at its very broadest part, from the dominions of the Emperor of the Sahara at Cape Juby on the Atlantic, and to the very borders of British India, stretches a desert of the most uncompromising character. It is famous in history: the strongest races of man, the great religions of the world, as well as most cultivated plants and domestic animals, have originated in some part of this dreary waste.

One cannot really appreciate deserts unless one has really seen them. But it is necessary to try to describe what they are like.

Sometimes the desert is a wilderness of broken, stony hills covered by angular pieces of shivered rock. In other places the soil is hard, and is everywhere covered by pebbles or shingle. Often it is a mere waste of sand blown into downs and hillocks which look sometimes like the sand dunes by the coast, and elsewhere like the waves of the sea.

One finds valleys in the desert quite like ordinary ones in shape, but instead of water there is only sand in sweeping curves and hollows, like the snow-wreaths and drifts in a highland glen.

Rocks stand out of this, but their projecting faces are polished smooth and glittering or deeply cut by the flinty particles scraping over them continually in storms and hurricanes.

The traveller on camel-back, where his waist has to act as a sort of universal joint giving to every unexpected jolt and wrench of his rough-paced mount, suffers from the heat, for nowhere else in the world are there such high temperatures. He suffers from thirst, and still more from the dust which fills eyes, mouth, nostrils, and ears.

Yet the dry pure air is most exhilarating.

In the evening there is a feast for the eyes in the glorious afterglow when the sun has just set. The light from below the horizon produces an ever-changing, indescribable play of colour from violet to salmon pink and through the most delicate shades of yellow, blue, and rose, until everything fades and there reigns only the mysterious silence of the beautiful starlit night.

No wonder the air is dry and pure, for rain only falls on perhaps eight days in the year in some places (Ghardiaia).

Yet plants manage to exist even where there is only about seven inches of rain annually.

But this seems still more extraordinary if one remembers that sand may be almost glowing hot during the day, whilst in winter it may be, at night, cooled below the freezing-point.

Yet a desert absolutely bare of plants is an exceedingly rare phenomenon. Such do occur. Darwin speaks of "an undulating country, a complete and utter desert." This is not very far from Iquique in South America. "The road was strewed with the bones and dried skins of the many beasts of burden which had perished upon it from fatigue. Excepting the Vultur aura, which preys on the carcases, I saw neither bird, quadruped, reptile, nor insect. On the coast mountains, at the height of about 2000 feet, where, during this season, the clouds generally hang, a very few cacti were growing in the clefts of rock; and the loose sand was strewed over with a lichen which lies on the surface quite unattached. … In some parts it was in sufficient quantity to tinge the sand, as seen from a distance, of a pale yellowish colour. Farther inland, during the whole ride of fourteen leagues, I saw only one other vegetable production, and that was a most minute yellow lichen, growing on the bones of the dead mules."61