The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,257 pages of information about The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom.

The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,257 pages of information about The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom.

GAMBIER.

The Gambier plant (Uncaria Gambler, Roxburgh, Nauclea Gambir, Hunter), has been described by Rumphius under the name of Funis uncatus.  It is a stout, scandent, evergreen shrub, which strongly resembles the myrtle.  It is generally cultivated in the same plantation with pepper, as the leaves and shoots, after undergoing the process by which their juice is extracted, to furnish a kind of catechu, are found to be an excellent manure for the pepper vines.  The leaves and young shoots of the gambier plant are collected as soon as they have attained a sufficient size, and boiled in iron pans until the juice acquires the consistence of treacle.  The decoction is poured out into narrow troughs, dried, and afterwards cut up into small cakes, and packed in baskets for exportation.  The gambier extract, which is of a yellowish brown color, and has the consistence of hard cheese, is much esteemed by the Malays for mixing with the preparation of betel, which they are in the habit of chewing; and considerable quantities have lately been imported to this country, where it is used for dyeing colors, and for tanning leather.  The demand for gambier here is on the increase; and when better known to our chemists, it will probably be found applicable to many other purposes than those to which it is at present applied.

There were, in 1850, 400 gambier and pepper plantations on the island of Singapore; each measures or occupies on an average an area of 500 fathoms square, and employs eight to ten hands to cultivate and manufacture the gambier and pepper.  There are some pepper plantations in addition, and they have been found to answer very well without any gambier being cultivated with them.  Gambier cultivation is generally a losing undertaking, but it is adopted to obtain the refuse of the leaves for manuring the pepper vines, and also to employ the people in the plantations; it besides affords the proprietors the means of getting monthly sums to carry on the cultivation of pepper, which affords two crops yearly.  There were formerly 600 plantations in Singapore, but the reason already assigned, and the formation of spice plantations contiguous have caused the abandonment of all those near the town.  Each plantation must have an equal extent of forest land to that cultivated with gambier and pepper, to enable the manufacture of the gambier being carried on, and each gambier plantation, of 500 fathoms square, contains about 3,500 pepper vines, which yield on an average two catties per vine, or 70 piculs of pepper, and about 170 piculs of gambier annually;—­a good plantation will, however, yield sometimes as much as 120 piculs of pepper, and 200 piculs of gambier, and a bad one as little as 40 to 50 piculs of pepper, and 60 to 80 piculs of gambier.  Were it not for the enormous commission charged by the agents of these plantations, from whom the cultivators get all the

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The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.