SUGAR, COFFEE, CACAO, COCA.
Progress of the Sugar Cane throughout the Tropical Zone--The Tahitian
Sugar Cane--The enemies of the Sugar Cane--The Sugar-harvest--The
Coffee Tree--Its cultivation and enemies--The Cacao Tree and the
Vanilla--The Coca Plant--Wonderful strengthening Effects of Coca,
and fatal consequences of its Abuse.
Sugar is undoubtedly one of the most valuable products of the vegetable
world, and may be said with truth to be only surpassed in importance
by the nourishing meal of the cereals, or the textile fibres of the
cotton-plant. Our garden fruit owes its agreeable taste to the sugar
which the ripening sun developes in its juices. The sap of many a
plant--the palm, the birch, the maple, the American agave--is
rendered useful to man by the sugar it contains. It is this substance
which imparts sweetness to the honey gathered by bees from flowers,
and, after undergoing fermentation, changes the juice of the grape into
delicious wine.
But although sugar is of almost universal occurrence throughout the
vegetable world, yet few plants contain it in such abundance as to
render its extraction profitable; and even the beet-root requires high
protective duties to be able to compete with the tropical sugar-cane,
a member of the extensive family of the grasses. The original home of
this plant--for which, doubtless, the lively fancy of the ancient
Greeks, had they been better acquainted with it, would have invented
a peculiar god, as for the vine or the cereals--was most probably
south-eastern Asia, where the Chinese seem to have been the first
people that learnt the art to multiply it by culture.
From China its cultivation spread westwards to India and Arabia, and
the conquests of Alexander the Great, first made Europe acquainted with
the sweet-juiced cane, while sugar itself had long before been imported
by the Phœnicians as a rare production of the Eastern world.
During the dark ages which followed the fall of the Roman Empire, all
previous knowledge of the Oriental sugar-plant became lost, until
the Crusades, and, still more, the revival of commerce in Venice and
Genoa re-opened the ancient intercourse between the Eastern and the
Western world. From Egypt, where the cultivation of the sugar-cane had
meanwhile been introduced, it now extended to the Morea, to Rhodes, and
Malta; and at the beginning of the twelfth century we find it growing
in Italy, on the sultry plains at the foot of Mount Etna.
After the discovery of Madeira by the Portuguese, in the year 1419, the
first colonists added the vine of Cyprus and the Sicilian sugar-cane to
the indigenous productions of that lovely island; and both succeeded
so well as to become, after a few years, the objects of a lively trade
with the mother country.
Yet, in spite of this extension of its culture, the importance of sugar
as an article of international trade continued to be very limited,
until the discovery of _tropical_ America[18] by Columbus opened a
new world to commerce. As early as the year 1506 the sugar-cane was
transplanted from the Canary Islands to Hispaniola, where its culture,
favoured by the fertility of a virgin soil and the heat of a tropical
sun, was soon found to be so profitable that it became the chief
occupation of the European settlers. The Portuguese, in their turn,
conveyed the cane to Brazil; from Hispaniola it spread over the other
West Indian Islands; thence wandered to the Spanish main, and followed
Pedrarias and Pizarro to the shores of the Pacific. Unfortunately, a
dark shade obscures its triumphal march, as its cultivation was the
chief cause which entailed the curse of negro slavery on some of the
fairest regions of the globe.
Towards the middle of the last century, the Chinese or Oriental
sugar-cane had thus multiplied to an amazing extent over both
hemispheres, when the introduction of the Tahitian variety, which was
found to attain a statelier growth, to contain more sugar, and to
ripen in a shorter time, began to dispossess it of its old domains.
This new and superior plant is now universally cultivated in all the
sugar-growing European colonies; and if Cook’s voyages had produced
no other benefit than making the world acquainted with the Tahitian
sugar-cane, they would for this alone deserve to be reckoned by the
political economist among the most successful and important ever
performed by man.
The sugar-cane bears a great resemblance to the common reed, but the
blossom is different. It has a knotty stalk, frequently rising to the
height of fourteen feet, and produces at each joint a long, pointed,
and sharply serrated leaf or blade. The joints in one stalk are from
forty to sixty in number, and the stalks rising from one root are
sometimes very numerous. A field of canes, when agitated by a light
breeze, affords one of the most pleasing sights, particularly when,
towards the period of their maturity, the golden plants appear crowned
with plumes of silvery feathers, delicately fringed with a lilac dye.
The sugar-cane is liable to be destroyed by many enemies. Sometimes
herds of monkeys come down from the mountains by night, and having
posted sentinels to give the alarm if anything approaches, destroy
incredible quantities of the cane by their gambols as well as their
greediness. It is in vain to set traps for these creatures, however
baited; and the only way to protect a plantation and destroy them, is
to set a numerous watch, well armed with fowling-pieces, and furnished
with dogs.
The rat, which the extension of commerce has gradually spread over the
world, is still more destructive to the sugar-cane, and great pains are
taken to keep it in check by poison or by its arch-enemy the cat.
The sugar-cane is also subject to the _blast_--a disease which no
foresight can obviate, and for which human wisdom has hitherto in
vain attempted to find a remedy. When this happens, the fine broad
green blades become sickly, dry, and withered; soon after they appear
stained in spots, and if these are carefully examined, they will be
found to contain countless eggs of an insect like a bug, which are soon
quickened, and cover the plants with vermin; the juice of the canes
thus affected becomes sour, and no future shoot issues from the joints.
The ravages of the ants concur with those of the bugs in ruining the
prospects of many a sugar-field, and often a long continued drought or
the fury of the tornado will destroy the hopes of the planter.
The land crabs are also very injurious to the sugar-fields, some of
the species being particularly fond of the cane, the juice of which
they suck and chiefly subsist on. They are of course narrowly watched,
and no opportunity of catching them is lost sight of; but such is
their activity in running, that they are almost always enabled to
escape. They seldom go far from their burrows in day-time; and their
watchfulness is such that they regain them in a moment, and disappear
as soon as a man or dog comes near enough to be seen.
Harvest-time in the sugar-plantations is no less a season of gladness
than in the corn-fields of England. So palatable, wholesome, and
nourishing is the fresh juice of the cane, that every animal drinking
freely of it derives health and vigour from its use. The meagre and
sickly among the negroes exhibit a surprising alteration in a few weeks
after the mill is set in action. The labouring oxen, horses, and mules,
though almost constantly at work during this season, yet being indulged
with plenty of the green tops and some of the scummings from the
boiling-house, improve more than at any other period of the year. Even
the pigs and poultry fatten on the refuse, and enjoy their share of the
banquet. The wholesome effects of the juice of the sugar-cane has not
escaped the attention of English physicians, and many a weak-breasted
patient, instead of coughing and freezing at home over what is
ironically termed a comfortable fireside, now spends his winter in the
West Indian Islands, chewing the sweet cane and enjoying in January a
genial warmth of seventy-two degrees in the shade.
The mountain regions of Enarea and Caffa, which the reader, on
consulting a map of Africa, will find situated to the south of
Abyssinia, are most probably the countries where the coffee-tree was
first planted by Nature, as it has here not only been cultivated from
time immemorial, but is everywhere found growing wild in the forests.
[Illustration: GENERAL FRASER’S COFFEE ESTATE AT RANGBODDE, CEYLON.]
Here also the art of preparing a beverage from its berries seems
to have been first discovered. Arabic authors inform us that about
four hundred years ago, a learned mufti of Aden, having become
acquainted with its virtues on a journey to the opposite shore of
Africa, recommended it on his return to the dervises of his convent
as an excellent means for keeping awake during their devotional
exercises. The example of these holy men brought coffee into vogue,
and its use spreading from tribe to tribe, and from town to town,
finally reached Meccah about the end of the fifteenth century. There
fanaticism endeavoured to oppose its progress, and in 1511 a council
of theologians condemned it as being contrary to the law of Mahomet,
on account of its intoxicating like wine, and sentenced the culprit
who should be found indulging in his cup of coffee to be led about the
town on the back of an ass. The sultan of Egypt, however, who happened
to be a great coffee-drinker himself, convoked a new assembly of the
learned, who declared its use to be not only innocent but healthy; and
thus coffee advanced rapidly from the Red Sea and the Nile to Syria,
and from Asia Minor to Constantinople, where the first coffee-house was
opened in 1554, and soon called forth a number of rival establishments.
But here also the zealots began to murmur at the mosques being
neglected for the attractions of the ungodly coffee divans, and
declaimed against it from the Koran, which positively says that _coal_
is not of the number of things created by God for good. Accordingly
the mufti ordered the coffee-houses to be closed; but his successor
declaring coffee not to be _coal_, unless when over-roasted, they were
allowed to re-open, and ever since the most pious mussulman drinks his
coffee without any scruples of conscience. The commercial intercourse
with the Levant could not fail to make Europe acquainted with this
new source of enjoyment. In 1652, Pasquia, a Greek, opened the first
coffee-house in London, and twenty years later the first French cafés
were established in Paris and Marseilles.
As the demand for coffee continually increased, the small province of
Yemen, the only country which at that time supplied the market, could
no longer produce a sufficient quantity, and the high price of the
article naturally prompted the European governments to introduce the
cultivation of so valuable a plant into their colonies. The islands
of Mauritius and Bourbon took the lead in 1718, and Batavia followed
in 1723. Some years before, a few plants had been sent to Amsterdam,
one of which found its way to Marly, where it was multiplied by seeds.
Captain Descleux, a French naval officer, took some of these young
coffee-plants with him to Martinique, desirous of adding a new source
of wealth to the resources of the colony. The passage was very tedious
and stormy; water began to fail, and all the gods seemed to conspire
against the introduction of the coffee-tree into the New World. But
Descleux patiently endured the extremity of thirst that his tender
shoots might not droop for want of water, and succeeded in safely
bringing over one single plant, the parent stock whence all the vast
coffee-plantations of America are said to have derived their origin.
On examining the present state of coffee-production throughout the
world, we find that the European markets obtain their chief supplies
from Brazil, Java, Ceylon, and the West Indies; but with regard to
quality, Mocha coffee, though comparatively insignificant in point of
quantity, is still prominent in flavour and aroma.
When left to the free growth of nature, the coffee-tree attains a
height of from fifteen to twenty feet; in the plantations, however, the
tops are generally cut off in order to promote the growth of the lower
branches, and to facilitate the gathering of the crop. Its leaves are
opposite, evergreen, and not unlike those of the bay-tree; its blossoms
are white, sitting on short foot-stalks, and resembling the flower
of the jasmine. The fruit which succeeds is a green berry, ripening
into red, of the size and form of a large cherry, and having a pale,
insipid, and somewhat glutinous pulp, enclosing two hard and oval seeds
or beans, which are too well known to require any further description.
The seeds are known to be ripe when the berries assume a dark red
colour, and if not then gathered, will drop from the trees.
To be cultivated to advantage, the coffee-tree requires a climate
where the mean temperature of the year amounts to 68°, and where the
thermometer never falls below 55°. It is by nature a forest tree
requiring shade and moisture, and thus it is necessary to screen it
from the scorching rays of the sun by planting rows of umbrageous trees
at certain intervals throughout the field. These also serve to protect
it from the sharp winds which would injure the blossoms. It cannot bear
either excessive heat or a long-continued drought, and where rain does
not fall in sufficient quantity, artificial irrigation must supply it
with the necessary moisture.
In Java the zone of the coffee-plantations extends between 3,000 and
4,000 feet above the level of the sea; and the primitive forest is
constantly receding before them. Frequently, on felling the woods,
a part of the original trees is left standing to shade the tender
coffee-plants; but oftener the rows are made to alternate with those
of the sheltering dadab. Thus a new and luxuriant grove replaces the
old thicket of nature’s planting. Straight paths, kept carefully clean,
lead through the dense, dark green shrubbery, under whose thick cover
the wild cock hastily retreats when surprised by the wanderer. When
the trees are in flower, the branches seem to bend under a weight of
snow, from the number of dazzling white blossoms, which form a pleasing
contrast to the dark and lustrous foliage, while high above, the dadabs
extend their airy crowns, whose light green leaves are agreeably
interspersed with flowers of a brilliant red. A few months later, when
the fruits are ripening into carmine a scene of the most bustling
animation ensues, for old and young are busily employed in plucking
the swelling berries, and hurrying with filled baskets to the nearest
pulping mill.
In Ceylon the native woodmen are singularly expert in felling forest
trees preparatory to the cultivation of coffee. Turning to advantage
the luxuriance of tropical vegetation, which lashes together whole
forests by a maze of interlacing climbers as firm and massy as
the cables of a line-of-battle ship, their practice in steep and
mountainous places is to cut half-way through each stem in succession,
till an area of some acres in extent is prepared for the final
overthrow. They then sever some tall group on the eminence, and allow
it in its decent to precipitate itself on those below, when the whole
expanse is in one moment brought headlong to the ground, the falling
timber forcing down those beneath it by its weight, and dragging those
behind to which it is harnessed. The crash occasioned by this startling
operation is so loud that it is audible for two or three miles in the
clear and still atmosphere of the hills.
Like the sugar-cane, or indeed any other plant cultivated by man, the
coffee-tree is exposed to the ravages of many enemies. Wild cats,
monkeys, and squirrels prey upon the ripening berries, and hosts of
caterpillars feed upon the leaves. Since 1847 the Ceylon plantations
have been several times invaded by swarms of the Golunda, a species
of rat which inhabits the forests, making its nest among the roots of
the trees, and, like the lemmings of Lapland, migrating in vast numbers
when the seeds of the nillo-shrub (_Strobilanthes_), its ordinary food,
are exhausted. ‘In order to reach the buds and blossoms of the coffee,
the Golunda eats such slender branches as would not sustain its weight,
and feeds as they fall to the ground; and so delicate and sharp are its
incisors, that the twigs thus destroyed are detached by as clean a cut
as if severed with a knife.’[19]
Another great enemy of the Ceylon planters is the _Lecanium Coffeæ_, a
species of _coccus_, which establishes itself on young shoots and buds,
covering them with a noisome incrustation of scales, from the influence
of which the fruit shrivels and drops off. A great part of the crop is
sometimes lost, and on many trees not a single berry forms from the
invasion of this insect plague.
[Illustration: THE COFFEE RAT.]
Theobroma,--food for gods,--the Greek name given by Linnæus to the
cacao or chocolate tree, sufficiently proves how highly he valued the
flavour of its seeds.
Indigenous in Mexico, it had long been in extensive cultivation before
the arrival of the Spaniards, who found the beverage which the Indians
prepared from its beans so agreeable that they reckoned it among the
most pleasing fruits of their conquest, and lost no time in making
their European friends acquainted with its use. From Mexico they
transplanted it into their other dependencies, so that in America its
present range of cultivation extends from 20° N. lat. to Guayaquil and
Bahia. It has even been introduced into Africa and Asia, in return for
the many useful trees that have been imported from the Old into the New
World. The cacao-tree seldom rises above the height of twenty feet; its
leaves are large, oblong, and pointed. The flowers, which are of a pale
red colour, grow on the stem and larger branches, and spring even from
the roots. ‘Never,’ says Humboldt, ‘shall I forget the deep impression
made upon me by the luxuriance of tropical vegetation on first, seeing
a cacao-plantation. After a damp night, large blossoms of the theobroma
issue from the root at a considerable distance from the trunk, emerging
from the deep black mould. A more striking example of the expansive
powers of life can hardly be met with in organic nature.’ The fruits
are large, oval, pointed pods, about five or six inches long, and
containing in five compartments from twenty to forty beans.
The trees are raised from seed, generally in places screened from the
wind. As they are incapable of bearing the scorching rays of the sun,
particularly when young, bananas, maize, manioc, and other broad-leaved
plants are sown between their rows, under whose shade they enjoy the
damp and sultry heat which is indispensable to their growth, for the
Theobroma Cacao is essentially tropical, and requires a warmer climate
than the coffee-tree or the sugar-cane.
Two years after having been sown, the plant attains a height of three
feet, and sends forth many branches, of which however but four or five
are allowed to remain. The first fruits appear in the third year, but
the tree does not come into full bearing before it is six or seven
years old, and from that time forward it continues to yield abundant
crops of beans during more than twenty years. When an Indian can get a
few thousand cacao-trees planted, he passes an idle, quiet, contented
life; all he has to do is to weed under the trees two or three times in
the year, and to gather and dry the seeds in the sun.
Cacao is chiefly used under the form of chocolate. The beans are
roasted, finely ground, so as to convert them into a perfectly smooth
paste, and improved in flavour by the addition of spices, such as the
sweet-scented vanilla, a short notice of which will not be out of place.
Like our parasitical ivy, the Vanilla aromatica, a native of torrid
America, climbs the summits of the highest forest-trees, or creeps
along the moist rock crevices on the banks of rivulets.
The stalk, which is about as thick as a finger, bears at each joint a
lanceolate and ribbed leaf, twelve inches long and three inches broad.
The large flowers which fill the forest with their delicious odours,
are white intermixed with stripes of red and yellow, and are succeeded
by long and slender pods containing many seeds imbedded in a thick oily
and balsamic pulp. These pods seldom ripen in the wild state, for the
dainty monkey knows no greater delicacy, and his agility in climbing
almost always enables him to anticipate man.
At present the vanilla is cultivated not only in Mexico, but in Java,
where the industrious Dutch have acclimatised it since 1819. It is
planted under shady trees on a damp ground, and grows luxuriantly;
but as a thousand blossoms on an average produce but one pod, it must
always remain a rare and costly spice.
Although but little known beyond the confines of its native country,
Coca is beyond all doubt one of the most remarkable productions of the
tropical zone.
The sultry valleys on the eastern slopes of the Peruvian and
Bolivian Andes are the seat of the Erythroxylon Coca, which, like
the coffee-tree, bears a lustrous green foliage, and white blossoms
ripening into small scarlet berries. The leaves when brittle enough to
break on being bent, are stripped from the plant, dried in the sun,
and closely packed in sacks. The naked shrub soon gets covered with
new foliage, and after three or four months its leaves are ready for
a second plucking, though in some of the higher mountain-valleys it
can only be stripped once a year. Like the coffee-tree, the coca-shrub
thrives only in a damp situation, under shelter from the sun; and for
this reason maize, which rapidly shoots up, is generally sown between
the rows of the young plants.
The local consumption of coca is immense, as the Peruvian Indian
reckons its habitual use among the prime necessaries of life, and
is never seen without a leathern pouch filled with a provision of
the leaves, and containing besides a small box of powdered unslaked
lime. At least three times a day he rests from his work to chew his
indispensable coca. Carefully taking a few leaves out of the bag, and
removing their midribs, he first masticates them in the shape of a
small ball, which is called an acullico; then repeatedly inserting a
thin piece of moistened wood like a toothpick into the box of unslaked
lime, he introduces the powder which remains attached to it into the
acullico until the latter has acquired the requisite flavour. The
saliva, which is abundantly secreted while chewing the pungent mixture,
is mostly swallowed along with the green juice of the plant.
When the acullico is exhausted, another is immediately prepared,
for one seldom suffices. The corrosive sharpness of the unslaked
lime requires some caution, and an unskilled coca-chewer runs the
risk of burning his lips, as, for instance, the celebrated traveller
Tschudi, who, by the advice of his muleteer, while crossing the
high mountain-passes of the Andes, attempted to make an acullico,
and instead of strengthening himself as he expected, merely added
excruciating pain to the fatigues of the journey.
The taste of coca is slightly bitter and aromatic, like that of bad
green tea, but the addition of lime, or of the sharp ashes of the
quinoa, renders it less disagreeable to the European palate.
It is a remarkable fact that the Indians who regularly use coca require
but little food, and when the dose is augmented are able to undergo
the greatest fatigues without tasting almost anything else. Professor
Pöppig ascribes this astonishing increase of endurance to a momentary
excitement, which must necessarily be succeeded by a corresponding
collapse, and therefore considers the use of coca absolutely hurtful.
Tschudi, however, is of opinion that its moderate consumption, far
from being injurious, is, on the contrary, extremely wholesome, and
cites the examples of several Indians who, never allowing a day to pass
without chewing their coca, attained the truly patriarchal age of one
hundred and thirty years. The ordinary food of these people consists
almost exclusively of roasted maize or barley, which is eaten dry
without any other addition: and the obstinate obstructions caused by
these mealy aliments are obviated by the tonic effects of the coca,
which thus removes the cause of many maladies.
Tschudi often found coca the best preservative against the asthmatic
symptoms which are produced by the rapid ascension of high mountains.
While hunting in the Puna, 14,000 feet above the level of the sea, he
always drank a strong infusion of coca before starting, and was then
able to climb among the rocks, and to pursue his game, without any
greater difficulty in breathing than would have been the case upon the
coast.
If the moderate use of coca is thus beneficial in many respects, its
abuse is attended with the same deplorable consequences as those which
are observed in the oriental opium-eaters and smokers, or in our own
incorrigible drunkards.
The confirmed coca-chewer, or coquero, is known at once by his
uncertain step, his sallow complexion, his hollow, lack-lustre
black-rimmed eyes, deeply sunk in the head, his trembling lips, his
incoherent speech, and his stolid apathy. His character is irresolute,
suspicious, and false; in the prime of life, he has all the appearances
of senility, and in later years sinks into complete idiocy. Avoiding
the society of man, he seeks the dark forest, or some solitary ruin,
and there, for days together, indulges in his pernicious habit. While
under the influence of coca, his excited fancy riots in the strangest
visions, now revelling in pictures of ideal beauty, and then haunted
by dreadful apparitions. Secure from intrusion, he crouches in an
obscure corner, his eyes immovably fixed upon one spot; and the almost
automatic motion of the hand raising the coca to the mouth, and its
mechanical chewing, are the only signs of consciousness which he
exhibits. Sometimes a deep groan escapes from his breast, most likely
when the dismal solitude around him inspires his imagination with some
terrific vision, which he is as little able to banish as voluntarily to
dismiss his dreams of ideal felicity. How the coquero finally awakens
from his trance, Tschudi was never able to ascertain, though most
likely the complete exhaustion of his supply at length forces him to
return to his miserable hut.
No historical record informs us when the use of the coca was
introduced, or who first discovered the hidden virtues of its leaves.
When Pizarro destroyed the empire of Atahualpa he found that it played
an important part in the religious rites of the Incas, and that it was
used in all public ceremonies, either for fumigation or as an offering
to the gods. The priests chewed coca while performing their rites, and
the favour of the invisible powers was only to be obtained by a present
of these highly valued leaves. No work begun without coca could come to
a happy termination, and divine honours were paid to the shrub itself.
After a period of more than three centuries, Christianity has not yet
been able to eradicate these deeply-rooted superstitious feelings, and
everywhere the traveller still meets with traces of the ancient belief
in its mysterious powers. To the present day, the miners of Cerro de
Pasco throw chewed coca against the hard veins of the ore, and affirm
that they can then be more easily worked,--a custom transmitted to
them from their forefathers, who were fully persuaded that the Coyas
or subterranean divinities rendered the mountains impenetrable unless
previously propitiated by an offering of coca. Even now the Indians put
coca into the mouths of their dead, to insure them a welcome on their
passage to another world; and whenever they find one of their ancestral
mummies, they never fail to offer it some of the leaves.
During the first period after the conquest of Peru, the Spaniards
endeavoured to extirpate by all possible means the use of coca, from
its being so closely interwoven with the Indian superstitions; but the
proprietors of the mines soon became aware how necessary it was for
the successful prosecution of their undertakings; the planters also
found after a time that the Indians would not work without it; private
interest prevailed, as it always does in the long run, over religious
zeal and despotic interdictions, and in the last century we even find
a Jesuit, Don Antonio Julian, regretting that the use of coca had not
been introduced into Europe as well as that of tea and coffee.
When we consider its remarkable properties, it is indeed astonishing
that it has so long remained unnoticed. Were it concealed in the
interior of Africa, or extremely difficult to procure, this neglect
could be more easily accounted for; but hundreds of our vessels
annually frequent the harbours of Peru and Bolivia, where it may be
obtained in large quantities, and yet its tonic and stimulating powers
are but just beginning to attract the attention of the medical world.
[Illustration: CAOUTCHOUC TREES (INDIANS INCISING THEM).]