PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES
It may be assumed that practically all beverages derived from plants owe
their popularity to the stimulant effects they produce. In coffee, tea,
cocoa, and maté, the stimulant principle is identical with _cafein_, the
active principle of coffee; in liquors it is a powerful narcotic
_alcohol_; non-potable substances, tobacco, opium, etc., owe their
popularity also to narcotic poisons.
=Coffee.=--The coffee "beans" of commerce are the seeds of a tree (_Coffea
arabica_) probably native to Abyssinia, but now cultivated in various
parts of the world. It was introduced into Aden from Africa late in the
fifteenth century, and from there its use spread to other cities. Rather
singularly its popularity resulted from the strong efforts made to
forbid its use.
It was regarded as a stimulant and therefore it was forbidden to
followers of Islam.[34] But its power to prevent drowsiness and sleep
during the intolerably long religious exercises was a winning feature,
and so its use became general in spite of the fulminations against it.
Coffee culture was confined to Arabia until the close of the seventeenth
century; it was then introduced into the Dutch East Indies, and for many
years the island of Java became the main supply of the world. At the
present time, Java is second only to Brazil in coffee production. In the
Old World it is now also cultivated along the Guinea coast of Africa, in
Madagascar, India, and Ceylon. In the New World the chief areas are
Brazil, Venezuela, the Central American States, and the West Indies.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCING REGIONS]
The coffee-tree may be cultivated in almost any soil that is fertile; it
thrives best, however, in red soil. Old, decomposed red lavas produce
the choicest beans. Coffee grows in any moist climate in which the
temperature does not range higher than 80° F. nor lower than 55° F. An
occasional frost injures but does not necessarily kill the trees, which
grow better in the shade than in the sunlight. For convenience in
gathering the crop, the trees are pruned until they are not higher than
bushes.
The fruit of the coffee-tree is a deep-red berry not quite so large as a
cherry. A juicy pulp encloses a double membrane, or endocarp, and within
the latter are the seeds which constitute the coffee of commerce.
Normally there are two seeds, but in some varieties there is a tendency
for one seed to mature, leaving the other undeveloped; this is the
"peaberry" coffee of commerce. The so-called Mocha coffee is a peaberry.
In their preparation the berries are picked when ripe and deprived of
their pulp. After pulping they are cured in the sun for about a week and
then hulled, or divested of the endocarp, a process requiring expensive
machinery. The coffee is then cleaned, and sacked.
The value of the product depends on two factors, age and the care with
which it is sorted. Formerly, in the Dutch East Indies, coffee-growing,
for the greater part, was a government privilege, and the crop was kept
for several years in storage before it was permitted to be
sold--therefore the term "Old Government" Java. Other coffee was
designated as "Private Plantations." The quality of coffee is greatly
improved with age. Brazilian and other American coffee-beans are rarely
seasoned by storage.
American coffees are almost wholly sorted by machinery. This process,
however, merely collects beans of the same size; it still leaves the
good and the bad beans together, though it is to be said that among the
largest beans there are fewer poor ones. In the coffees handled by the
Arab dealers all the sorting is done by hand, the very choice grade
selling in the large cities of Europe for the equivalent of nearly three
dollars per pound. All machine-sorted coffee is greatly improved by a
subsequent hand-sorting to remove the imperfect beans.
The naming of the different kinds of coffee is somewhat arbitrary. Thus,
Brazilian coffees are commercially known as _Rio_ because they are
shipped from the port of Rio de Janeiro; the same name is applied to the
product shipped from Santos. Nearly all Venezuela coffees are called
_Maracaibo_ although they differ much in kind and quality; most Central
American coffee is sold as _Costa Rica_; most peaberry varieties are
known as _Mocha_; and most of the East India product is popularly called
_Java_, no matter whence it comes.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCTION]
Of the American coffees Rio constitutes about half the world's product.
After sorting, the larger beans are often marketed as Java coffee, and
when the beans have been roasted it is exceedingly difficult to tell the
difference. The best Maracaibo is regarded as choice coffee, but its
flavor is not liked by all coffee-drinkers. The best Honduras and Puerto
Rico coffees take a high rank and command very high prices, retailing in
some instances at sixty cents per pound. A very choice peaberry is grown
in the volcanic soils of Mexico to which the name of _Oaxaca_ is given;
most of it is sold in the United States as a choice Mocha.
Mocha is the commercial name of a coffee at one time marketed in the
Arabian city of that name. Since the completion of the Suez Canal,
Hodeida has been the chief centre of the Arabian coffee-trade. Formerly
most of this coffee was grown in the Province of Yemen, but now it is
brought to Hodeida, from Egypt, Ceylon, and India.
About all the product is hand-sorted. The choicest is sold in
Constantinople, Cairo, and other cities near by, in some instances
bringing five dollars per pound. Very little, and only that of the most
inferior quality, ever finds its way into western Europe or the United
States. Even the best Mocha is not superior to fine Oaxaca coffee.
Java coffee is renowned the world over for its fine flavor. The best
quality was formerly that which had been held in storage to season for a
few years. The government coffee was generally the better, but some of
the private plantations crop is now equally good. Some of the Sumatra
coffees are equal to the best Java beans.
The Liberia coffees have never been favorites in the United States on
account of their flavor. In Europe they are used for blending with other
varieties.
Of the entire coffee-crop of the world, the United States consumes more
than three-quarters of a billion pounds--a yearly average of very nearly
eleven pounds for each inhabitant. This is nearly three times as much
per inhabitant as is consumed in Germany, and almost fifteen times the
average used in Great Britain. Nearly all the world's crop is consumed
in the United States and western Europe.
Chicory, parched grain, pease, and burnt parsnip are sometimes added as
adulterants to ground coffee. Of those, chicory most nearly resembles
coffee in flavor and taste. It is harmless and usually improves the
flavor of inferior coffee. A tariff recently placed upon chicory has
somewhat lessened the use of it.
=Tea.=--The tea of commerce consists of the dried and prepared leaves of
an evergreen shrub (_Thea chinensis_) belonging most probably to the
_camellia_ family. Tea has been a commercial product of China for more
than fourteen hundred years, but seems to have been carried thither from
India about five hundred years before the Christian era; for its virtues
were praised by (the probably mythical) Chinung, an emperor of that
period.
The cultivated plants are scarcely higher than bushes, but the wild
plant found in India is a tree fifteen or twenty feet in height. The
cultivated plant is quite hardy; severe winters kill it but ordinary
freezing weather merely retards its growth. It thrives best in red,
mouldy soils; the choicest varieties are grown in new soils. The leaves
are not picked until the plants are three or four years old.
Two general classes of tea are known in commerce--the green and the
black. Formerly these were grown on different varieties of the plant,
but in the newer plantations no distinction is made in the matter of
variety; the color is due wholly to the manner of preparation.
The plants are watched carefully during the seasons of picking, of which
there are three or four each year. The April picking yields the choicest
crop of leaves, and only the youngest leaves and buds are taken.[35] A
single plant rarely yields more than four or five ounces of tea yearly.
Each acre of a tea-garden yields about three hundred and fifty pounds.
After picking, the leaves are partly crushed and allowed to wilt until
they begin to turn brown in color. They are then rolled between the
hands and either dried very slowly in the sun, or else rapidly in pans
over a charcoal fire--a process known as "firing." The former method
produces _black_, the latter _green_, tea. The color of the latter is
sometimes heightened by the use of a mixture of powdered gypsum and
Prussian blue. In the black teas the green coloring matter of the leaf
is destroyed by fermentation; in the green teas it remains unchanged.
The greater part of the Chinese tea designed for export is packed rather
loosely in wooden chests lined with sheet-lead, the folds and joints of
which are soldered in order to make the cover both air-tight and
moisture-tight. A full chest contains seventy-five pounds of tea. The
Japan product is also packed in moisture-tight wrappers, the original
parcels being usually ten-pound, five-pound, and pound packages. Similar
devices are used in preparing the India and Formosa teas for ocean
shipment.
The chief tea-producing countries are India (including Ceylon) China,
Japan (including Formosa), and Java. A successful tea-garden is in
operation near Charleston, S.C. A small amount is grown in the Fiji and
Samoan Islands. The Ceylon and Formosa teas take a very high rank.
[Illustration: AREA OF TEA PRODUCTION]
Great Britain and her colonies consume the bulk of the tea-crop. The
average yearly consumption per person is eight pounds in Australia, six
in Great Britain and Cape of Good Hope, and more than four in Canada. In
the United States and Russia it is less than one pound per person.
Before the opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, most of the crop for the
English market was despatched by way of Cape of Good Hope. So important
was it to get the consignments to London without loss of time, that fast
clipper ships were built especially for carrying tea. Since the opening
of the canal the crop has been shipped mainly by the Suez route.
A part of the tea required for the United States reaches New York by way
of the Suez Canal, but the movement is gradually changing since the
building of the fast liners that now ply between Asian and American
ports. These steamships carry it to Seattle, or to Vancouver, whence it
is distributed by rail. The increased cost of shipment by this route is
more than offset by a gain of from five to seven days in time.
In some respects the Russian "caravan route" is the most important
channel of the tea-trade. The tea is collected mainly at Tientsin, and
sent by camel caravans through Manchuria to the most convenient point on
the Siberian railway. Not only the shipments of brick tea[36] for the
Russian market, but the choicest products for western Europe also are
sent by this route. It is probably an economical way of shipping the
brick tea, but a more expensive method of shipment for the latter could
not be found easily; it is preferred from the fact that, no matter how
carefully sealed, the flavor of tea is materially injured by an ocean
voyage.
It is evident, therefore, that for the tea product alone the Siberian
railway will soon become an important factor in the commerce of Europe.
Shipments of tea are also sent from Canton to Odessa, Russia, but this
route is not less expensive in the long run than the Cape route, and the
tea suffers as much deterioration from the shorter as from the longer
voyage.
=Cacao.=--Cacao, the "cocoa" of commerce, consists of the prepared seeds
of several species of _Theobroma_, the greater part being obtained from
the _Theobroma cacao_. The name is unfortunately confused with that of
the cocoa-palm, but there is no relation whatever between the two.
The seeds of the cacao were used in ancient America long before its
discovery by Columbus, and the latter carried the first knowledge of it
to Europe. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was much used in
Spain, and less than a hundred years later it had become the fashionable
drink of western Europe.
The cacao-tree, originally native to Mexico, is now cultivated
throughout tropical America and the West Indies. It is not cultivated to
any extent in the Eastern continent. The fruit consists of large, fleshy
pods, which are cut from the trees usually in June and December. The
seeds are then piled in heaps, or else packed in pits, and allowed to
undergo a rapid fermentation for a period of several days, to which
process their flavor is mainly due. The roasted and broken seeds are the
cocoa-nibs of commerce. The husks are known as cocoa-shells.
A very large part of the cacao product comes from Ecuador, Guayaquil
being perhaps the chief market of the world. The Venezuelan and
Brazilian products, however, are the choicest; these are known in
commerce respectively as Caracas and Trinidad cacao. Spain, Portugal,
and France are the chief purchasers, and in the first-named country the
consumption per person is five or six times as great as in other
countries.
Cacao is not only a stimulant beverage, but a food as well; about
one-half its weight is fat, and about one-third consists of starch and
flesh-making substances. The stimulant principle is the same as that
occurring in tea and coffee, but the proportion is considerably less. In
preparing the cocoa for the market, much of the fat is intentionally
withdrawn. The fat, commercially known as "cocoa-butter," and "oil of
theobroma," does not turn rancid.
Chocolate consists of cocoa ground to a paste with sugar and flavoring
matter, and then cast in moulds to harden. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of confectionery. Most of the chocolate is made in France,
Spain, and the United States. More than forty million pounds of cocoa
are yearly consumed in the United States.
=Maté.=--Maté, yerba maté, or Paraguay tea, is the leaf of a shrub, a
species of holly, growing profusely in the forests of Brazil, Paraguay,
Argentina, and Uruguay. In many instances, the shrub is cultivated. The
leaves are prepared in much the same manner as tea-leaves are, but
instead of being rolled, they are broken by beating.
The maté of commerce has a stimulant principle identical with that of
tea and coffee, which is the only reason for its use. The consumption,
about fifteen thousand tons a year, is confined almost wholly to the
countries named.
=Tobacco.=--The tobacco of commerce is the prepared and manufactured leaf
of several species of plant, belonging to the nightshade family. Most of
the product is derived from the species known as Virginia tobacco
(_Nicotiana tabacum_) and the Brazilian species (_Nicotiana rustica_).
The former is cultivated in the United States, West Indies, the
Philippine Islands, and Turkey; the latter has been transplanted to
central Europe and the East Indies.
The use of tobacco was prevalent in the New World at the time of
Columbus's first voyage, and was quickly introduced into Europe. The
prepared leaf contains a substance, nicotine, which is one of the most
deadly of poisons when swallowed, and an intense narcotic stimulant when
inhaled. On account of the evil effects arising from its introduction,
its use was forbidden by the Church and also by sovereigns of several
European states. The latter, however, finding that its use was becoming
general, made it a Crown monopoly. In Great Britain its cultivation was
forbidden in order to encourage its cultivation in Virginia.
Tobacco does not thrive best in a poor soil, but the latter produces a
thin, half-developed leaf, which in other plants would be called
"sickly." It grows in almost any kind of soil, but requires warm summer
nights. In many instances the tobacco of temperate latitudes yields a
more salable leaf when grown under cover. The flavor is due partly to
soil and climate, and partly to skill in curing. The choicest product is
obtained in only a few localities of limited area. It sometimes happens
that the products of two plantations almost side by side, and similarly
situated, are very unlike in character and quality.
[Illustration: TOBACCO]
The choicest cigar-tobacco is grown on the Vuelta Abajo district in the
province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba; another very choice Cuban leaf is known
as Partidos. Cuban-made cigars of fine quality are commercially "Havana"
cigars, although tobacco from Manila and Porto Rico is apt to be largely
used in their manufacture. In order to avoid the very heavy duty on
cigars, which is not far from six dollars per pound, a great deal of the
Havana tobacco is exported to points along the Florida coast, mainly Key
West and Tampa. The unmanufactured tobacco pays a comparatively small
duty, and the cigars made from it are commercially known as "Key West."
In some parts of Mexico a fine-flavored tobacco is grown, but as the
cigars are not uniform in quality they are not popular. Some of the
Brazilian tobacco is a high-class product, but not much is exported.
Porto Rican leaf has a fine flavor, but is not popular because of its
dark color. The demand for it in the United States is growing, however.
Of the leaf grown in the East, that from Sumatra and the Philippine
Islands is by far the best, and the exports are heavy. Cuban
manufacturers purchase the Manila leaf; the Sumatra wrappers are
purchased in the United States.
The choicest cigarette-tobacco is grown in Asiatic Turkey,
Transcaucasia, and Egypt. It is selected with great care, and is
"long-cut." The common grades are made of chopped Virginia tobacco, or
of chopped cigar-trimmings. The cheapest grades consist of refuse leaf
mixed with half-smoked cigar-stumps. The United States leads in the
manufacture of cigarettes, and a large part of the product is sold in
China, India, and Japan. Most of the world's product of snuff is made in
the United States, and nearly all of it is sold abroad.
The United States produces yearly about seven hundred million pounds. A
large part of this is sold to European countries. Great Britain
purchases about four-fifths of the tobacco there consumed from the
United States. The latter country purchases from Europe (mainly the
Netherlands) about half as much as it sells to Europe. Louisville, Ky.,
is probably the largest tobacco-market in the world. New York,
Baltimore, Richmond, Manila, and Havana are the chief shipping-ports.
In almost every civilized country tobacco is heavily taxed. In the
United States there is not only a heavy import duty, but an internal
revenue in addition. In Austria, France, Italy, Japan, and Spain the
manufacture and sale is in the hands of the government. The consumption
of tobacco varies greatly. In the Netherlands it averages about seven
pounds a year to each individual; in the United States it is more than
four pounds; in central Europe, three pounds; in Spain, Sweden, Great
Britain, and Italy, it is less than two pounds.
=Opium.=--The opium of commerce is the hardened juice obtained from the
seed capsules of several species of the poppy-plant. A variety having a
large capsule (_Papaver somniferum_) is most commonly cultivated for the
commercial production of the substance. Half-a-dozen times during the
season the capsules are scratched or cut; the juice exuding when hard is
picked or scraped off and pressed into cakes.
Opium is not only a narcotic poison, but it has the property of
lessening the pain of disease, and this is its chief use in medicine. In
Mohammedan countries where the use of alcoholic liquors is forbidden as
a religious custom, opium is used as a substitute. In Turkey, Persia,
Arabia, and Egypt the production of opium is an important industry
connected with social and religious life. In British India it is a
political factor, being extensively cultivated as a government monopoly
to be sold to the Chinese, who are probably the chief consumers of it.
The Indian Government derives a revenue sometimes reaching twenty
million dollars from this source.
The best quality of opium is marketed at Smyrna, and most of this is
purchased by the United States. A considerable amount of Chinese opium
is imported for the use of the Chinese, and a larger amount is probably
smuggled over the Canadian and Mexican borders. Laudanum is an alcoholic
tincture, and morphine an extractive of opium; both are used as
medicine.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Consult a good physiology and learn the effects of coffee, tea, tobacco,
and opium.
Where and what are the following: Mocha, Java, Maracaibo, Yokohama,
Amoy, Canton, Oaxaca, Hodeida, Rio Janeiro, Santos, Havana; how is each
connected commercially with this chapter?
From the map, Fig. 1, trace the route of a cargo of tea overland from
China to Great Britain.
Consult an English history or a cyclopædia and learn about the opium
war.
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the following, preserving them for study and
inspection in closely stoppered vials: Mocha, Java, Rio, and Sumatra
coffees; green, black, and gunpowder tea. Soak a tea-leaf a few minutes
in warm water; unroll the leaf and attach it to a white card, for study.
Obtain samples of gum opium, laudanum, and morphine; note the odor of
the first two and the taste of the last. Remember that they are
poisonous.
Unroll a cheap cigarette and note the character of the tobacco in it,
using a magnifying glass.