for sale or use. The plants are placed in the field
at the distance of eight or nine feet. The younger
leaves afford the whitest and best g am b it. and
the older a brown and inferior sort. In point of
quality, much depends also on the skill with which
the process of inspissation is conducted.
The gambir> unlike other productions of agricultural
industry, is the growth of some of the more
western and poorer countries of the Archipelago.
It is not cultivated in Java, nor the islands to the eastward
of it, but abounds on the east coast of Sumatra,
at Siak, Kampar,and Indragiri; at Malacca, in
the island of Rhio, and on the west coast of Borneo.
The culture and manufacture is generally in the
hands, of the Chinese. The coarser kind is exported
in larger quantity to China, to be used in tanning
leather, but the principal consumption is as a
masticatory with the Areca nut and Betel leaf.
The taste of the Gambir is peculiar, affecting the
tongue at first with a mixed sensation of bitterness
and astringency, for which we have no name, but
which the Malays call Kalat, and leaving a lasting
and not disagreeable sweetness.
Tobacco CNicotiana) is of universal consumption
among the Indian islanders, and their domestic
husbandry supplies the whole of what they use.
Every where it is raised in small quantities, but it
is only in Java, Mindanao* and Luconia, that it is
raised as an article for exportation. The husbandry
pursued in Java is familiar to me, and as it is some-
what peculiar, I shall describe it. The seedlings
are raised in beds in mountainous tracts of two and
three thousand feet of elevation above the level of
the sea, from which they are transplanted into the
deep and fertile soils of the plains. The husbandry
of raising the seedlings, and bringing the plants to
maturity, is not only prosecuted in different climates,
but by different people, so that the sale of
the young plants is an object of traffic between the
mountaineers and the inhabitants of the plain*
Tffe rearing; of the seedlings in high lands is
found necessary to prevent the plant from,-degenerating^
a f ^ t which seems to shew, that it
is a native of a colder climate than the plains of
Java, v » •«; Ot Miul | ill Dii
Tobacco is either raised in ordinary upland arable,
or in lands in which rice is raised by artificial
irrigation. The most abundant and least precarious
crops, as well as those of the finest quality,
are raised in the latter. Tobacco is what farmers
call a scourging crop, and every where tlie successful
culture of it requires the richest soils. In Java
it is only extensively prosecuted in such, and the
chief production we find to be confined to thevery
finest provinces, the rich valleys of Kadu, Ladok,
and Banyumas, towards the centre of the island, and
at the feet of the lofty mountains, which are there
found. Such is the wonderful fertility of those