P r o d u c t io n s
o f . •
P e p p e r .
S a n g u i s
D r a c o n i s .
have endeavored to form fettlements at Succadana, Samba, and
many other places. Tatas has its fultan. Thefe fovereigns command
the trade of the ifland, and furnifli the European ihips,
who happen to arrive, with cargoes o f pepper, the ftaple of the
country; that article is brought down from the interior parts,
and fold to the Europeans, or to the commercial AJlatic nations.
I t is to Captain Daniel Beeckman that we owe the belt account
o f Borneo; he vilited it in the beginning of this century,
and publiihed his account in the year 1718. At p. 36 he
gives the following lift of the productions of the country, which
abounds with pepper, the beft dragon’s blood, bezoar, moft excellent
camphor, pine apples, citrons, oranges, lemons, water
melons, muik melons, plantains, banana, coco nuts, and all forts
o f fruit that are generally found in any part of the Eajl Indies;
the, mount uns yield diamonds., gold, tin and iron; the forefts.,
honey, cotton, deer, goats, buffaloes, wild oxen, wild hogs, fmall
horfes, bears, tigers, elephants, and a multitude o f monkies.
T he pepper grows far up the country, and is collected by the
v.ery poo.reft people o n ly ; they have all the different forts, black,
white, and long.
Sanguis Draconis, or dragon’s blood, is a gum, the exudation
o f certain trees, o f a bloody color. There is a conjecture that
.this is the CinnaBeri.s of Diofcorides, lib. v. c. 69. Pliny, Jib.
xxxiii. c. 7, fays that the name vs, Indian ; and then fables, that
it is the Sanies of the dragon oppreffed by the weight o f an elephant
expiring with the bite, and that the Cinnaberis is the
mixed blood of each animal. The antients procured under this
notion the Teal drug, and ufed it in medicine. It was often adulterated
terated with the blood of goats; the genuine kind was fold at a
great rate.
T he trees or fhrubs which we know to produce this medicine
in our difpenfatory are the Dracana Draco, o f which Van-
delli has given a good figure in his monograph on the fubjeCt.
According to Kaempfer, Amoin. Exot. 554, another o f the vegetables
it is extracted from- is a Palmapinus Rottani Dfierenang,
one o f the Rotangs defcribed by Rumphius under the name of
Palmijuncus Draco, v. p. 115 tab. 58. fig. 1. This grows' in the
thick and almoft impervious forefts o f Java.
A n o t h e r kind is the produce o f the Santalum Rubrum, or S a n d a j . W o o d .
Red Sanders; and again, from the Dracoena Terminalis o f Unnaus,
Rumph. iv. p. 18. tab. 34, called in Pernate, Ngaß, or Haß.
This fpecies grows in Borneo, and bears a fruit, fays Beeckman,
as red as a cherry ; the juice, the beft in the world, is extracted
from the tree, and the color tried by rubbing it on paper. The
natives bring it in drops, wrapped in leaves ; but are fo apt tb
adulterate it, that we do not chufe to purchafe without previous
examination.
A nother kind is procured from the Gladiolus Odoratus In-
dicus, Rumpb.v. p. 185. tab. 73. For further accounts I muft refer
to that Pliny o f the Indies in the places cited, to vol. ii,
p. 2 5 2 and to Kaempfer, 551 to 557. The drug, from whatfo-
ever tree or plant it be gotten,, maintains its plaGe in our difpenfatory.
A t times a confiderabl'e quantity o f gold has been brought G o l d .
here, which is found in the mines in the interior parts o f the
country. Some is melted into bars,,and ufually adulterated by a
cover