Mr. Wildman, of Hong Kong, says: "The market for a good article is practically unlimited. There are four hundred million Chinese and all to some extent use Ginseng. If they can once become satisfied with the results obtained from the tea made from American Ginseng, the yearly demand will run up into the millions of dollars worth." Another curious fact is that the Chinese highly prize certain peculiar shapes among these roots especially those resembling the human form. For such they gladly pay fabulous prices, sometimes six hundred times its weight in silver. The rare shapes are not used as medicine but kept as a charm, very much as some Americans keep a rabbit's foot for luck.
Sir Edwin Arnold, that famous writer and student of Eastern peoples, says of its medicinal values: "According to the Chinaman, Ginseng is the best and most potent of cordials, of stimulants, of tonics, of stomachics, cardiacs, febrifuges, and, above all, will best renovate and reinvigorate failing forces. It fills the heart with hilarity while its occasional use will, it is said, add a decade of years to the ordinary human life. Can all these millions of Orientals, all those many generations of men, who have boiled Ginseng in silver kettles and have praised heaven for its many benefits, have been totally deceived? Was the world ever quite mistaken when half of it believed in something never puffed, nowhere advertised and not yet fallen to the fate of a Trust, a Combine or a Corner?"
It has been asked why the Chinese do not grow their own Ginseng. In reply it may be said that America supplies but a very small part indeed of the Ginseng used in China. The bulk comes from Korea and Manchuria, two provinces belonging to China, or at least which did belong to her until the recent Eastern troubles.
Again, Ginseng requires practically a virgin soil, and as China proper has been the home of teeming millions for thousands of years, one readily sees that necessary conditions for the plant hardly exist in that old and crowded country.
CHAPTER V.
GINSENG HABITS.
A few years ago Ginseng could be found in nearly every woods and thicket in the country. Today conditions are quite different. Ginseng has become a scarce article. The decrease in the annual crop of the wild root will undoubtedly be very rapid from this on. The continued search for the root in every nook and corner in the country, coupled with the decrease in the forest and thicket area of the country, must in a few years exterminate the wild root entirely.
To what extent the cultivated article in the meantime can supplant the decrease in the production of the wild root, is yet to be demonstrated. The most important points in domesticating the root, to my opinion, is providing shade, a necessary condition for the growth of Ginseng, and to find a fertilizer suitable for the root to produce a rapid growth. If these two conditions can be complied with, proper shade and proper fertilizing, the cultivation of the root is simplified. Now the larger wild roots are found in clay soil and not in rich loam. It seems reasonably certain that the suitable elements for the growth of the root is found in clay soil.
The "seng" digger often finds many roots close to the growing stalk, which had not sent up a shoot that year. For how many years the root may lie dormant is not known, nor is it known whether this is caused by lack of cultivation. I have noticed that the cultivated plant did not fail to sprout for five consecutive years. Whether it will fail the sixth year or the tenth is yet unknown. The seed of Ginseng does not sprout or germinate until the second year, when a slender stalk with two or three leaves puts in an appearance. Then as the stalk increases in size from year to year, it finally becomes quite a sizable shrub of one main stalk, from which branch three, four, or even more prongs; the three and four prongs being more common. A stalk of "seng" with eight well arranged prongs, four of which were vertically placed over four others, was found in this section (Southern Ohio) some years ago. This was quite an oddity in the general arrangement of the plant.