Buyo (Piper betle) (Tagálog, Igmô), is cultivated with much care in every province, as its leaf, when coated with lime made from oyster-shells and folded up, is used to coil round the areca-nut, the whole forming the buyo (betel), which the natives of these Islands, as in British India, are in the habit of chewing. To the chew a quid of tobacco is sometimes added. A native can go a great number of hours without food if he has his betel; it is said to be stomachical. After many years of habit in chewing this nut and leaf it becomes almost a necessity, as is the case with opium, and it is believed that its use cannot, with safety, be suddenly abandoned. To the newly-arrived European, it is very displeasing to have to converse with a native betel-eater, whose teeth and lips appear to be smeared with blood. The buyo plant is set out on raised beds and trained (like hops) straight up on sticks, on which it grows to a height of about 6 feet. The leaf is of a bright green colour, and only slightly pointed. In all market-places, including those of Manila, there is a great sale of this leaf, which is brought fresh every day.
Cocoanut (Cocos nucifera) plantations pay very well, and there is a certain demand for the fruit for export to China, besides the constant local sales in the tianguis.[3] Niog is the Tagálog name for the cocoanut palm. Some tap the tree by making an incision in the flowering (or fruit-bearing) stalk, under which a bamboo vessel, called a bombon, is hung to receive the sap. This liquid, known as tuba, is a favourite beverage among the natives. As many as four stalks of the same trunk can be so drained simultaneously without injury to the tree. In the bottom of the bombon is placed about as much as a desert spoonful of pulverized Ton͠go bark (Rhizophora longissima) to give a stronger taste and bright colour to the tuba. The incision—renewed each time the bombon is replaced—is made with a very sharp knife, to which a keen edge is given by rubbing it on wood (Erythrina) covered with a paste of ashes and oil. The sap-drawing of a stalk continues incessantly for about two months, when the stalk ceases to yield and dries up. The bombons containing the liquid are removed, empty ones being put in their place every twelve hours, about sunrise and sunset, and the seller hastens round to his clients with the morning and evening draught, concluding his trade at the market-place or other known centres of sale. If the tuba is allowed to ferment, it is not so palatable, and becomes an intoxicating drink. From the fermented juice the distilleries manufacture a spirituous liquor, known locally as cocoa-wine. The trees set apart for tuba extraction do not produce nuts, as the fruit-forming elements are taken away.
The man who gets down the tuba has to climb the first tree, on the trunk of which notches are cut to place his toes in. From under the tuft of leaves two bamboos are fastened, leading to the next nearest tree, and so on around the group which is thus connected. The bottom bamboo serves as a bridge, and the top one as a handrail. Occasionally a man falls from the top of a trunk 70 or 80 feet high, and breaks his neck. The occupation of tuba drawing is one of the most dangerous.
When the tree is allowed to produce fruit, instead of yielding tuba, the nuts are collected about every four months. They are brought down either by a sickle-shaped knife lashed on to the end of a long pole, or by climbing the tree with the knife in hand. When they are collected for oil-extraction, they are carted on a kind of sleigh,[4] unless there be a river or creek providing a water-way, in which latter case they are tied together, stalk to stalk, and floated in a compact mass, like a raft, upon which the man in charge stands.
The water or milk found inside a cocoanut is very refreshing to the traveller, and has this advantage over fresh water, that it serves to quench the thirst of a person who is perspiring, or whose blood is highly heated, without doing him any harm.
Well-to-do owners of cocoanut-palm plantations usually farm out to the poorer people the right to extract the tuba, allotting to each family a certain number of trees. Others allow the trees to bear fruit, and although the returns are, theoretically, not so good, it pays the owner about the same, as he is less exposed to robbery, being able more closely to watch his own interests. The trees bear fruit in the fifth year, but, meanwhile, care must be taken to defend them from the browsing of cattle. If they survive that period they will live for a century. At seven yearsʼ growth the cocoanut palm-tree seldom fails to yield an unvarying average crop of a score of large nuts, giving a nett profit of about one peso per annum.
The cocoanut is largely used for culinary purposes in the Islands. It is an ingredient in the native “curry” (of no resemblance to Indian curry), and is preserved in several ways, the most common being the Bocayo, a sort of cocoanut toffee, and the Matamis na macapuno, which is the soft, immature nut preserved in molasses.
In the Provinces of Tayabas, La Laguna, E. Batangas and district of La Infanta, the cocoanut-palm is extensively cultivated, solely for the purpose of extracting the oil from the nut. The cocoanut-oil factories are very rough, primitive establishments, usually consisting of eight or ten posts supporting a nipa palm-leaf roof, and closed in at all sides with split bamboos. The nuts are heaped for a while to dry and concentrate the oil in the fruit. Then they are chopped, more or less, in half. A man sits on a board with his feet on a treadle, from which a rope is passed over, and works to and fro a cylindrical block, in the end of which is fixed an iron scraper. He picks up the half-nuts one at a time, and on applying them to the scraper in motion, the white fruit, or pith, falls out into a vessel underneath. These scrapings are then pressed between huge blocks of wood to express the oil, and the mass is afterwards put into cast-iron cauldrons, of Chinese make, with water, which is allowed to simmer and draw out the remaining fatty particles, which are skimmed off the surface. When cold, it is sent off to market in small, straight-sided kegs, on ponies which carry two kegs—one slung on each side. The average estimated yield of the cocoanuts, by the native process, is as follows, viz.:—250 large nuts give one cwt. of dried coprah, yielding, say, 10 gallons of oil.
Small quantities of Cocoanut Oil (Tagálog, Lan͠guis n͠g niog) are shipped from the Philippines, but in the Colony itself it is an important article of consumption. Every dwelling, rich or poor, consumes a certain amount of this oil nightly for lighting. For this purpose it is poured into a glass half full of water, on which it floats, and a wick, made of pith, called tinsin, introduced by the Chinese, is suspended in the centre of the oil by a strip of tin. As the oil is consumed, the wick is lowered by slightly bending the tin downwards. There are few dwelling-houses, or huts, without a light of some kind burning during the whole night in expectation of a possible earthquake, and the vast majority use cocoanut oil because of the economy.
It is also in use for cooking in some out-of-the-way places, and is not unpalatable when quite fresh. It is largely employed as a lubricant for machinery, for which purpose, however, it is very inferior. Occasionally it finds a medicinal application, and the natives commonly use it as hair-oil. In Europe, cocoa-nut oil is a white solid, and is used in the manufacture of soap and candles; in the tropics it is seldom seen otherwise than in a liquid state, as it fuses a little above 70° Fahr.