Whether the red sandal here coupled with white and yellow was the inodorous wood of Pterocarpus santalinus, now called Lignum santalinum rubrum or Red Sanders ([see p. 199]), is extremely doubtful. It may have meant real sandal wood, of which three shades, designated white, red, and yellow, are still recognized by the Indian traders.[2254]
On the other hand, we learn from Barbosa[2255] that about 1511 white and yellow sandal-wood were worth at Calicut on the Malabar Coast from eight to ten times as much as the red, which would show that in his day the red was not a mere variety of the other two, but something far cheaper, like the Red Sanders Wood of modern commerce.
In 1635 the subsidy levied on sandal-wood imported into England was 1s. per lb. on the white, and 2s. per lb. on the yellow.[2256]
The first figure and satisfactory description of Santalum album occur in the Herbarium Amboinense of Rumphius (ii. tab. 11).
Production—The dry tracts producing this valuable wood occupy patches of a strip of country lying chiefly in Mysore and Coimbatore, about 250 miles long, north and north-west of the Neilgherry Hills, and having Coorg and Canara between it and the Indian Ocean; also a piece of country further eastward in the districts of Salem and North Arcot, where the tree grows from the sea-level up to an elevation of 3000 feet. In Mysore, where sandal-wood is most extensively produced, the trees all belong to Government, and can only be felled by the proper officers. This privilege was conferred on the East India Company by a treaty with Hyder Ali, made 8 August 1770, and the monopoly has been maintained to the present day. The Mysore animal exports of sandal wood are about 700 tons, valued at £27,000.[2257] They are shipped from Mangalore.
A similar monopoly existed in the Madras Presidency until a few years ago, when it was abandoned. But sandal-wood is still a source of revenue to the Madras Government, which by the systematic management of the Forest Department has of late years been regularly increasing. The quantity of sandal-wood felled in the Reserved Forests during the year 1872-3 was returned as 15,329 maunds (547½ tons).[2258]
The sandal-wood tree, which is indigenous to the regions just mentioned, used to be reproduced by seeds sown spontaneously or by birds; but it is now being raised in regular plantations, the seeds being sown two or three in a hole with a chili (Capsicum) seed, the latter producing a quick-growing seedling which shades the sandal while young.[2259] It is probable that the nurse-plant affords sustenance, for it has been shown[2260] that Santalum is parasitic, its roots attaching themselves by tuber-like processes to those of many other plants; and it is also said that young sandal plants thrive best when grass is allowed to grow up in the seed-beds.
The trees attain their prime in 20 to 30 years, and have then trunks as much as a foot in diameter. A tree having been felled, the branches are lopped off, and the trunk allowed to lie on the ground for several months, during which time the white ants eat away the greater part of the inodorous sapwood. The trunk is then roughly trimmed, sawn into billets 2 to 2½ feet long, and taken to the forest depots. There the wood is weighed, subjected to a second and more careful trimming, and classified according to quality. In some parts it is customary not to fell but to dig the tree up; in others the root is dug up after the trunk has been cut down,—the root affording valuable wood, which with the chips and sawdust are preserved for distillation, or for burning in the native temples. The sap wood and branches are worthless.[2261]
In 1863 a sort of sandal-wood afforded by Fusanus spicatus ([p. 599]) was one of the chief exports of Western Australia, whence it was shipped to China. A trifling payment for permission to cut growing timber of any kind was the only barrier placed on the felling of the trees. The farmers employed their teams during the dull season in bringing to Perth or Guildford the logs of sandal which had been felled and trimmed in the bush; and there was a flourishing trade so long as trees of a fair size could be obtained within 100 or even 150 miles of the towns, where the commodity was worth £6 to £6 10s. per ton. But the ill-regulated and improvident destruction of the trees in the more easily accessible districts has so reduced their numbers that the trade in that part of Australia soon came to an end.[2262] Australian sandal-wood appears however to be still an article of commerce, if one may draw such an inference from the fact that 47,904 cwt. of sandal wood were imported into Singapore from Australia in the year 1872. It was mostly re-shipped to China.[2263]
Description—sandal-wood is not much known in English commerce, and is by no means always to be found even in London. That which we have examined, and which we believe was Indian, was in cylindrical logs, mostly about 6 inches in diameter (the largest 8 inches—smallest 3: inches) and 3 to 4 feet long, extremely ponderous; the bark had been removed. A transverse section of sandal-wood exhibits it of a pale brown, marked with rather darker concentric zones and (when seen under a lens) numerous open pores. The tissue is traversed by medullary rays, also perceptible by the aid of a lens. The wood splits easily, emitting when comminuted an agreeable odour which is remarkably persistent; it has a strongish aromatic taste.