When the spathes of the fruit-bearing trees exhibit themselves, the toddy-drawer forthwith commences his operations, climbing by the assistance of a loop of flexible jungle-vine, sufficiently wide to admit both his ancles and leave a space between them, thus enabling him to grasp the trunk of the tree with his feet and support himself as he ascends. Having pruned off the stalks of fallen leaves, and cleansed the crown from old fruit-stalks and other superfluous matter, he binds the spathes tightly with thongs to prevent them from farther expansion, and descends, after having thoroughly bruised the embryo flowers within to facilitate the exit of the juice. For several succeeding mornings the operation of crushing is repeated, and each day a thin slice is taken off the end of the racemes, to facilitate the exit of the sap and prevent its bursting the spathe. About the eighth morning the sap begins to exude, an event which is notified by the immediate appearance of birds, especially of the ‘toddy bird,’ a species of shrike, (Artamus fuscus), attracted by the flies and other insects which come to feed on the luscious juice of the palm. The crows, ever on the alert when any unusual movement is in progress, keep up a constant chattering and wrangling; and about this time the palmyra becomes the resort of the palm-martin and the graceful genet, which frequent the trees in quest of birds. On ascertaining that the first flow of the sap has taken place, the toddy-drawer again trims the wounded spathe, and inserts its extremity in an earthen chatty to collect the juice. Morning and evening these vessels are emptied, and for four or five months the palmyra will continue to pour forth its sap at the rate of three quarts a day. But once in every three years the operation is omitted, and the fruit is allowed to form, without which the natives assert that the tree would pine and die.[17] The hard and durable wood of the palmyra, which, consisting like the other palms of straight horny fibres, can easily be split into lengths, is said to resist the attacks of the termites, and is used universally in Ceylon and India for roofing and similar purposes. The leaves, finally, are employed for roofs, fences, mats, baskets, fans, and paper.
The Talpot or Talipot of the Singalese (Corypha umbraculifera) rises to the height of one hundred feet, and expands into a crown of enormous fan-like leaves, each of which when laid upon the ground will form a semicircle of sixteen feet in diameter, and cover an area of nearly two hundred superficial feet. These gigantic foliaceous expansions are employed by the Singalese for many purposes. They form excellent fans, umbrellas, or portable tents, one leaf being sufficient to shelter seven or eight persons; but their most interesting use is for the manufacture of a kind of paper, so durable as to resist for many ages the ravages of time. The leaves are taken, whilst still tender, cut into strips, boiled in spring water, dried, and finally smoothed and polished, so as to enable them to be written on with a style, the furrow made by the pressure of the sharp point being rendered visible by the application of charcoal ground with a fragrant oil. The leaves of the palmyra similarly prepared are used for ordinary purposes; but the valuable documents are written to-day, as they have been for ages past, on strips of the talipot.
The currents of the sea sometimes drift to the shores of the Maldives, and even to the south and west coasts of Java and Sumatra, a nut, exceeding the ordinary cocoa-nut many times in size, with the additional peculiarity of presenting a double, or sometimes even a triple form, as if two separate fruits had grown together. These mysterious gifts of the ocean, the product of an unknown tree were believed to be of submarine origin, and to have the wonderful power of neutralising poisons. On the Maldive Islands they were the exclusive property of the king, who either sold them at an exorbitant price, or made presents of them to other potentates. At length, about a hundred years ago, the French traveller Sonnerat discovered in the uninhabited Seychelles the home of the Lodoicea Sechellarum, which, like the cocoa, grows on the strand of that small and secluded group, and drops its large nuts into the sea, which then carries them along to the east. The trunk of the Lodoicea rises to the height of forty or fifty feet, and bears a crown of immense fan-like leaves, upwards of twenty feet long and fifteen broad, with foot-stalks seven feet long. As soon as the real origin of the wonderful drift nuts became known, they of course immediately lost their imaginary value, to the great vexation, no doubt, of the Maldive potentate, who thus found himself deprived of the best part of his scanty revenues.
The Ratans, a most singular genus of creeping plants, luxuriate in the forests of tropical Asia. Sometimes their slender stems, armed with dreadful spines at every joint, climb to the summit of the highest tree; sometimes they trail along the ground; and while it is impossible to find out their roots among the intricate tangles of the matted underwood, their palm-like tops expand in the sunshine, the emblems of successful parasitism. They frequently render the forest so impervious, that the distinguished naturalist Junghuhn, while exploring the woods of Java, was obliged to be accompanied by a vanguard of eight men, one-half of whom were busy cutting the ratans with their hatchets, while the others removed the stems. These rope-like plants frequently grow to the incredible length of four or even six hundred feet, often consisting of a couple of hundred joints two or three feet long, and bearing at every knot a feathery leaf, armed with thorns on its lower surface. Though often extremely disagreeable to the traveller, yet they are far from being useless. The natives of Java and the other islands of the Eastern Archipelago cut the cane into fine slips, which they plait into beautiful mats, manufacture into strong and neat baskets, or twist into cordage of such strength and durability that it is even used with success in the formation of bridges across the watercourses and ravines.
On turning from the Indian Ocean to Arabia and Africa, we enter upon a new world of palms, several of which are no less valuable than the cocoa-nut or the palmyra.
The date-tree (Phœnix dactylifera), sung from time immemorial by the poets of the East, is as indispensable as the camel to the inhabitants of the wastes of North Africa and Arabia, and, next to the ‘ship of the desert,’ the devout Mussulman esteems it the chief gift of Allah. Few palms have a wider range, for it extends from the Persian Gulf to the borders of the Atlantic, and flourishes from the twelfth to the thirty-seventh degree of northern latitude. Groves of dates adorn the coasts of Valencia in Spain; near Genoa its plantations afford leaves for the celebration of Palm Sunday; and in the gardens of southern France a date-tree is sometimes seen growing among the oranges and olives. But it never bears fruit on these northern limits of its empire, and thrives best in the oases on the borders of the sandy desert.
DATE TREE.
The date-palm is propagated by shoots, and the female tree bears its first fruits after four or five years. It is said to attain to an age of two centuries, but is rarely left standing longer than eighty years, when the trunk is tapped in spring, producing a kind of toddy, which is consumed in great quantities in ‘Biledulgerid,’ or the long line of oases situated to the south of the Atlas, and pre-eminently called the ‘land of dates.’
It is not to be wondered at that the tribes of the desert so highly value a tree which, when in full growth, bears as much as two hundredweight of dates, and by enabling a family to live on the produce of a small spot of ground, extends as it were the bounds of the green islands of the desert. It is considered criminal to fell it while still in its vigour, and both the Bible and the Koran forbid the warriors of the true God to apply the axe to the date-trees of an enemy.