In Sumatra many of the common drinking and baking utensils in the boats, and vessels for holding water, not dissimilar to those made by the Australian natives from the bark of the gum trees, are made from the spathe of this palm, it is also nailed upon the bottoms of the boats, and often small bunches of the abortive fruit may be seen placed as an ornament at the stem and bows of the native vessels. The male flowers are deliciously fragrant, and are in request in the island of Borneo on all festive occasions; they are considered a necessary ingredient in the medicines and charms employed for healing the sick. In Malabar an inebriating lozenge is prepared from the sap of this palm.
Manuel Blanco thinks that the areca might be used for making red ink, and it is not improbable that it is thus employed in India. With other combinations it makes black ink of moderate quality. The lower part of the petiole is used for wrapping instead of paper, for which purpose it is sold in the Philippines. The heart of the leaves is eaten as a salad, and has not a bad flavour. The convicts confined in the Andaman Islands masticate the nuts of another species of areca. The Nagas and Abors of Eastern Bengal, use those of a third species, and the natives of the mountainous districts of Malabar those of a fourth. There are about twenty species of the areca genus, of which several are thus used.
When betel nuts are scarce in the Philippines, the natives substitute the bark of the Guayabo and the Antipolo.
It is confidently affirmed to us, that in Ceylon the natives sometimes masticate the roots of the cocoa-nut palm, instead of, and as a substitute for, the areca nut, and that it answers the purpose very well.
The root of a plant known botanically as Derris pinnata, is also occasionally used amongst certain Asiatics, in the same manner, in cases of deficiences in the supply of genuine betel.
The consumption of the areca-nut being confined to an area of no very wide extent, and that principally in the neighbourhood of the producing countries, or in those countries themselves, the necessity for providing a substitute does not often arise; hence, those of which we have any knowledge, as having been at all generally used for that purpose, are confined to two or three substances. Some years, however, are not so productive as others, and instances have occurred in which the average price of areca nuts for mastication has been doubled. If the Yankees persist in their betel and hemp chewing propensities, which have lately been developed amongst them, probably the Chinese and Malay will have to pay a higher price for their nuts, or provide something which shall thenceforth fulfil its duties, and we may hear of other substitutes.
Ardent as the admirers of the areca may be in their admiration of the “buyo,” we have never seen more than one translation of a Malayan poem in which the masticatory was extolled, and this, unfortunately, we are unable to present to our readers. The gods have either not made the votaries of betel so poetical as the servants of the pipe, or the paeans in praise thereof are locked up from us in the cabalistic characters of their national language. The unmistakable marks left by the habit on the lips, teeth, and gums, are certainly extolled by them as marks of beauty. In the poem already referred to, the lover addresses his mistress in praise of the redness of her teeth and lips, and the fragrant odour of her breath, produced by the sweet “buyo” secreted in the hollow of her cheek. White teeth are therefore held in abomination, and as this is also the opinion of certain African tribes, who stain theirs with the juice of flowers, ours must be a barbarous nation to respect such albino masticators.
N.B.—The average annual export of areca nuts from Ceylon is 50,000 cwts., and the price a fraction below 20s. per cwt.