In Sumatra the best camphor is obtained in a district called Barus, and all good camphor bears that local name. It appears that the tree is cut down to obtain the gum and that not in one tenth of the trees is it found. Barus camphor is getting scarce, as the tree must be destroyed before it is ascertained whether it is productive or not. About 800 piculs are annually sent to China. The proportion between Malay and Chinese camphor is as eighteen to one; the former is more fragrant and not so pungent as the latter.
Nine hundred and eighty-three tubs of camphor were exported from Java in 1843; 625 bales were imported in 1843, the produce of the Japanese empire; and 559 piculs exported from Canton in 1844.
The price of unrefined camphor in the Liverpool market in July, 1853, was £4 to £4 10s. the cwt. There have been no imports there direct in the last two years.
Camphor (says Dr. Ure) is found in a great many plants and is secreted in parity by several laurels; it occurs combined with the essential oils of many of the labiacæ; but it is extracted for manufacturing purposes only from the Laurus Camphora, which abounds in China and Japan, as well as from a tree which grows in Sumatra and Borneo, called in the country kapur barus, from the name of the place where it is most common. The camphor exists, ready formed, in these vegetables between the wood and the bark; but it does not exude spontaneously. On cleaving the tree Laurus Sumatrensis (Qy. Dryobalanops Camphora), masses of camphor are found in the pith. The wood of the Laurus is cut into small pieces and put, with plenty of water, into large iron boilers, which are covered with an earthen capital or dome, lined within with rice straw. As the water boils, the camphor rises with the steam, and attaches itself as a sublimate to the stalks, under the form of granulations of a grey color. In this state it is picked off the straw and packed up for exportation to Europe."—(" Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures.")
The price of camphor at Canton in July, 1850, was from fourteen to fifteen dollars per picul.
Cinchona.—Peruvian or Jesuit's Bark—One of the most valuable and powerful astringents and tonics used in medicine, is the produce of several species of cinchona, natives of the Andes, from 11 north latitude to 20 south latitude, at elevations varying from 1,200 to 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, and in a dry rocky soil. There are at least twelve trees which are supposed to furnish the barks of commerce, and great obscurity prevails as to the species whence the various kinds of cinchona bark are derived. The names of yellow, red, and pale bark have been very vaguely applied, and are by no means well defined. Dr. Lindley mentions twenty-six varieties; of which twenty-one are well known. The barks are met with either in thick, large, flat pieces, or in thinner pieces, which curl inwards during drying, and are called quilled.
Quinine is one of the most important of the vegetable alkaline bitters. It was first discovered by Vauquelin, in 1811, and its preparation on a large scale pointed out by Pelletier and Caventon in 1820. It is obtained by boiling the yellow bark (Cinchona) in water and sulphuric acid, and then treating it with lime and alcohol, when the quinine is precipitated in the form of a white powder. Upwards of 120,000 ounces are made annually in Paris.
Cinchona, or the Peruvian bark, was gathered to the amount of two million dollars in one year recently, and the demand is constantly increasing.
Peruvian bark is cut in the eastern Provinces of Bolivia, skirting the river Paraguay, and now conveyed an immense distance by mules over a mountainous region to El Puerto, the only port of Bolivia on the Pacific. It is thence brought by Cape Horn to the cities of the United States and Europe. Now that Government has been successful in opening the South American rivers, this important article of commerce will be furnished in market by the Paraguay and La Plata rivers, at a much reduced price.
A species of bark from Colombia, known as Malambo or Matias bark, has been frequently administered by Dr. Alexander Ure as a substitute for cinchona with good effect. It offers the useful combination of a tonic and aromatic. It is supposed to be the produce of a species of Drimys. It is stated that in New Granada, and other districts of Central America, where the tree is indigenous, incisions are made in the bark, and there exudes an aromatic oil which sinks in water.