AMERICAN GINSENG.
Extract from the New Monthly Magazine, on the "American Trade with China."
Above all, a remarkable production deserves to be mentioned here, which grows in America itself, and is almost peculiar to the United States; a production which is almost wholly unknown in Europe, but has been in use in China from time immemorial, and is held there in extraordinary esteem. This is the root Panax quinquefolia, or Ginseng. The Chinese writers call this plant a precious gift of nature, sweeter than honey and the honey comb, more valuable than fine gold, and jewels, and pearls, a glorious gift of Heaven, bestowed by the gods upon mortals for their happiness, and their enjoyment on earth. Placed on a par with the philosopher's stone, it is called the food of immortality, and it passes among the priests and physicians for a universal remedy, wholesome for all weakness of the frail body, applicable to all diseases; nay, it is even said to prolong life, invigorating the nerves, strengthening the understanding, cheering the soul, soothing the mind, taming the wild passions, and bestowing inexhaustible delights upon our mortal existence.
The reigning dynasty of the Mantchews, in China, were proud that Nature produced this wonderful root, with such magical powers, in their original country; for it was found in Chinese Mogul Tartary; but sparingly scattered in certain places and districts. Here it was considered as one of the regalia of the crown, only the emperor had the right to have it gathered, and guards were posted at the places where it grew, that no one might presume to take openly, or by stealth, what was for the emperor alone. How fortunate was it for the Americans, that they accidentally discovered, not very long ago, that this root, so highly esteemed in China, and paid for there with its weight in gold, which it had been always supposed was only to be found in Tartary, as the Chinese had always boasted, was indigenous in the United States, and might be there collected in far greater abundance than in China, hitherto the only country where it was known to grow.
It grows in the United States, in the whole of the immense tract from the Canadian Lakes to Georgia; is found even in the northern states of New York and Pennsylvania, and flourishes in Virginia and the two Carolinas. Nature has spread it here, particularly in the tract between the Alleghany mountains and the sea, and it thrives especially where the mountains take a southwesterly direction. It loves a fertile soil, and cool shady spots, on the declivity of the mountains.
While Europe produces nothing which it can offer to the Chinese in exchange for their productions, America possesses in this remarkable plant an article peculiarly its own, which is, above all others, proper for the trade with China.
Many of your readers may, perhaps, be curious to be better acquainted with a plant so esteemed by the great Chinese Mandarins, and in the Harems.
The stalk of this plant, which attains the height of about a foot from the ground, is of a dark red. It is adorned with elliptical leaves, three of which always grow together, and each of which is again divided into five little leaves. On account of the symbolical meaning attached to the numbers three and five, which these leaves present to the eye, the plant obtained, in ancient times, in China, the character of particular sacredness. The growth of this singular plant is extremely slow, but then it attains an age unusual in plants of this kind; when it has stood fifteen years or more, the root it not yet an inch in diameter. Every year the stalk makes at the upper part of the root, at each new shoot, marks, which show by their number the age of the plant. The root itself is of an elliptical form, and commonly consists only of one piece. The plant bears but a few seeds; two or three grains are all that can be gathered from one stem; these are of a bright red colour, in shape and size like those that may be collected from the honeysuckle. They ripen in America, in the latter half of the month of September, and their taste is more aromatic than that of the root itself, but less bitter.
In China the greatest care is taken in gathering this valuable root. It is not done till it has attained the highest perfection and maturity: this is during the autumn and winter. In America they long committed, from ignorance and inattention, the great fault of collecting the root from the spring to the first frost. As it is always soft and watery at this season, it naturally shrunk together in drying, became very hard, and lost not only in weight but in goodness. This mistake is still committed in some parts of the United States, where the inhabitants make the collecting of the root only an occasional object; and when they are hunting or travelling, dig up the plant at all seasons when they happen to meet with it. But by this they deprive the ground of a valuable production, which would be far more valuable if it were tended and cultivated with due care. Though the Ginseng roots thus collected by ignorant persons do not fetch in China the high prices which are given for such as have attained their proper maturity, yet the demand for them is not the less brisk. The American merchants in the interior purchase large quantities by the pound, or the hundred weight, of the country people, who employ themselves in collecting and digging this root, and gain by exporting it to China, about one hundred per cent.