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Updated: June 7, 2025
This nut is called, I believe, "Areca nut." When applied to the human skin it causes a sore. The illness from which the poor girl was suffering was an "inclination to maim or disfigure oneself," commonly found with imbeciles. As the parents were not fully convinced that "Jadoo" was not being worked, we again took the girl to hospital and again was she cured of the ghastly sores.
It suddenly bursts with a loud report, and the beautiful plume, freed from its imprisonment, ascends at this signal and rapidly unfolds its feathers, towering above the drooping leaves which are hastening to decay. The areca is a palm of great elegance; it rises to a height of about eighty feet, and a rich feathery crest adorns the summit.
Sewing the portions of a boat together appears ill adapted to purposes of strength; but all the Cingalese vessels are constructed upon this principle: the two edges of the planks being brought together, a strip of the areca palm stern is laid over the joints, and holes being drilled upon each plank, the sewing is drawn tightly over the lath of palm, which being thickly smeared with a kind of pitch, keeps the seams perfectly water-tight.
Sometimes it runs like a creeper along the ground, and at others it climbs the stems of the palmyra and areca palms in little patches, which are carefully guarded by rough paling. Great attention is paid to the irritation of these spots, to insure a good flavour in the leaves.
This betel is a herb which has a leaf like the leaf of the pepper, or the ivy of our country; they always eat this leaf, and carry it in their mouths with another fruit called areca. This is something like a medlar, but it is very hard, and it is very good for the breath and has many other virtues; it is the best provision for those who do not eat as we do.
Then the trees change, the long tresses of an autumn-flowering orchid fall from their branches over the road; dead trees appear transformed into living beauty by multitudes of ferns, among which the dark-green shining fronds of the Asplenium nidus, measuring four feet in length, specially delight the eye; huge tamarinds and mimosa add the grace of their feathery foliage; the banana unfolds its gigantic fronds above its golden fruitage; clumps of the betel or areca palms, with their slender and absolutely straight shafts, make the cocoa-palms look like clumsy giants; the gutta-percha, india rubber, and other varieties of ficus, increase the forest gloom by the brown velvety undersides of their shining dark-green leafage; then comes the cashew-nut tree, with its immense spread of branches, and its fruit an apple with a nut below; and the beautiful bread-fruit, with its green "cantalupe melons," nearly ripe, and the gigantic jak and durion, and fifty others, children of tropic heat and moisture, in all the promise of perpetual spring, and the fulfillment of endless summer, the beauty of blossom and the bounteousness of an unfailing fruitage crowning them through all the year.
The highest hill, on which the governor's house and the telegraph are situated, is scarcely more than 200 feet high, but the luxuriant verdancy, the neat houses of the Europeans in the midst of beautiful gardens, the plantations of the most precious spices, the elegant areca and feathered palms, with their slim stems shooting up to a height of a hundred feet, and spreading out into the thick feather-like tuft of fresh green, by which they are distinguished from every other kind of palms, and, lastly, the jungle in the back-ground, compose a most beautiful landscape, and which appears doubly lovely to a person like myself, just escaped from that prison ycleped Canton, or from the dreary scenery about the town of Victoria.
The leaves are a rich dark green, and very light and feathery, beneath which the nuts grow in clusters similar to those of the areca palm. The only use that the natives make of the produce of this tree is in the preparation of flour from the nuts. Even this is not very general, which is much to be wondered at, as the farina is far superior in flavor to that produced from most grains.
COCOA, PHOENIX, and ARECA, one after the other, went in at his eyes and through his head; none of them pleased him. His wife, however, who in her smiling way had fallen in with his whim, helped him out of his difficulty.
The betel and areca, which are here called siri and pinang, and chewed by both sexes and every rank in amazing quantities, are all grown by these Indians: Lime is also mixed with these roots here as it is in Savu, but it is less pernicious to the teeth, because it is first slaked, and, besides the lime, a substance called gambir, which is brought from the continent of India; the better sort of women also add cardamum, and many other aromatics, to give the breath an agreeable smell.
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