Digitalphilologie

Titel

Baron Humboldt on the bamboos of America

Jahr

1817

Ort

Edinburgh

Nachweis

in: Caledonian Mercury 14999 (1. Dezember 1817), [o. S.].

Sprache

Englisch

Typografischer Befund

Antiqua; Spaltensatz; Auszeichnung: Kursivierung.

Identifikation

Textnummer Druckausgabe: III.41
Dateiname: 1817-Pflanzenbilder_die_Orchiden-4-neu

Statistiken

Seitenanzahl:	1
Zeichenanzahl:	6777

Weitere Fassungen
	Pflanzenbilder. Die Orchiden-Familie (Stuttgart; Tübingen, 1817, Deutsch)
	Characteristic sketches of american vegetables (London, 1817, Englisch)
	Pflanzenbilder vom Herrn Baron Alexander von Humboldt (Berlin, 1817, Deutsch)
	Baron Humboldt on the bamboos of America (Edinburgh, 1817, Englisch)
	Observations on the Orchidea. From the Latin of Alexander Baron Von Humboldt (London; New York City, New York, 1819, Englisch)
	Recensio Palmarum ex opere Humboldtii et Bonplandii a Runthio edito, inscripto: Nova Genera et Species plantarum etc. Tom . I. p. 250–255 (Wien, 1821, Latein)

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BARON HUMBOLDT ON THE BAMBOOS OF AMERICA. (From “The New Monthly Magazine.”

Messrs Humboldt and Bonpland were so for-tunate as to meet with two specimens of thebamboo tree in flower; the one on the bank ofthe river Cassaquiar, which is a branch of theOronoko, and the other at the village of ElMuerto, in the province of Popayan. Thesereed-like trees, though they cover damp andswampy tracts of great extent, and attain theheight of from 50 to 80 feet, are neverthelessvery rarely seen in blossom in America. Vari-ous observant travellers who have visited the guadales—as the swamps occupied by the bam-boos are termed by the inhabitants—never hadthe good fortune to obtain a sight of the flowersor fruit, either in Peru or New Granada. Inthe East Indies, on the other hand, the giganticgrasses blossom so abundantly, that the seeds ofthe bamboo mixed with honey are a commondish with the people of Mysore. According toa notion prevalent there, the plant does not bearfruit till it is fifteen years old, and soon after-wards dies. There, too, a distinction is madebetween the bamboo with a solid stem, whichthe natives call chitter, and which growsin a dry soil, and the bamboo with a hollowstem, termed doda, which grows more rapidly,and in moist situations. The guadua bamboo was found by MessrsHumboldt and Bonpland, on mountains to theheight of 860 fathoms; and what is still moreremarkable, these mountain trees, though grow-ing upon a soil equally damp, contained morewater than those of the level country. In moreelevated regions the tree grows separately in thethickets; but in the plains, and to the height of400 fathoms, it forms extensive woods. Thebamboo belongs to the plants that grow in so-ciety. The American bamboos render the same ser-vices in the New World as those of the East In-dies in the Old. Whole houses are built of the bambus guadia. The oldest and thickest trunksare employed for the walls; the roof is formedwith the smaller, and these are covered with theyoung branches that have leaves. The doorsand household furniture also are made of bamboo.The advantages which cause the Americans toprefer the use of bamboo to that of the hardwood of the lofty trees which every where growin the vicinity of their habitations, consist in thefacility with which it may be felled and wrought,in its durability, and the coolness enjoyed inhouses constructed with it, owing to the freecurrent of air which they afford. The water contained in the American bamboohas a somewhat saline but not disagreeable taste.The inhabitants assert, that it acts powerfully onthe urinary passages. Of the sweet bamboo-honey, M. Von Humboldt could discover notraces in the New World; but in the kingdom ofQuito he met with the tabaschir, differing butlittle from that of the East Indies. A piece ofit, given by him to M. Vauquelin, was found bythat chemist to be composed of 70-100ths of si-liceous earth, and 30-100ths of potash, lime,and water. The American tabaschir is calledby the Spaniards bamboo-fat. “I cannot con-ceive,” says the traveller, “how writers, whohave made the sugar of the ancients a subjectof their inquiry, can compare the tabaschir, which is white and brittle like starch, with ho-ney. For my own part, I could not perceiveany sweet taste in the tabaschir of Quito, thoughit was yet moist and viscid; and I have somedoubts whether the tree-like reeds of Americacontain a sweet juice at all. The tabaschir, in-deed, before it becomes by desiccation as hardas stone, is clammy, white, and milky; when ithas been kept five months, it emits an extreme-ly fetid animal odour. The same was observedby Russel respecting the salt of the Asiatic bam-boo, and Garcias ab Orto, who long resided atGoa as physician to the Viceroy, has alone ascri-bed a sweet taste to the juice of the bamboo. Itappears, however, that the ancients mistook the tabaschir for real sugar; partly because both arethe produce of reed-like plants, and partly be-cause the Sanscrit word scharkara, which atthe present day is used like the Persian schakar and the Hindostanee schukar to denote our su-gar, does not properly imply something sweet,but something stony or sandy, and even the uri-nary calculus. It is therefore probable that theword scharkara was at first used for the tabaschir alone, and in the sequel transferred to our sugarfrom the smaller sugar-cane on account of its si-milar figure. The word bamboo is derived from mambu, and from canda comes our term sugar-candy, as does tabaschir from the Persian word schir, which signifies milk. “Under the name of saccharum, Pliny cer-tainly described the tabaschir of the bamboo as‘a honey collected from the stems of reeds,which is white like gum, breaks between theteeth, is of the size of a nut, and is applicableto medicinal purposes alone.’ The ancients had,nevertheless, some knowledge of our sugar,which was said to be produced in India withoutbees. Several writers of antiquity believed thata sweet honey-like juice was expressed from theroots of lofty reeds, thus confounding the rootwith the stem, and the comparatively low sugar-cane with the tall bamboo tree. Some of themeven had a notion that the genuine cane-sugarwas a dew which settled upon the leaves of thoseplants. The sugar-cane indeed grows wild andin a natural state near Almansura, in the EastIndies, on the banks of Euphrates, and at Siraf;yet I presume that in the regions of Asia, visitedby the Greeks, the juice of the cane was express-ed only for the purpose of an immediate beve-rage, and that the ancients had not consequent-ly any knowledge of solid sugar, so that where-ever the term is employed by them it signifiesthe tabaschir of the bamboo. “It is almost superfluous to observe, that be-fore the Spaniards opened the way to America,the inhabitants of that continent and the adja-cent islands were strangers to the sugar-cane, aswell as to our different kinds of corn and rice.The Spanish writers on America, indeed, givethe name of little rice to the chenopodium quino, which is common in Bogota and Quito, as theAnglo-Americans term a species of zizania, wildrice of Canada. Maize or Turkey corn, likeother plants of ancient cultivation, does notgrow wild in any part of the new Continent. Itwere to be wished that some future travellerwould furnish more particular information re-specting the magu-corn and tuca-barley, of whichMolini makes very brief mention in his historyof Chili, and of which the Araucanians former-ly made their Covque bread. From maize andthe agave the Americans prepared the honeynot produced by bees, which, as Hernando Cor-tez informs us, was carried for sale to their mar-kets.”

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