In the first place, the areca nut palm is almost, if not altogether, the most graceful of all its graceful tribe. Unlike the coconut, it grows as erect as a flagstaff, and the effect of this is increased by its extreme slenderness, for though it may attain a height of fifty feet, its diameter scarcely exceeds six inches. At the top of the stem there is a sheath of polished green, from the top of which again there issues a tuft of the most ethereal, feathery fronds, diverging and drooping with matchless grace. Under these hang the clusters of reddish-brown nuts.
As the areca nut will not grow except in places that are at once moist and warm, the gardens are generally situated in narrow valleys and dells among hills, with little streams of limpid water rippling past them or through them. The steaming heat of such situations can only be realised by one who has traversed them at noon in the month of May in pursuit of sport or natural history. But the palms grow so close together that their fronds mingle into an almost unbroken roof, through which the sun can scarcely peep, and every air that enters there has the heat charmed out of it, and as it wanders among the broad, aromatic leaves of the betel vines which wreathe the pillars of that fairy hall, it is softened with balmy moisture, and laden with fragrance and scent to woo your senses in perfect tune with the tinkling music of the water and the enchanting beauty of the whole scene.
In a large hut among these shades, with bananas waving their banner leaves over the smooth and well-swept yard in front, where the children play, lives the family that cultivates the garden. They are a sect of Brahmins, but very unbrahminical, unsophisticated, industrious, temperate, kind and hospitable. Other Brahmins despise them and wish to deny them the name, because they have soiled their priestly hands with agriculture. But they return the contempt, and walk in the way of their fathers, a way which leads them among the purest pleasures that this life affords and keeps them from many of its more sordid temptations. Perhaps the picture has its darker shades too. I have not seen them, and why should I look for them?
The betel nut harvest is something of the nature of an acrobatic performance, for the crop is not on the ground, but on poles forty or fifty feet high. This is the manner in which it is gathered. The farmer, attended by his wife, goes out, and slipping a loose loop of rope over his feet to keep them together, so that when he gets the trunk of a tree between them it may fit like a wedge, he clasps one of the trees with his hands and goes up at a surprising rate. He carries with him a long rope, and when he reaches the top, he fastens one end of it to the tree, and throws the other to his wife, who goes to a distance and draws it tight. Then the man breaks off a heavy bunch of ripe nuts, and hitching it on the rope lets it go. It shoots down with such velocity that it would knock his wife down did she not know how to dodge it skilfully and break its force in a bend of the rope.