The natives here, and at Singapore, Penang, Colombo, and along the Asiatic coast generally, when not sleeping or eating, are incessantly chewing the betelnut, which, as before intimated, gives to their teeth and lips a disagreeably suggestive color, as if they were covered with blood. The men, and some of the women also, carry the means for this indulgence about them at all times, secured in the folds of their one garment wrapped about the loins. They inclose a piece of the nut in a bit of green leaf, after adding a portion of quicklime, and thus form a quid which they masticate with great earnestness, expectorating the while as a person does who chews tobacco, for which it is an Eastern substitute. Sometimes the mass is permitted to rest for a while between the gums and the cheek, and though it is known to occasionally produce cancer of the mouth, the natives give it not a second thought. The betelnut is a tonic, though very little if any of the nut is swallowed, nor is the saliva which it produces. In some cases cardamom and pepper seeds are added to the quid to give it pungency. It is claimed also that this combination counteracts malarial influences, forming a preventive against fever, which attacks natives as well as strangers in the lowlands. This habit becomes inveterate with the Singhalese, just as smoking or chewing tobacco does with those addicted to the weed. The men here would rather abstain from food than from chewing this stimulating compound. It is said that Europeans who have contracted the habit afterwards give it up with equal difficulty. It is not alone the lower classes who chew the betelnut. Persons of good social standing do it,--priests, native officials, ladies in their boudoirs, and so on, just as some American women are addicted to the secret use of cigarettes, wine, or liquor.
The practice of chewing the betelnut is so ancient in Ceylon, and along the coast of India proper, that the Arabs and Persians who visited these countries in the eighth century, or say a thousand years ago, carried back the habit to their country, where it is still more or less prevalent in the sea-coast district.
Thus mankind, civilized and barbarian, seek some stimulant other than natural food and drink. In Europe and America, where tobacco is easily obtained, it serves the purpose with the majority. In Peru, the Indians universally chew the leaves of the coca for the stimulating effect it produces. In China, opium takes the place of tobacco to a certain extent, while in the region of which we are writing, the betelnut yields a mild stimulant and sedative combined. The Ceylon and Malacca men eagerly substitute tobacco when it is to be had, and sometimes mix it with the betelnut. No gift to the savages of the Magellan Strait is so acceptable or so eagerly sought for as tobacco. The natives of Terra del Fuego, half-starved and almost wholly naked in a frigid clime, will exchange anything they have for a few dried plugs of this seductive weed. If you meet a North American Indian in the wilds of the far West, the first thing he asks of you, with extended hand, is "toback." The Japanese imbibes the subtle stimulus of tea in excessive quantities; the people of the equatorial regions get tipsy on palm toddy; the Chinese make a bedeviling liquor from distilled rice; the Mexican gets his intoxicating pulque from the agave plant; grapes yield the fiery brandy used by French and English people; hops and malt stupefy the Germans; while corn and rye whiskey turn men into brutes in this country.