Massoudi, the traveller
of Bagdad, who wrote the account of his voyages in A.D. 943, states that
the chewing of betel prevailed along the southern coast of Arabia, and
reached as far as Yemen and Mecca.[1] Ibn Batuta saw the betel plant at
Zahfar A.D. 1332, and describes it accurately as trained like a vine
over a trellis of reeds, or climbing the steins of the coco-nut palm.[2]

[Footnote 1: Massoudi, _Maraudj-al-Dzeheb_, as translated by REINAUD,
_Memoire_ _sur l'Lede_. p. 230.]

[Footnote 2: _Voyages_, &c. t. ii. p. 205.]

The leaves of the coca[1] supply the Indians of Bolivia and Peru with a
stimulant, whose use is equivalent to that of the betel-pepper among the
natives of Hindustan and the Eastern Archipelago. With an admixture of
lime, they are chewed perseveringly; but, unlike the betel, the colour
imparted by them to the saliva is greenish, instead of red. It is
curious, too, as a coincidence common to the humblest phases of
semi-civilised life, that, in the absence of coined money, the leaves of
the coca form a rude kind of currency in the Andes, as does the betel in
some parts of Ceylon, and tobacco amongst the tribes of the south-west
of Africa.[2]

[Footnote 1: Erythroxylon coca.]

[Footnote 2: Tobacco was a currency in North America when Virginia was
colonised in the early part of the 17th century; debts were contracted
and paid in it, and in every ordinary transaction tobacco answered the
purposes of coin.]

Neither catechu nor its impure equivalent, "terra japonica," is prepared
from the areca in Ceylon; but the nuts are exported in large quantities
to the Maldive Islands and to India, the produce of which they excel
both in astringency and size. The fibrous wood of the areca being at
once straight, firm, and elastic, is employed for making the pingoes
(yokes for the shoulders), by means of which the Singhalese coolie, like
the corresponding class among the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks,
carries his burdens, dividing them into portions of equal weight, one of
which is suspended from each end of the pingo. By a swaying motion
communicated to them as he starts, his own movement is facilitated,
whereas one unaccustomed to the work, by allowing the oscillation to
become irregular, finds it almost impossible to proceed with a load of
any considerable weight.[1]

[Footnote 1: The natives of Tahti use a yoke of the same form as the
Singhalese _pingo_, but made from the wood of the _Hibiscus
tiliace