h there are many
and varied species, are the vineyards and olive-orchards of that
country. For beside the many other uses and advantages of this tree,
it yields wine, vinegar, and oil in sufficient quantities not only
to supply that region abundantly, but likewise to ship and send away
to other neighboring regions--especially furnishing wine to Japon,
Maluco, and Nueva Espana. The rigging of vessels is also manufactured
from this tree. In fact, there is such an abundance of the materials
necessary for the construction of ships that a vessel which is built
in Nueva Espana or Peru in several years' time for fifty or sixty
thousand pesos, is constructed in the Filipinas in less than one year,
and at a cost of less than eight thousand pesos. The cane is in itself
another miracle, especially the kind called _cauayan_, the size and
thickness of which are incredible. I shall not say what I have seen
of that species during fourteen years; but one of our Society lately
told me in Lisboa, while discussing this subject, that in the river
of London he had seen a vessel which had one of these canes for a
pump. In addition to Pliny, [45] the most ancient writer who makes
much mention of these canes, there are many moderns who testify to
their size--especially one who, from information received by those of
his nation who have coursed these seas (to our detriment and their
own danger), has written an account of these canes and of other
plants and fruits of that New World. Although this cane is so large,
it is so easily worked that it is employed in whatever is needed for
any of the uses of life; from vessels and houses (which can be made
from it in all their parts), its use extends to the pot and wood for
cooking. It seems to me that its uses could go no farther; and in
these it corresponds, too, with what Pliny [46] writes of the reed
and the papyrus--particularly as within the hollow of the cane, there
are membranes somewhat similar to beaten and glazed paper, on which
I have at times written. In some of the canes there is also found a
juice or liquor which is drunk as a luxury. There is nothing especially
remarkable in the fact that so much abundance should be deposited in
the hollow of these canes; for, just as in other regions trees need
water, in the Filipinas some are found which furnish it--acting as a
perpetual fountain for a whole community, even though it may be on the
apparently dry uplands. In all that locality there are no