Indigo planter

“ The indigo land must be weeded every day, the plants cleansed from worms, and the plantation attended with the greatest care and diligence. About twenty-five hands may manage a plantation of fifty acres, and complete the manufacture of the drug, besides providing their own necessary subsistence and that of the planter's family.
"Each acre yields, if the land be very good, 60 or 70 lbs. weight of indigo, at a medium the produce is 50 lbs. This however, is reckoned by many skilful planters but a very indifferent crop. ”

“ After it appears to be dry, it is put up in heaps to sweat and dry the second time; it is then fit for market. All that has not been injured by missing the true point of fermentation, sells here generally at a dollar a pound. The planter often, by mistake, makes his indigo of a superior quality, so as to be equal to the Guatemala indigo, and be worth from one dollar and a quarter to two dollars. This happens from the indigo maker's drawing off his water from the steeper too soon, before it has arrived at its due point of fermentation. ”

“ Great masses of mango wood shew a sombre outline at intervals, and here and there the towering chimney of an indigo factory pierces the sky. Government roads and embankments intersect the face of the country in all directions, and vast sheets of the indigo plant refresh the eye with their plains of living green, forming a grateful contrast to the hard, dried, sun-baked surface of the stubble fields, where the rice crop has rustled in the breezes of the past season. ”

“ Whatever the cause may be, the demand exists, and immense tracts of land have been and are still, devoted to the cultivation of the indigo plant. Within the past few years scientific investigation has shown that indigo can be made in the factory from substances, the production of which does not for the most part involve the cultivation of the soil. ”

“ The indigo plant, in its general appearance, is not unlike the lucerne of our fields. The seed is sown in drills, about 18 inches apart, and soon makes its appearance above the ground, when it requires incessant care to keep the weeds down, which would otherwise soon choke so tender a crop. In about two months the plants begin to flower, and are then cut down, but shoot up again and give two or three more crops in the same year. Formerly indigo was carefully dried after being cut, and even fire heat was sometimes used for the purpose ”

“ Although there are a great many fields in which the indigo grows wild, and settlements in which it was once extensively cultivated still exist, yet at this period but very little is produced. Its cultivation requires the greatest care, for it has to go through a very long process, from the picking of the leaves on which the blue is found until it is fit to be removed into chests. ”

“ Batcham, “I travelled with a couple of men who said they were indigo planters, and so they may have been for all I know. Anyhow they spotted me to be a globe-trotter—said they knew it by the kind of hat I wore—and then they proceeded to fill me up about the country. One fellow said he didn’t own a yard of indigo land himself; always got the peasants to grow it for him; and the other went into some complicated explanation of how blue indigo was got by squeezing green leaves. ”

“ The red-flowered indigo hides the dry, red soil, and from it rise strange shrubs with sparse foliage and abundant blossom--yellows and whites and lilacs--with here and there a burnished pomegranate, vivid green and crimson. A sweet scent fills the air from grey aromatic herbs, among which the wild bees keep up a perpetual hum. ”

“ Rawson, 0.5%, but the yield from the whole plant is considerably less, since the stalks and twigs contain practically no colour.
Since the introduction on a large scale of synthetic indigo efforts have been made in India and in Java to place the cultivation of the plant and the manufacture of the natural product on a more scientific basis. ”

“ The only hope of rescuing the industry from total disappearance lies in the fact that the natural indigo gives a faster dye than the manufactured product, while an effort has also been made to introduce the Java-Natal seed into India, which gives a much heavier yield, and so may be better able to compete in price with synthetic indigo. ”

“ About the year 1745 a fortunate discovery was made, that this plant grew spontaneously in the province, and was found almost every where among the wild weeds of the forest. As the soil naturally yielded a weed which furnished the world with so useful and valuable a dye, it loudly called for cultivation and improvement. For this purpose some indigo seed was imported from the French West Indies, where it had been cultivated with great success, and yielded the planters immense profit. ”

“ I picked out the best of it and had it planted but there is not more than a hundred bushes of it come up, wch proves the more unlucky, as you have sent a man to make it. I make no doubt Indigo will prove a very valueable commodity in time, if we could have the seed from the east Indies time enough to plant the latter end of March, that the seed might be dry enough to gather before our frost. ”

“ Hence, it is practically well known to manufacturers, that the indigo plant, however fine and luxuriant, as is the natural result of much rain, is very deficient in produce, and a similar loss is experienced even if the plant, without the fall of too much rain, has grown up under cloudy weather. ”

“ It has been found by experience that a good soil is essentially necessary for the plant, and the indigo transplanted from elevated grounds to the rice fields succeeds better and yields more coloring matter than when raised direct on the spot from the seed. ”

“ The central provinces of Java yield large quantities of indigo, which are exported to Holland, and thence widely distributed. The indigo prepared by the natives is of an indifferent quality, in a semi-fluid state, and contains much quicklime; but that prepared by Europeans is of a very superior quality. An inferior variety, having smaller seeds, and being of quicker growth, is usually planted as a second crop on land where one rice crop has been raised. In these situations, the plant rises to a height of about 31⁄2 ft. ”

“ In our settlements of Honduras, Demerara, and various portions of the American continent, it would amply reward the labor of the cultivator; several inferior sorts of Indigofera being found there indigenous, and only requiring care and culture to improve them.
The quality of indigo depends upon the species of the plant, its ripeness, the soil and climate of its growth, and the mode of manufacture. The East India, and Brazilian indigo arrives here packed in chests, the Guatemala in ox-hides, called serons. ”

“ In the East Indies, after having ploughed the ground in October, November, and the beginning of December, they sow the seed of the indigo plant in the last half of March and the beginning of April, while the soil being neither too hot nor too dry, is most propitious to its germination. A light mould answers best; and sunshine, with occasional light showers, are most favourable to its growth. Twelve pounds of seeds are sufficient for sowing an acre of land. ”

“ Amongst the number of interesting plants to which my attention has been called, I am of opinion that this country may hereafter derive great advantages from the three new species of indigo which I have found in these fertile regions. They are very different from the plant from which the indigo is [Pg 361] obtained in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, and India; and I flatter myself that the South Americans will avail themselves of this discovery, and cultivate a plant which has hitherto been disregarded under the common name of yuyo. ”

“ We had this year, as a part of our crop, ten acres of indigo. This plant is worked nearly after the manner of rice, except that it is planted on high and dry ground, whilst the rice is always cultivated in low swamps, where the ground may be inundated with water; but notwithstanding its location on dry ground, the culture of indigo is not less unpleasant than that of rice. When the rice is ripe, and ready for the sickle, it is no longer disagreeable ”

“ The country which produces the excellent indigo, which takes its name from Biana, is not more than twenty or thirty coss long. The herb nill, from which indigo is made, grows in form not much unlike chives or chick-pease, having a small leaf like that of senna, but shorter and broader, set on very short foot-stalks. The branches are hard and woody, like those of broom. The whole plant seldom exceeds a yard high, and its stem, at the biggest in the third year, does not much exceed the size of a man's thumb. ”

“ It is commonly cut in the West Indies six and seven times in the year, but in Carolina no more than two or three times before the frost begins. Our planters have been blamed by the English merchants for paying too much attention to the quantity, and too little to the quality of their indigo, hence the West-India indigo brings an higher price at the market. He that prefers the quality to the quantity, is very careful to cut the plant at the proper season, that is, when the weed begins to bloom; for the more luxuriant and tender the plant, the more beautiful the indigo. ”

“ The plants which afford this dye grow chiefly in the East and West Indies, in the middle regions of America, in Africa and Europe. They are all species of the genera Indigofera, Isatis and Nerium. Indigofera tinctoria or cœrulea, furnishes the chief indigo of commerce, and affords in Bengal, Malabar, Madagascar, the Isle of France, and St. Domingo, an article of middling quality, but not in large quantity. The Indigofera disperma, a plant cultivated in the East Indies and America, grows higher than the preceding, is woody, and furnishes a superior dye-stuff. ”

“ Indigo of different kinds also grows wild, and in such quantities, as to be a very troublesome weed in the rice and millet fields. What a strange inversion of nature does not man, actuated by the most extravagant and most ridiculous selfishness, every where labour to effect? What necessity is there for exiling this plant from the soil and climate which nature has assigned it, in order to transplant it into a country, where it is far from thriving so well as in its native place, and where it fails every third or fourth year? ”

“ The plant cultivated in Central America for the manufacture of indigo, is the triennial plant, supposed to be a native of America; but there is also an indigenous perennial plant, abounding in many parts of Central America, which produces indigo of a very superior quality, but gives less than half the weight which is produced by the cultivated species. ”

“ Indigo (Strobilanthes flaccidifolius, Lhota tchemo) is grown to a certain extent in garden plots, but chiefly in damp, shady places in the jungle. Cuttings are put in in May and June, and are full grown by August of the next year. It is forbidden for men to touch this plant. The only garden vegetable grown is mustard (hangi) , the leaves of which are eaten. A kind of giant taro (taktsü) is grown in gardens occasionally for its leaves, which are used to line the baskets in which “madhu” rice is set to stand. No part of the plant is ever eaten. ”

“ The indigo seeds are then planted by the dibble, and just as the rains have begun: they cut it every year during the rainy season. A plantation will last four or five years without renewing the seeds. ”

“ This I shall endeavour to show; but under that name must be understood every kind of blue pigment, separated from plants by fermentation, and converted into a friable substance by desiccation; for those who should maintain that real indigo must be made from those plants named in the botanical system Indigofera tinctoria, would confine the subject within too narrow limits; as the substance which our merchants and dyers consider as real indigo is prepared, in different countries, from so great a number of plants, that they are not even varieties of the same species. ”

“ We ourselves will have our plantation bordering on the Bayou set with such bushes as these; it is so directed.”
“But I thought indigo and sugar-cane were what we were to plant. I know that I could not bring half the 166things I wished, lest there should not be room for the indigo seeds and the little canes.”
Pierre smiled and said,—
“Truly a house, dear girl, is the first thing to be considered, and that may best be obtained by a good crop of indigo seed, since the planters hereabouts must needs get their seed from France, unless some are willing to raise seed only.” ”

“ Dark grayish green, clover-like leaves, and small, bright yellow flowers growing in loose clusters at the ends of the branches of a bushy little plant, are so commonly met with they need little description. A relative, the true indigo-bearer, a native of Asia, once commonly grown in the Southern states when slavery made competition with Oriental labor possible, has locally escaped and become naturalized. But the false species, although, as Doctor Gray says, it yields "a poor sort of indigo," yields a most valuable medicine employed by the homoeopathists in malarial fevers. ”

“ The species generally cultivated is the I. tinctoria, which requires a rich moist soil and warm weather. The seed, which is at first sight not unlike coarse gunpowder, is sown three or four inches deep, in straight lines, twelve or fifteen inches apart. The shoots appear above ground in about a week; at the end of two months the plant flowers, when it is fit for cutting, which is done with a pruning knife. It must be mentioned that great care is requisite in weeding the indigo field when plants first shoot through the earth. ”