Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1892 — HERB-GATHERING. [ARTICLE]

HERB-GATHERING.

THE GREAT SOURCE OF VEGETABLE MEDICINES. How a Big Business Has Been Built Up—Tho Collectors and Their Methods. The curious reader who may have passed the stores of the botanic medicine dealers in John street, New York, has wondered, no doubt, whore the curatives came from, lind he naked the dealer ho would probably have been told that twothirds of thorn wore gathered in tho Blue Ridge districts of North and South Carolina and Tennessee. Tho business of collecting them is wholly in tho hands of one firm, Messrs. Wallace Brothers, of Statesville, N. C., who have several hundred thousand dollars of cupitul invested, and employ 300 agents and 00,000 collectors throughout tho mountains. Statesville, writes a correspondent of the Now York Evening Post, is tho county seat of Iredell County, in Western North Carolina, a pretty town of some fifteen hundred inhabitants, set in the midst of cotton, tobacco and grain fiolds. 1 was introduced to its loading industry-—herb-gathering—in n somewhat picturesque fashion. The wide main street was filled with vehicles of various descriptions—coaches and carriages of tho gentry, heavy, farm-wagons, ono-steer-oarts laden with colored folk, aud the white-topped canvas-covered wagons of the mountaineers —prototypes of thoso “prairie schooners’’ in which the early emigrants navigated the boundless prairies of tho West to found new States. Tho canopies of these wagons projected fore and aft like the bow and stern of a schooner, hence their name. Peering curiously into one of them as it stood drawn up by tho sidewalk, l found that it was occupied solely by huge bags of fragrant horbs, roots and barks—tho aromatic sussnfras, birch, and wintergreen predominating. Presently it moved on, and following it down a side street, I came soon to two Immense warehouses —tho horbarlum of the Messrs. Wallace Brothers. The story of the origin and growth of their somewhat unique inustry is not without interest.

A walk through the grout warehouse with Mr. Isidore Wallace us cicerone is a very interesting experience. There aro forty-four thousand square foot of floor space in the two warehouses, and on this, in deep, dark bins, or iu tiers of huge bales or sacks, or loose on tho floor, were stored sovorul hundred tons of roots, herbs, harks, gums, and mosses, some varieties in lots of many tons ouch. The yearly business of the firm amounts to one million fivo hundred thousand pounds. This mass is brought in by collectors, or sent in by country merchants who act us agents for the firm,tho greater portion coming from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida, 01 this, by far the greater share comes from tho mountain districts. It is delivered usually in sacks. Experienced men then sample it by removing specimen bunches from the center and bottom. It is then weighed, sproud on tho floor to dry, and when In marketable shape it is shipped to all parts of the world. The office of tho firm is adorned with engravings of plants and samples of herbs in bottlos, with a fino botanical collection, a minerulogical cabinet, Indian relics, etc. The following extracts from the firm’s order-book for January will oonvey a good idea of tho volume of its transactions, ouch order boing from u single firm: “Fifty thousand pounds of mandrake root, 15,000 pounds of black cohosh root, 12,1KK) pounds of wild cherry bark, 24,0 CR) pounds of sassafras hark, djtRRI pounds of birch bark, 8,000 pounds of rod-olovor blossoms, 12,000 pounds of ponnyroyal leaves, !),000 pounds of catnip loavos, 8,00 t) pounds of stramonium leaves, 8,000 pounds of witohhuzel leaves, B,(HR) pounds of yellow dook, 6,600 pounds of queen’S-deliglitroot, 3,<RR) pounds of unicorn root, etc.’’ Most of the orders come from manufacturing chemists and Owners of proprietary medicines, both in this country aud in Europe. “Which is tho most valuable herb?” I asked.

“Ginseng, or ‘sang,’ as the oolleotors call it. Wo pay from $2.75 to $3.00 a pound for it. 'Phis costlinoss is duo to two causes—its scarcity and the groat demand for it. This demand comes almost wholly from China. With the Chinese it is the herb of herbs. It is their chief curative agent, a specific in their opinion for all diseases. They also wear it as a charm on their bodies to ward off evil spirits, and worship it in their joss-houses. It was discovered growing wild in Chinu a sow years ago: before that it was worth six dollars a pound. This demand has caused it to be so persistently sought for that it was nearly exterminated, the collectors gathering it boforo the seeds were fully mutured, in defiance of a State law which forbids the collection of ginseng before September. It is a small plant growing about two feet high, with a peculnrly shaped root, double pronged, as you soe, which, perhaps, leads the Chinese to attribute sovereign virtues to it. It is all exported to Chiha through Chinese agents in New York. In this country it holds an insignificant position in'therapeutics. It has come virtue as a light tonic, but is noj valued. It is indigenous to America*, growing in mountainous sections, but cannot be successfully cultivated.’’ A more romantic interest attaches to the collectors. More than thirty thousand of these, Messrs. Wallace estimate, aro employed in collecting this vast body of simples. These poople comprise men, women and children, white and black, plainsmen and mountaineers. All the outfit required is a mattock and a large sack holding about two bushels, which the collector throws across ono shoulder and under the other arm like a sower's seed-bag. A certain knowledge of herbs, how properly to secure them, at what seasons, and how to prepare them for market, is a necossury outfit for the collector. The Messrs. Wallace have spent much time and money during the past twenty years in imparting this information. Several hundred of these people, principally colored, reside in and around Statesville, and ply their vocation in the neighboring fields aad forests. Most of the great army, however, live in the mountains in small log cabins of one room, and pursue their novel calling in the shadow of the deep cliff's, under the mighty forests, on the open summits of the lofty peaks, or in the deep gorges of the great Appalachian chain. In these almost inaccessible solitudes, the ginseng, snake-root, lobelia, blood-root, mandrake, unicorn-root, and scores of other varieties are found in abundance. These the mountaineer collects, carries to his cabin, and dries. When he has a cargo sufficientto load his “schooner,” he hitches up his ancient mules, and transports it over the mountain roads to the nearest town or settlement, where he exchanges it for tea, coffee, sugar, snuff, nod tobaoco. The Messrs. Wallace have

some three hundred of these merchant agents scattered throughout the mountains, and once a year —usually in June —a member of the firm in a two-horse buggy makes the tour of all, often driving a thousand miles over the rough mountain roads, settling accounts with the merchants, establishing new agencies and taking a general survey of the field of operations.—[Now York Post.