Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/237

 *mences in autumn, and continues all the winter, the epoch when the root has acquired its full degree of maturity and perfection; and by the means of a very simple process they render it almost transparent.

In the United States, on the contrary, they begin gathering of ginseng in the spring, and end at the decline of autumn. Its root, then soft and watery, wrinkles in drying, terminates in being extremely hard, and loses thus a third of its bulk, and nearly half its weight. These causes have contributed in lowering its value. It is only gathered in America by the inhabitants whose usual occupations afford them leisure, and by the sportsmen, who, with their carabine, provide themselves, for this purpose, with a bag and a pickaxe. The merchants settled in the interior of the country purchase dried ginseng at the rate of ten pence per pound, and sell it again from eighteen pence to two shillings, at the seaports. I have never heard particularly what quantity {172} of it was exported annually to China, but I think it must exceed twenty-five to thirty thousand pounds weight. Within these four or five years this trade has been very brisk. Several persons begin even to employ the means made use of by the Chinese to make the root transparent. This process, long since described in several works, is still a secret which is sold for four hundred dollars in Kentucky. The ginseng thus prepared is purchased at six or seven dollars per pound, by the merchants at Philadelphia, and is, they say, sold again at Canton for fifty or a hundred, according to the quality of the roots. Again, the profits must be very considerable, since there are people who export it themselves from Kentucky to China.

They have again, in Kentucky, and the western coun