The Upas-Tree—Valley of Death, from Blackwood's Magazine [pp. 251-252]

THE UPAS-TREE-VALLEY OF DEATH.
THE UPAS-TREE-VALLEY OF DEATH.
THE famed upas-tree, in its history, concentrates
the elements of all that is strange and fearful in
romance. In the sixteenth century stories circulated about the Macassar poison-tree of Celebes;
and physicians and naturalists came gradually to
tell of the action of the poison. The description
of its qualities had become so terrible, that if the
smallest quantity entered the blood, not only immediate death resulted, but its action was so fearfully
destructive, that within half an hour afterward the
flesh fell from the bones. The first description of
the tree was given by Neuhof in 1682. Dreadful
as the poison is represented to be by this old author, his accounts are free from the gloomy fables
which subsequent writers promulgated. At the
end of the seventeenth century, Gervaise asserted,
that merely to touch or smell the tree was fatal;
and in Camel-1704-we find the story, that the
vapor from the tree destroyed every thing living
for a considerable distance around, and that the
birds which settled on it died, unless they immediately ate the seeds of the nux vomica, by which,
indeed, their lives were saved, but with the loss of
all their feathers. Before this time, Argensola had
told of a tree in the neighborhood of which every
one fell asleep, and if he approached it on the
west side, died; while if he came to it on the east
side, that very sleep shielded him from the deadly
action. It was now said, also, that the collection
of the poison was committed solely to criminals
whose lives were forfeited, and who escaped their
punishment if they successfully completed their
task. From Rumph we learned that the poisontree is also met with in Sumatra, Borneo, and Bali,
as well as in Celebes.
The admixture of fable and truth which characterized all these early descriptions arose from confounding the deadly qualities of two very different
trees, which grow side by side amid the luxuriance
of the Japanese forest. The one is a climbing
shrub, belonging to the dogbanes, from the roots
of which the upas radia, or sovereign poison, is
prepared. The other is a tall cylindrical tree,
with a tender and easily wounded bark, the milky
sap of which produces immediate and dangerous
ulcers. This sap is the ready-made poison so
widely known, and which is especially employed
in poisoning arrows. From Schleiden's description
of a Javanese forest we take the following passage:
"All is full of animal life, a strong contrast to
the desert and silent character of many of the
primeval forests of America. Here a twining,
climbing shrub, with a trunk as thick as one's
arm, coils round the columns of the dome, overpassing the loftiest trees, often quite simple and
unbranched for a length of a hundred feet from the
root, but curved and winding in the most varied
forms. The large, shining green leaves alternate
with the long and stout tendrils with which it
takes firm hold, and greenish-white heads of pleasant-smelling flowers hang pendant from it. This
plant, belonging to the dogbanes, is the Tjettek of
the natives-Strychnos Tienti, Lesch.-from the
roots of which the dreadful upas radia, or sovereign poison, is concocted. A slight wound from
a weapon poisoned with this-a little arrow made
of hardwood, and shot from the blow-tube, as by
the South Afericans-makes the tiger tremble,
stand motionless a minute, then fall as though
seized with vertigo, and die in brief but violent
convulsions. The shrub itself is harmless, and he
whose skin may have been touched with its juice
need fear no consequences. As we go forward, we
meet with a beautiful slender stem, which overtops
the neighboring plants. Perfectly cylindrical, it
rises sixty or eighty feet, smooth, and without a
branch, and bears an elegant hemispherical crown,
which proudly looks down on the more humble
growths around, and the many climbers struggling
up its stem. Woe to him who heedlessly should
touch the nrilk-sap that flows abundantly from its
easily-wounded bark. Large blisters, painful ulcers, like those produced by our poisonous sumach,
only more dangerous, are the inevitable consequences. This is the Antiar of the Javanese, the
Pohon upas-signifying the poison-tree-of the
Malays, the Ipo of Celebes and the PhilippinesAntiaris toxicaria, Lesch. From it comes the common upas-Anglic6 poison-which is especially
employed for poisoning arrows; a custom which
appears to have extended formerly throughout all
the Sunda Islands, but which is now, since the
introduction of fire-arms, only to be met with
among the savages of the rugged and inacessible
mountains of the interior of the islands."
To this common upas apply many of the legends
of the early travelers; but the exaggerated reports
as to the noxious properties of both poison-trees
were mixed up, in eastern minds, with equally
exaggerated statements regarding another natural
phenomenon of a not less rare and striking character. The mountains of Java are the seat of numerous volcanoes, which in modern times have
been frequently in activity, producing numerous
changes in the local surface, and extensive devastation. One consequence of the upheaval of rocks
so often seen in volcanic countries is the production of cracks and fissures, often of great length
and width; the sinking of portions of the surface,
so as to form valleys, sometimes only of a small
extent; the elevation of hills or mountains, etc.
Now, through the fissures thus produced a heavy
kind of air, very generally known now to educated
people by the name of carbonic acid gas, is found
in volcanic countries to issue often in very large
quantity. It does so near the living volcanoes of
Italy and Sicily, but in still more marked quantity
in the extinct volcanic region of Andernach and
the Laacher Sea, on the left bank of the Rhine.
Where this gas issues into caves or pits, it collects
and forms an atmosphere which is fatal to animal
life. Where it flows at once into the open air, it
is generally carried off by the wind as fast as it
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