CLOVES. 225 
returns. It seems probable that it will continue to bea profitable 
crop, as the consumption of the article appears to keep pace with 
the inevitable increase of production. 
“Up to the present time the plantations have been worked with 
slave labour at comparatively small expense ; but with stoppage of 
slave supplies from the mainland great difficulty will be experienced 
by the planters during harvest-time. One result will be an increase 
in expenses ; but what the planters have most to fear is that the 
curtailment of the labour-supply will entail a direct loss by rendering 
it impossible to harvest the crop until after it has bloomed, when it 
would be unfit for the uses of commerce.”’ 
From a still more recent Report of Consul G. H. Portal of Zan- 
zibar, we learn that “ four-fifths of the world’s crop of cloves is 
produced in Zanzibar and Pemba, and this harvest forms the staple 
item upon which the country may be said to depend. The culti- 
vation has been so remunerative that almost every available acre 
of (suitable) ground is devoted to them. But the average price 
has now (1892) gradually declined to about one-third of what it 
was*; the market is overstocked and the demand fails to keep 
pace with the supply. Rather more than half the crop reaches 
Bombay and New York, whilst London, Hamburg, Marseilles, ete. 
take the rest. Clove-stems are also exported in quantity... . . 
The Northern and Western portions of the Island are extremely 
fertile, being covered with clove plantations and cocoa-nut palms 
Wherever the ground is not cleared for cloves it is usually 
overrun by a luxuriant growth of aloes and common pine-apples.”’ 
The finest quality of cloves are dark brown in colour, with full 
perfect heads, free from moisture. The varieties of cloves met 
with in commerce are structurally similar in appearance. The 
inferior sorts are somewhat smaller, of inferior colour, and poorer 
in essential oil. In the London “ Price Currents” cloves are 
quoted, according to their relative value, as “ Penang,” ‘ Ben- 
coolen,” “ Amboyna,” and “ Zanzibar.” 
(The large yield of cloves per tree mentioned above by Consul 
Pratt seems rather exaggerated, and his estimation of the percentage 
of strength of the flower-stalks is also wrong, the yield of oil from 
the stalks being only one-fourth that from the cloves.) 
* [The price in 1892 is less than a third of that in 1888 and only a fifth of 
that in 1879. The present price of the oil is less than half the price it was in 
1889.] 
Q 
