52 MODERN HISTORY. [Part VF. 



A.D. of cinnamon, tlie selling or exporting of a single stick, 

 except by the servants of the government, or even the 

 wilful injury of a cinnamon plant, were crimes punishable 

 ■with death. ^ 



Elephants. — ^Next to cinnamon, elephants were, in the 

 estimation of the Dutch, the most important of their 

 exports. The chief hunting grounds were the Wanny in 

 the north, and the forests around Matiura, in the south 

 of the island. Those captured in the latter were shipped 

 at Galle for the east coast of India, and those taken in 

 the Wanny were embarked at Manaar for the west. 

 But the trade in these animals does not appear to have 

 been ever productive of any considerable gain, and latterly 

 it involved an annual loss." 



Areca Nuts. — A thkd article of export which the 

 Dutcli guarded witli marked attention was the fruit of 

 the Areca pahu, tlie nuts of which were shipped in large 

 quantities to India, to be used by the natives in conjunc- 

 tion with the leaf of the betel vine ; and the story of the 

 trade in this commodity is singularly illustrative of the 

 pohcy adopted by the Dutch to crush their commercial 

 rivals. On the capture of Ceylon a large portion of 

 the active trade of the island was in the hands of 

 the energetic Moors, who not only maintamed a brisk 

 intercourse by sea with the ports on the opposite coast, 

 but also, by \irtue of tlieir neutrahty, were enabled to 



1 By tlie Dutcli laws every tree were under obligation to produce 



of ciunamon which gi-ew by chance ! annually thirty-four elephants, of 



in the gi-ound of an individual be- which foiu' were to have tusks — 



came " immediately the property of Ibid., ch. xii. p. 133 : find at a later 



the state, and was put imder the i period, A. D. 1707, one of the insti'uc- 



law of the Chalias, who may enter ; tions of the Dissaves was to bribe the 



the garden to peel it. If the pro- j people of the emperor secretly to 



prietor destroys the tree or otherwise , drive down tusked elephants across 



disposes of it, the punishment is, I | the Kandyan fi-ontiers towards the 



believe, capital." — Private letter of i company's hunting gxoimds. (Ibid., 



Mr. North to the Earl of 3Iorninq- j ch. xv. p. 310.) The total number 



ton, 22nd Oct. 1798 ; WeUesley MSS. ' exported in 1740 was about 100 ele- 



Brit. jNIus. No. 13,8(35, p. 57. t phants. (See the Iteport of Baron 



'^ Valenttn, ch. XV. p. 272. This ' Imhoff in the Appendix to Lee's 



was owing chiefly to the scarcity of Riher/ro, p. 170 ; Buknand's Memoir, 



ivory. The headmen of Matura ' Asiat. Journ., vol. xii. p. 5.) 



