CONCLUSION. 373 



" plunder of the earth." In tropical countries many 

 valuable products can be cultivated by means of cheap 

 native labor, so as to give a large profit to the European 

 planter. But here also the desire to get rich as quickly 

 as possible has often defeated the planter's hopes. Nut- 

 megs were grown for some years in Singapore and Pe- 

 nang; but by the exposure of the young trees to the sun, 

 instead of growing them under the shade of great forest- 

 trees, as in their natural state, and as they are grown in 

 Banda, they became unhealthy and unprofitable. Then 

 coffee was planted, and was grown very largely in Cey- 

 lon and other places; but here again the virgin forests 

 were entirely removed, producing unnatural conditions, 

 and the growth of the young trees was stimulated by 

 manure. Soon there came disease and insect enemies, 

 and coffee had to be given up in favor of tea, which is 

 now grown over large areas both in Ceylon and India. 

 But the clearing of the forests on steep hill slopes, to 

 make coffee plantations, produced permanent injury to 

 the country of a very serious kind. The rich soil, the 

 product of thousands of years of slow decomposition of 

 the rock, fertilized by the humus formed from decaying 

 forest trees, being no longer protected by the covering 

 of dense vegetation, was quickly washed away by the 

 tropical rains, leaving great areas of bare rock or fur- 

 rowed clay, absolutely sterile, and which will probably 

 not regain its former fertility for hundreds, perhaps 

 thousands of years. The devastation caused by the 

 great despots of the Middle Ages and of antiquity, for 

 purposes of conquest or punishment, has thus been 

 reproduced in our times by the rush to obtain wealth. 

 Even the lust of conquest, in order to secure slaves 



