SPICY ISLANDS. - 1^3 



monarch of Tidor about five hundred. This treaty has been 

 twice renewed. 



When, the Dutch firft took polTeffion of the iflands, they met 

 with fome difficulties. The natives were impatient of the yoke^ 

 and killed the Governor, William Verhoeven^ as they could not 

 fee the juflice of having their nutmeg- woods robbed by ftrangerSy 

 they thought themfelves juftified in putting to death any 

 thieves they met within their limits ; but the Captain General, 

 the great Koen^ came in force in the year 1621, and put a ftop to 

 the evil, by the radical cure of a general maflacre. 



The white inhabitants, or rather Creoles, are chiefly the out-» 

 cafts of the world, or refugees of the mod abandoned princi- 

 ples, often fent here by their relations, fo that Banda itfelf is 

 called the houfe of corred:ion. Thefe are the colonics who re- 

 peopled the ifland, and who get flaves from the neighboring 

 places to cultivate the land. Happily the climate is fo un- 

 healthy that very few of thefe exiles, we may call them, ever 

 return to be a peft to their country or their relations. 



In the Banda group, the nutmeg trees are permitted to grow 

 only on that illandy Z-o;^/o/r, and Biilo aya ; the beft are thofe of 

 Lontoir, among the lofty and rocky mountains, and on the edges 

 of the precipices, which makes the gathering of the fruit a 

 work of great danger. 



Pulo aya is only two miles long, quite flat, and fo deftitute of 

 water, either rain or fpring, that they are obliged to get it from 

 the neighboring ifles, and preferve it in cifterns ; yet here grow 

 the loftieft trees, and fo produdlive are they, that the whole 



Y s- world 



