CURING NUTMEGS. 223 



sun. During this process its loriglit color changes 

 to a dull yellow. It is now ready to be packed in 

 nice casks and shipped to market. The black, shi- 

 ning part, seen between the ramifications of the ver- 

 milion mace, is really a shell, and the nutmeg is 

 within. As soon as the mace is removed, the nuts 

 are taken to a room and spread on shallow trays of 

 open basket-work. A slow fire is then made beneath, 

 and here they remain for three months. By the end 

 of that time the nutmesr has shrunk so much that it 

 rattles in its black shell. The shell is then broken, 

 and the nutmegs are sorted and packed in large casks 

 of teak-wood, and a brand is placed on the head of 

 the cask, giving the year the fruit was gathered and 

 the name of the plantation or " park " where it grew. 

 From Neira a large cutter took us swiftly over 

 the bay to Selam, a small village containing the 

 ruins of the old capital of the Portuguese duiing the 

 sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries, 

 while their rights remained undisputed by the Dutch. 

 This western end of Lontar is about four hundred 

 feet high, and is composed of coral rock of a very 

 recent date. Walkincr eastward, we next came to a 

 conglomerate containing angular ft'agments of lava. 

 This rock was succeeded on the shore of the bay 

 by a fine-grained, compact lava, somewhat strati- 

 fied, and this again by trachytic and basaltic lavas. 

 Indeed, the whole island, except the parts described 

 above, consists of these eruptive rocks, and Lontar 

 may be regarded as merely a part of the walls of an 

 immense crater about six miles in diameter, if it were 

 circular, tliough its form may have been more nearly 



