XIV.] NUTMEGS. 335 



the most part wasted ; the mace is removed and dried in ovens, and 

 the nut is kept to dry, enclosed in its outer sliell, until it is ready 

 for export. The tree requires shade and protection, and is con- 

 sequently grown beneath the lofty Kanari, the noblest nut-tree in 

 the world. It is an ideal cultivation, this nutmeg-growing, — a sort 

 of high-art agriculture befitting the perfumed product and the 

 sunny isles in which it ripens. 



The Government monopoly has long since been given up, and 

 every one is permitted to plant and sell as he pleases. But the 

 industry, so far as we could learn, is chiefly in the hands of large 

 proprietors. The official " Statistiek " gives no information as 

 regards Banda, the exports of which are apparently included in 

 those of Amboina, but from this latter port 635,491 kilos of nut- 

 megs were shipped to Holland in 1884, their value amounting to 

 £76,258. 



The neatly-roaded town with its white houses and cool, shady 

 avenues, the sloping beach dotted with canoes with quaint up- 

 turned peaks at the stem and stern, were only such as we had met 

 with half a dozen times before at the various Dutch East Indian 

 ports, unless, perhaps, the roads were a shade neater, the peaks of 

 the praus slightly more elevated. To the west, almost under the 

 volcano, is an old fort, now turned into a " Pakhuis " or magazine. 

 Near it are the houses of the Chinese merchants, dealers in and 

 exporters of the various products of the Malay Archipelago, in the 

 stores of one of whom we found a tolerably large collection of 

 Paradise and other birds' skins from the Papuan region, interesting 

 enough to examine, but for the most part useless except to the 

 plumassier, from their mutilated and moth-eaten condition. Entire 

 carapaces of tortoise-shell were here too, some of them of great 

 thickness and beauty, and numbers of pearls, for one of which, as. 

 large as one's little finger-nail, we bargained in vain. Eastwards, 

 the town follows the shore almost to the end of the island, where 

 it eventually loses itself among the nutmeg -trees. It is large 

 enough, we learnt, to contain about 7000 inhabitants. Of how 



