CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTION 



THE history of the cultivation and use of spices is 

 perhaps the most romantic story of any vegetable 

 product. From the earliest known eras of civilisation 

 spices were eagerly sought in all parts of the world. 

 The earliest explorers in their search after gold paid 

 almost as much attention to drugs and spices, and it 

 was the pursuit of these as much as anything which led 

 to the first rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, and 

 the colonisation of the East Indies. Later, the greed 

 of the Dutch in maintaining the monopoly of the 

 Eastern spice-trade led to the founding of the Straits 

 Settlement colony, while the pepper gardens of southern 

 India, the vanilla of Mauritius and the Seychelles, the 

 cinnamon and cardamoms of Ceylon all played im- 

 portant parts in the opening up of these countries to 

 Western civilisation and Western trade. 



It must be noticed that the greater part of the 

 spices that have been valued by man are derived from 

 the Asiatic tropics, while the other quarters of the 

 globe have produced comparatively few. Thus we 

 have the following distribution. 



From Asia are derived pepper, cardamoms, cinnamon 

 (natives of southern India and Ceylon), nutmegs, and 

 mace ; cloves, clove -bark, turmeric, ginger, greater 

 galangal, from the Malay Archipelago ; cassia-bark and 

 lesser galangal from China. Africa gave us grains of 

 Paradise, Madagascar Ravensara aromatica, while the 



B 



