300 SPICES 



CHAP. 



1884 . . 7,129 piculs. 



1885 -, . 11,924 



1888 



1886 . . 17,006 piculs. 



1887 . . 39,482 

 17,267 piculs. 



Cambodia. The cultivation of pepper in Cambodia 

 forms the subject of an extensive paper by M. A. 

 Leclerc in the Revue des cultures coloniales, 1900, 

 pp. 87 and 116, and another by M. Le Kay, Bulletin 

 economique de TIndo-Chine, 1907, p. 361. 



The first record of pepper-planting in this country 

 is found in the Voyage lointain au Cambodge by a 

 Dutchman, Wusthof, in 1644, who mentions pepper as 

 furnished by the province of Thbaung Khmoun on the 

 Chileang River. The cultivation seems to have discon- 

 tinued later, and to have been re-started about 1840 in 

 the Kampot province, and about twenty-five years later 

 in Peam and fifteen years later in Treang. M. Leclerc 

 mentions the only pepper producing districts as Peam, 

 Kampot, Treang, and Banteay-mear. These districts are 

 arranged thus in order of importance of the cultivation. 

 In 1884 the amount of pepper exported from Kampot 

 and Peam was 5,000 piculs, but the unsettled state of the 

 country in 1885 and 1886 seriously injured the 

 cultivations. Young plantations were abandoned and 

 many plants in older plantations were destroyed by the 

 bandits, or died from neglect, and the planters ceased 

 to open up fresh ground or plant. The production fell 

 to 2,000 piculs in Peam and to 1,800 in the Kampot 

 province. When the country was at peace the 

 cultivators set to work again, and in 1889 the 

 production had risen to its former amount, the four 

 provinces producing 6,000 piculs. 



In 1902 the cultivation rapidly increased owing to 

 the exhaustion of the soil in Hatien (Cochin -China) 

 and the superiority of the Cambodian soil, which 

 required no manuring, and which allowed of a first crop 

 in the fourth or even the third year ; to the higher 

 taxation of Asiatic aliens in Cochin -China than in 

 Cambodia, and to the objection of the Chinese to 

 certain anthropometrical examinations which entailed 



