THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 183 



ready to start early and take the ride in the cool of the 

 morning. Reaching the palace just after sunrise, he was 

 received by the Sultan at the door and welcomed. His 

 Highness had been ill during the night and excused him- 

 self from taking the ride to his gardens in the country. 

 Breakfast was then served, the coffee fine, and in cups of 

 gold. The party was mounted at seven, consisting of the 

 young prince, a youth of eighteen, two secretaries to the 

 Sultan, several officers of the army and navy and a guard 

 of sixteen soldiers in red coats and white trowsers. The 

 Consul was placed in front, next the guard. The horses 

 were Arabs of fine mettle. The roads were good, many 

 birds were singing, and the appearance of the country 

 was most delightful. Riding slowly they reached the 

 plantation, some six miles out, and found a one-story 

 country-seat of stone, plastered and whitened on the out- 

 side, pleasant of aspect and placed on a high hill which 

 overlooks the country to a great distance. One feature 

 of the delightful scene was the Sultan's great plantation of 

 clove trees, two hundred thousand of them, set in rows a 

 mile or more in length, twenty feet apart. The tree is of 

 a most beautiful green and attains a height of about twenty 

 feet. The air, for some distance, is strongly impregnated 

 with the odor of cloves, recalling to the memory of the 

 guest the " spicy breezes " in Bishop Heber's much ad- 

 mired missionary hymn. Cloves in large quantities were 

 drying, spread about in the sun. 1 There were nutmeg and 

 coffee trees too, which the Consul had never before seen, 

 though he had already passed a night in the open air on 

 one of the islands in the bay, under the shelter of the 

 cocoa-palms. Orange groves and bananas were notable 



1 These great clove plantations seem to have been not uncommon. Capt. Has- 

 sen had one eight miles out in the country called "Salem," which Mr. Waters vis- 

 ited Oct. 15 and Dec. 21, 1839. It numbered twelve thousand clove trees. 



