GAMBIES. 407 



are collected as soon as they have attained a sufficient size, and 

 boiled in iron pans until the juice acquires the consistence of 

 treacle. The decoction is poured out into narrow troughs, dried, 

 and afterwards cut up into small cakes, and packed in baskets for 

 exportation. The gambier extract, which is of a yellowish brown 

 color, and has the consistence of hard cheese, is much esteemed 

 by the Malays for mixing with the preparation of betel, which 

 they are in the habit of chewing; and considerable quantities have 

 lately been imported to this country, where it is used for dyeing 

 colors, and for tanning leather. The demand for gambier here is 

 on the increase ; and when better known to our chemists, it will 

 probably be found applicable to many other purposes than those 

 to which it is at present applied. 



There were, in 1850, 400 gambier and pepper plantations on 

 the island of Singapore ; each measures or occupies on an average 

 an area of 500 fathoms square, and employs eight to ten hands 

 to cultivate and manufacture the gambier and pepper. There 

 are some pepper plantations in addition, and they have been found 

 to answer very well without any gambier being cultivated with 

 them. Grambier cultivation is generally a losing undertaking, but 

 it is adopted to obtain the refuse of the leaves for manuring the 

 pepper vines, and also to employ the people in the plantations ; it 

 besides affords the proprietors the means of getting monthly sums 

 to carry on the cultivation of pepper, which affords two crops yearly. 

 There were formerly 600 plantations in Singapore, but the reason 

 already assigned, and the formation of spice plantations contiguous 

 have caused the abandonment of all those near the town. Each 

 plantation must have an equal extent of forest laud to that cul- 

 tivated with gambier and pepper, to enable the manufacture of 

 the gambier being carried on, and each gambier plantation, of 

 500 fathoms square, contains about 3,500 pepper vines, which 

 yield on an average two catties per vine, or 70 piculs of pepper, 

 and about 170 piculs of gambier annually ; a good plantation will, 

 however, yield sometimes as much as 120 piculs of pepper, and 

 200 piculs of gambier, and a bad one as little as 40 to 50 piculs 

 of pepper, and 60 to 80 piculs of gambier. Were it not for the 

 enormous commission charged by the agents of these plantations, 

 from whom the cultivators get all the advances, it would prove a 

 profitable cultivation. The rates of commission charged generally 

 are as follows : Per picul of gambier, fifteen to twenty-five cents ; 

 per picul of pepper, thirty to forty cents; and if the price of the 

 former is below one-and-a-half dollars, and the latter below three- 

 and-a-half dollars per picul, a small reduction is made in the rates 

 of commission. On every picul of rice supplied to the planters 

 twenty to twenty -five cents commission is charged ; this includes 

 the interest of money advanced, which is never charged. A gam- 

 bier aud pepper plantation is valued or estimated at about 400 

 dollars on an average. The following is supposed to be a correct 

 estimate, on an average, of the yearly expenditure and returns of 

 a gambier and pepper plantation of 500 fathoms square, viz : 



2 K 



