Ch. XVI.] DECLIKE OF PEPPEE-PLANTINa. 271 



exhausts the soil ; and the quantity of wood required for boil- 

 ing the shoots demands the immediate neighbourhood of an 

 inexhaustible supply. In course of time, therefore, the 

 wood has all been cut down close to the plantation ; and the 

 necessity of having to convey it a mile or so is fatal to the 

 successful cultivation of the drug ; consequently, gambier- 

 planting is now fast disappearing in Singapore. 



It had always been found profitable to combine with 

 gambier-planting the cultivation of pepper ; partly because 

 this could be attended to in the intervals of gambier-cropping, 

 but chiefly because the boiled shoots and leaves of the 

 gambler, after the astringent was extracted, formed an excel- 

 lent ready-made manure for the pepper, free of expense, 

 which no other manure would have paid. As therefore the 

 planting of gambier declines, that of pepper must necessarily 

 decline also, and as the two rose together so they must also 

 fall together. Considerable quantities of pepper are stiU 

 produced in Singapore, but not nearly so much as formerly ; 

 and many of the gambier and pepper clearances have re- 

 verted to the Government. In the peninsula of Johore, 

 however, there are abundance of pepper and gambier 

 plantations. 



It may be asked, however, if Singapore has failed in 

 realising the expectations of planters in so many instances, 

 and so many different crops have one by one proved ruinous 

 to their proprietors, what will grow remuneratively in the 

 island ? — or will anything do so ? The answer to this has 

 been solved of late years. In the first place it is found that 

 all fruit-trees flourish in the soil of Singapore ; and bread- 

 fruit, jack, dookoo, mangosteen, pineapple, plantain, ram- 

 bootan, custard-apple, mango, guava, and durian, with many 

 others, now occupy the plantations in which nutmegs were 



