A COOLIE BRINGING IN A LOAD OF TU-CHUNG BARK (EuCOilWlia ulmoides Oliv.), A 

 VALUED TONIC MEDICINE: YUNGYANG HSIEN, CPIINA 



"And even in the far places, out on the very rim of the world, strange tribesmen were 

 to cry aloud in outlandish tongues against the invisible clutching thing which, while they 

 wondered, took away their bread" (see text, page 216). 



well. "The world had lived in former 

 ages," he says, "very comfortably with- 

 out cloves." But in the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century that odoriferous pis- 

 til had been the cause of so many pitched 

 battles and obstinate wars ; of so much 

 vituperation, negotiation, and intriguing, 

 that the world's destiny seemed to have 

 become almost dependent upon the 

 growth of a particular gilly-flower. Out 

 of its sweetness had grown such bitter- 

 ness among nations as not torrents of 

 blood could wash away. A common- 



place condiment it seems to us now, 

 easily to be dispensed with, and not worth 

 purchasing at a thousand human lives or 

 so the cargo, but it was once the great 

 prize to be struggled for by civilized na- 

 tions. 



And so Venice and Alexandria pun- 

 ished the nations who took their spice 

 trade away with the unholy spell of war, 

 a curse that all through history has both 

 preceded and followed every marked 

 change in the trade routes of the world. 



The changes in drug prices which have 



227 



