CINNAMON— NUTMEGS— CLOVES. 



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suddenly eclipsed after Vasco de Gama discovered the new maritime road to the East 

 Indies, round the Cape of Good Hope (1498); and when, a few years later, the 

 countrymen of the great navigator conquered the Moluccas (1511), they for a short 

 time monopolized the whole spice trade much more than their predecessors had ever 

 done before. But here also as in Ceylon the Portuguese were soon obliged to yield to 

 a stronger rival ; for the Dutch now appeared upon the scene, and by dint of enter- 

 prise and courage soon made themselves masters of the Indian Ocean. In 1605 they 

 drove the Portuguese from Amboyna, and before 1621 had elapsed, the whole of the 

 Moluccas were in their possession. Five-and-twenty years later, Ceylon also fell into 

 their hands, and thus they became the sole purveyors of Europe with cinnamon, cloves 

 and nutmegs. Unfortunately, the scandalous manner in which they misused their 

 power throws a dark shade over their exploits. For the better to secure the monopoly 

 of the spice trade, they declared war against nature itself, allowed the trees to grow 

 only in particular places, and extirpated them everywhere else. Thus the planting of 

 the nutmeg tree was confined to the small islands of Banda, Lonthoir, and Pulo Aij, 

 and that of the clove to Amboyna. Wherever the trees were seen to grow in a wild 

 state, they were unsparingly rooted out, and the remainder of the Moluccas were occu- 

 pied and subjugated for no other reason. 



The natives were treated with unmerciful cruelty, and blood flowed in torrents to 

 keep up the prices of cloves and nutmegs at an usurious hight. When these spices 

 accumulated in too large a quantity for the market, they were thrown into the sea or 

 destroyed by fire. Thus M. Beaumare, a French traveler, relates that on June 10, 

 1760, he beheld near the Admiralty at Amsterdam a blazing pile of these aromatics, 

 valued at four millions of florins, and an equal quantity was to be burnt the next day. 

 The air was perfumed with their delicious fragrance, the essential oils freed from their 

 confinement distilled over, mixing in one spicy stream, which flowed at the feet of the 

 spectators ; but no one was suffered to collect any of this, or, on pain of heavy punish- 

 ment, to rescue the smallest quantity of the spice from the flames. But the reign 

 of monopoly has ceased even in the remote Moluccas, and their ports are now, at 

 length, thrown open to the commerce of all nations ; for the spice trees having been 

 transplanted into countries beyond the control of the Dutch, the ancient system could 

 not possibly be maintained any longer. 



The clove tree belongs to the far-spread family of the myrtles ; the small lanceolate 

 evergreen leaves resemble those of the laurel, the flowers growing in bunches at the 

 extremity of the branches. When they first appear, which is at the beginning of the 

 rainy season, they are in the form of elongated greenish buds, from the extremity 

 of which the corolla is expanded, which is of a delicate peach-blossom color. When 

 the corolla begins to fade, the calyx turns yellow, and then red ; the calyces with 

 their embryo-seed are in this stage of their growth beaten from the tree, and, after 

 being dried in the sun, are known as the cloves of commerce. If the fruit be allowed 

 to remain on the tree after arriving at this period, the calyx gradually swells, the seed 

 enlarges, and the pungent properties of the clove are in great part dissipated. The 

 whole tree is highly aromatic, and the foot-stalks of the leaves have nearly the same 

 pungent quality as the calyx of the flowers. Clove trees as an avenue to a residence 

 are perhaps unrivalled; their noble hight, the beauty of their form, the luxuriance 

 of their foliage, and, above all, the spicy fragrance with which they perfume the air, 



