124 WONDERS OF THE TROPICAL FORESTS, 
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 Bandaj Lonthoir, and 
Pulo Aij, and that of the clove to Aiuboyna. Wherever 
the trees were seen to grow in a wild state they were 
unsparingly rooted up, and tlie remainder of the ^Moluccas 
were occupied and subjugated for no other reason. The 
natives were treated with unmerciful crnelty, and blood 
flowed in torrents to keep up the prices of cloves and nut- 
mega at an usurious height. 
When the spices accmnnlated in too large a quantity 
for the market, they were thrown into the sea or destroyed 
by fire. Thus M, Beanmare, a French traveller, relates 
that on June to, 1760, he beheld near the Admiralty at 
Amsterdam a blazing pile of cinnamons and cloves, valued 
at four millions of florins, and an equal quantity was to 
be burnt tbe next day. The air was perfumed with their 
delicious fragrance, the essential oils freed from their con- 
finement 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, orj on pain of heavy punish- 
ment, to rescue the smallest quantity of the spice from 
the flames. 
Fortunately these distressing scenes^ — for it is painful 
to see man, under the impulse of an insatiable greed, thus 
wilPnlly destroying the gifts of Nature— -belong to the 
history of the past. The reign of monopoly has ceased 
even in the remote IMoluccas, 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 
