100 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
Mace seems at this time to have been much more in 
request than nutmegs, which are hardly mentioned in 
these early days in Europe. 
The Portuguese located the home of the plant in 
Banda in 1512, and held the trade in these spices until 
they were driven out by the Dutch, who held the 
monopoly for many years. They endeavoured to limit 
the trees to Banda and Amboyna, destroying all the 
trees in the other islands, but it is said that the fruit 
pigeons more or less frustrated their efforts by swallow- 
ing the seeds and transporting them to other islands in 
the neighbourhood. 
The accumulations of nutmegs and mace in Holland 
were so large that it is said that the crops of sixteen 
years were in their warehouses, and in 1760 an immense 
quantity of nutmegs and cloves were burnt at Amster- 
dam to keep the prices up. 
Prices were very high till much later, for we read of 
the import price of mace in London in 1806 being 85s. 
to 90s. per lb., with an import duty of 7s. Id. per lb. 
added. 
But now Sir Stamford Baffles had begun to foster 
the cultivation of the spices in Bencoolen, in Sumatra, 
and in Penang, and to break down the monopoly of the 
Dutch. In Bencoolen he records in 1820 that he had 
100,000 trees, of which one-fourth were in bearing, but 
on the abandonment of that settlement by the British, 
all cultivation disappeared and cultivation centred in 
Penang. 
IN PENANG 
The history of the cultivation of the nutmeg in 
Penang dates almost from the first colonisation of the 
island by the British. The founding of the settlement 
by Captain Light took place in 1786. At that time 
the Dutch had the monopoly of nutmegs and cloves, and 
it was hoped that it might be possible to break this 
monopoly down by the introduction of these spices into 
English colonies. The Honourable East India Com- 
o 
