102 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
not only to conduct the necessary experiments, but to 
make his profits at the same time. Fortunately there 
was one man, David Brown, who persevered in the 
cultivation of spices, and after his death his son 
George continued the work with such spirit and judg- 
ment that, after thirty years of trial, the cultivation 
was established on a sound and profitable basis. 
In 1818 the productive nutmeg trees on the island 
were estimated at 6900, and in 1836 Captain James 
Low writes that there were upwards of thirty spice 
plantations in Penang and Province Wellesley. The 
biggest of these contained 20,000 trees, and the whole 
of the estates comprised some 80,000 trees, of which 
more than half were fully developed and fruiting. 
The gross annual produce was estimated at 130,000 lb. 
weight. 
The Court of Directors in 1803 desired that every 
encouragement should be given to the Penang spice 
planters, as Dr. Koxburgh had in the previous year ex- 
pressed his opinion that this was “ the most eligible spot 
of all the East India Company’s possession for spice 
cultivation.” The Penang planters meanwhile com- 
plained of the duties imposed on their produce, and 
also desired that the Dutch merchants of Batavia should 
be prevented from taking advantage of the difference in 
the taxation of British grown nutmegs and foreign 
spices, by shipping their produce to Singapore and 
Malacca, and thence to England and Bengal, to save the 
extra duty of a shilling a pound imposed on foreign 
spice. 
Even at this early period the superiority of the 
Penang nutmegs and mace over those of the Dutch 
islands (then chiefly Amboyna) was observed by the 
London dealers, a reputation which Penang and Pro- 
vince Wellesley maintain to this day. 
From 1836 onwards the cultivation increased steadily 
till 1866, when the trees were badly diseased and the 
industry suffered severely. 
After the founding of Singapore in 1819, Raffles 
