160 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
islands. Still, however, comparatively few cloves were 
produced or exported till the occupation of the islands 
by the Dutch. 
As in the case of the nutmeg, they attempted to 
form a monopoly of the spice by confining its cultiva- 
tion to Amboyna, and by making periodical expeditions 
to other islands to exterminate it. Though they pursued 
this policy with great inhumanity, their attempts to 
keep the trade exclusively in their hands was not 
altogether successful. Large supplies reached England 
independently of their Government. Thus, in 1609, a 
ship belonging to the East India Company, the Consent^ 
reached England with 112,000 lb. of cloves on board, 
on which duty to the amount of £1400, and an import 
tax of as much again was paid ; the cloves sold for from 
5s. 6d. to 5s. 9d. a pound. 
The Dutch, however, maintained almost a complete 
monopoly of the spice trade till the eighteenth century, 
at the end of which time attempts were made to wrest 
it from them. 
In 1770 M. Poivre, the governor of Mauritius and 
Bourbon, succeeded in procuring some living plants, 
both of nutmegs and cloves, and introduced these 
successfully into the island under his control, for the 
benefit of the French Government, and from these trees 
plants were sent to Cayenne about 1789 and onwards. 
William Urban Buee introduced them from Cayenne 
into the West Indies in 1789, obtaining one plant that 
year and fourteen more in 1791, and in 1793 managed 
with much expense and trouble to secure two boxes of 
seed ; for exportation from French territory of plants and 
seed was forbidden. His first two trees fruited in 1795, 
and the produce was decided to be fit for any culinary 
purpose, and as good as any of the East Indian cloves. 
Buee published an excellent Narrative of the 
Successful Manner of Cultivating the Clove Tree in 
the Island of Dominica, in 1797. 
Plants were introduced also into Martinique about 
this time, and it is recorded that 300 lb. of cloves were 
