VIII 
PEPPEHS 
293 
As time went on, Malacca became a great emporium 
for produce of tbe eastern islands, notably for pepper, 
chiefly from Sumatra and Java, and was thence shipped 
to Europe. Very little, however, seems to have been 
actually cultivated at Malacca itself. 
In 1802, pepper was the staple production of 
Penang, probably introduced from Sumatra shortly after 
the foundation of the settlement by Captain Light. An 
account of its cultivation in that year was published by 
Sir William Hunter in the Asiatic Researches, vol. ix., 
1809. The average quantity produced annually was 
4,000,000 lbs., but before 1810 it had decreased to 
2,500,000 lbs. The price fell at length to 3 and 3| 
dollars a picul, with occasional rises, and the cultivation 
was gradually abandoned. The total produce in 
1836 did not exceed 2,000 piculs. In 1818 there 
remained on the island 1,480,265 vines in bearing, and 
the average annual value of exports from Penang, 
cultivated there, and exported from the surrounding 
countries, was 106,870 Singapore dollars. 
The cultivation does not seem ever to have again 
assumed large proportions, and the extensive develop- 
ment of pepper planting in Singapore, soon after its 
founding, probably restrained that of Penang. 
As in the rest of the peninsula, the cultivation was 
almost entirely in the hands of the Chinese, though, 
especially in Province Wellesley, there was a good deal 
of cultivation by immigrant Achinese. 
Europeans have seldom attempted the cultivation, 
but about 1830, J. J. Thomson records an extensive 
area under pepper by a European gentleman in Malacca 
[Logans Journal, iv., 1837). This, however, proved a 
failure. Pepper of a very high-class quality was long 
produced at Kamuning estate in Perak, but not 
abundantly. 
In Singapore pepper cultivation seems to have been 
first started by an energetic Chinaman in 1825, who, as 
has usually been done, combined this cultivation with 
that of gambir. Pepper was then selling at $1*50 a 
