322 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
attendants, was besieged by assailants armed with 
flowers, fruits, sweetmeats and spices, among which 
Melegetae are mentioned. 
After this period there are many records of the use 
of Meleguetta, showing tl;at it was of common occurrence 
in commerce. Nicolas Myrepsius, physician at the 
Court of Emperor John III. at Nicea in the thirteenth 
century, prescribes Menegetai. Grana Paradisi was 
enumerated among spices sold at Lyons in 1245, and by 
the Welsh physicians of Myddvai, under the name of 
Grawn Paris. 
In the early days the spice was conveyed overland 
from the Mandigo country through the desert to Tripoli 
and shipped by the Italians from the port of Monti di 
Barca on the Mediterranean coast, and as they did not 
know whence it came they called it Grains of Paradise. 
Towards the middle of the fourteenth century there 
began to be commercial intercourse, direct by sea, with 
Western Africa, and ships were sent there from Dieppe 
(1364), and, loaded with ivory and Malaguette, sailed 
from the mouth of the river Cestos (Sestros). 
In the sixteenth century English voyagers traded to 
the Gold Coast for gold, ivory, pepper (doubtless that 
of Pijper Clusii), and Grains of Paradise. 
Trade . — Grains of Paradise are chiefly shipped from 
the settlements on the Gold Coast, the most important 
being Cape Coast Castle and Accra. 
The official Blue book for the Colony of the Gold 
Coast in 1871 gives the exports as 191,011 lbs. (1,705 
cwt.), of which Great Britain received 85,502 lbs., the 
United States 35,630 lbs., Germany 28,501 lbs., France 
27,125 lbs., Holland 14,250 lbs. In 1872, 620,191 lbs. 
were shipped, valued at £10,303 : in 1875 the export 
fell to 151,783 lbs., valued at £912. 
Uses . — Grains of Paradise seem chiefly to have been 
used in the early days as a substitute for pepper, and 
according to Pomet (Livre des drogues) as an adulterant 
by pepper dealers. It was an ingredient in the spiced 
wine known as hippocras, and in more recent times used 
