101 
charge of them as soon as possible. In 1802 there were 19,000 
nutmeg trees and 6,250 cloves in the Gardens and altogether about 
33,000 spice plants in the island. 
The first nutmeg fruit and the first mangosteen in Penang were 
produced in l8ot. At this time Sir William Hunter, surgeon to the 
East India Company, was in charge of the Gardens, with a staff of 
fifty convicts. An account of the plants of Prince of Wales Island 
from a manuscript, in the British Museum, was published recently 
by the Editor in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal 
Asiatic Society, Vol. 53. It shows that a number of other plants of 
a useful and ornamental character, many obviously sent from the 
Moluccas by Smith, weie cultivated in the spice gardens. Among 
the plants recorded in this work and elsewhere are Cinnamon, 
Pimento Coffee, Kay a Puteh, Colelava' (sic, probably clove bark) 
Kulit La wan, Cinnamomum , Kulit Laiuan Bl) Teak, Loquat, Artabotrys 
odoratissima, Canary nut, etc. 
Christopher Smith returned from the Moluccas and was appoin- 
ted Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens in 1806, having sent to 
Penang 71,266 nutmeg plants, 55,264 cloves and large quantities of 
Canariu m commune the Canary nut and Arenga saceharifera , the well 
known Kabong Palm. 
Capt. James Law, in his dissertation on the soil and agriculture 
of Penang (1836), describes the position and area of the* Gardens 
thus : — “ It comprised 130 acres of land lying on the slopes 
which skirt the base of the hill near Amie’s mills, a romantic spot 
and well watered by a running stream called Ayer Puteh. It con- 
tained 19,628 nutmegs from I to 4 years old, 3,460 being four years 
old and 6259 clove trees, of which 669 were above six and under 
7 years old.” Hunter says the Gardens were in the valley of Ayer 
Hitam. 
Sir George Leith was Lieut. Governor but was succeeded by Col. 
R. T. Farquhar in 1803, He appears to have been a reckless and 
extravagant man, spending large sums on his own luxury and on 
useless fortifications. 
Hunter seems to have left the island about 1803, and Smith died 
in 1806, or soon after. 
The Gardens, which in 1804 to 1805 had a staff of 80 coolies and 
cost $11,909.41, were sold at 12 days’ notice by auction for $9,656. 
The trees were dug up and carried off by the purchasers but most of 
them died. So ended the first Gardens of Penang. 
From 1805 to 1822 Penang possessed no gardens, then at the 
instance of Sir Stamford Raffles the second gardens were founded. 
They were also situated at Ayer Hitam, and put under the charge of 
a botanical school master, George Porter. These gardens existed till 
1834, when Governor Murchison who took no interest in gardens or 
agriculture sold them for 1,250 rupees because his wife could not get 
enough vegetables from them to diminish the cost of her cook’s bills, 
and so ended the second Penang Gardens. 
