PIMENTO. 
617 
allspice, from its tasto and flavour (qualities which reside chiefly in the cortical part of 
the berry) being supposed to resemble that of a mixture of cloves, cinnamon, and nut¬ 
megs. Its properties are chiefly due to a volatile oil. The pimento walks are situated 
in the mountains, on the north side of the island, where the trees grow in hundreds. It 
is a white-trunked, shapely tree, not unlike in shape and growth an English apple-tree, 
but with a thicker, richer foliage, and dark glistening leaves, aromatic, like its fruit, and 
resembling those of the myrtle, to which family it belongs. The trunk is white, because 
every year the bark strips. Nature seems to have intended that some useful purpose 
should be served by the bark, but hitherto it has not been made available commercially. 
The tree blossoms twice, but only bears once a year. The blossom that holds and sets 
to fruit appears in April. The trees form the most delicious groves that can possibly be 
imagined, filling the air with fragrance, and giving reality, though in a very distant part 
of the globe, to the poet’s description of those balmy gales which convey to the delighted 
voyager— 
“ Sabean odours from the spicy shore of Araby the blest, 
Cheered with the grateful smell, old ocean smiles.” 
The tree grows spontaneously, and seems to mock all the labours of man in his en¬ 
deavours to extend or improve its growth, not one attempt in fifty to propagate the 
young plants, or to raise them from the seeds, in parts of the country where it is not 
found growing spontaneously, having succeeded. 
The usual method of forming a new pimento plantation (in Jamaica it is called a walk) 
is nothing more than to appropriate a piece of woodland, in the neighbourhood of a 
plantation already existing, or in a district where the scattered trees are found in a native 
state, the woods of which being fallen, the trees are suffered to remain on the ground 
till they become rotten and perish. In the course of twelve months after the first season, 
abundance of young pimento plants will be found growing vigorously in all parts of the 
land, being, without doubt, produced from ripe berries scattered there by the birds, 
while the fallen trees, etc., afford them both shelter and shade. 
At the end of two years it will be proper to give the land a thorough cleaning, leaving 
such only of the pimento-trees as have a good appearance, which will then soon form 
groves, and, except for the first four or five years, require very little subsequent attention. 
In July and August, soon after the trees are in blossom, the berries become fit for 
gathering, the fruit not being suffered to ripen on the tree, as the pulp in that state be¬ 
ing moist and gelatinous, is difficult to cure, and, when dry, becomes black and tasteless. 
It is impossible, however, to prevent some of the ripe berries from mixing with the rest, but 
if the proportion of them be great, the price of the commodity is considerably injured. 
It is gathered by the hand. One labourer on the tree, employed in gathering the 
small branches, will give employment to those below (who are generally women and 
children) in picking the berries, and an industrious picker will fill a bag of seventy 
pounds in a day. It is then spread on a terrace, and exposed to the sun for about seven 
days, in the course of which it loses its green colour, and becomes a reddish-brown, and 
when perfectly dry it is passed through a fanner, bagged, and is ready for shipment. 
The term sometimes used to denote the in-gathering of the crop is not picking, but 
“ breaking,” because, with each cluster of berries a portion of the branch is broken off, 
the tree thriving all the better for the spoliation. 
The returns from the pimento walk in a favourable season are prodigious. A single 
tree has been known to yield 150 lbs. of the raw fruit, or 1 cwt. of the dried spice, there 
being commonly a loss in weight of one-third in curing; but this, like many other of 
the minor productions, is exceedingly uncertain, and perhaps a very plenteous crop 
occurs but once in five years. 
Before the war with Russia there was a large demand for pimento in that country, for 
use in spiced bread, but during the blockade it was found that a tree growing on the 
banks of the Amoor, yielded a bark which, when grated, was pungent enough to supply 
the pepper, and aromatic enough to yield the spice, and the Russian market was thus 
lost. Pimento is used as a spice in cooking, and in medicine in weak digestion, to re¬ 
lieve flatulency, etc. The dried fruit and flower-buds of Myrtus communis were formerly 
used as a spice, and are said to be so still in Tuscany. 
Pimento exists in sufficient abundance in many parts of the parish of Hanover, Jamaica, 
but the price has frequently fallen so low as 1 \d. per lb., making it scarcely worth the 
VOL. VII. 
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