POSSESSIONS IN THE STRAITS OP MALACCA. 14T 
most luxuriously, but as no one has yet made a business of preparing 
it for the market its quality remains unknown. 
The article which, next to nutmegs, has arrested the attention* of 
Europeans is the cocoanut tree, of which there are many extensive 
plantations in a very flourishing condition, holding out favourable 
prospects to the proprietors. Hitherto the Island has been supplied 
almost wholly from abroad with nuts and oil for its consumption 
which will before long be obtained from her own soil. 
Sugar cultivation was commenced on the island ten years ago and 
has remained stationary since, for the two plantations then com¬ 
menced remain still the only ones. The cause of this pause may be 
mainly attributed to the higher rate of duty charged in Great Bri¬ 
tain on the Singapore grown sugar than on that manufactured in 
other British Colonies, and this heavy difference is imposed because 
foreign sugar, like every other article of commerce, is freely admitted 
into the port; as if it could not easily be ascertained and certified by 
the local authorities of the place which is the genuine production of 
the island. Another cause for its non progress is the want of adequate 
capital to carry on the business on a large scale. From the beginn¬ 
ing an impression has prevailed that neither the climate nor the soil 
were favourable to the cane, consequently no money facilities are ob¬ 
tainable in the shape of advances on growing crops or time loans. 
But to those acquainted with the matter the objections alledged will 
appear to be mere prejudice unsupported by facts, for if, in taking note 
of the climate, neither long protracted droughts, nor continuous sea¬ 
sons of wet are heard of, nor hurricanes, nor typhous, and if a soil chang¬ 
ing from red clay more or less mixed with sand, to fields of peat overlay¬ 
ing beds of blue clay filled with marine shells of various sorts be ob¬ 
served, if the observer does not class this soil as the very best, he will 
be apt to pronounce it, at least, good ; more particularly if, on pro¬ 
ceeding with his observations, he sees continuous fields of canes mea¬ 
suring from six to eight feet in the stem ; which when ripe and ex¬ 
pressed yield a fair quantity of juice marking from 9° to 11° of 
Baumes Saccharometer. A practical observer will not he apt to is¬ 
sue a decree of condemnation against the cultivation when, besides. 
U 
