338 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
its shining outer shell, until ready for export. The fruits 
are devoured whole by certain large pigeons of the genus 
Carpophaga, which consequently fell in early days under 
the ban of the Dutch, who were endeavouring to restrict 
the tree to the Banda group, and feared that the birds 
would be the means of conveying it elsewhere. It is a 
very singular fact that the nutmeg—like the clove—is 
not, and does not appear ever to have been, used by the 
native races, and it is difficult to explain how they can 
have become known to civilised nations at so early a 
period in the world’s history, especially in the case of the 
clove, where the product is so largely artificial. 
The Banda Islands were first visited by Yarthema in 
about 1505, who, rather inaptly, speaks of them as being 
most wretched and gloomy in appearance. Six years 
later, Antonio d’Abreu reached them with his fleet of 
three vessels and brought a cargo of nutmegs back to 
Malacca, but some years elapsed ere the Portuguese 
fairly established themselves. They did not hold them 
long, being ejected by the Dutch in 1609. On this 
occasion the natives opposed the new-comers, and suc¬ 
ceeded in killing the admiral and sixty-five of his men. 
The result was a war of extermination; 3000 were 
killed and over 1000 taken prisoners, and the rest fled 
the islands. The plantations, or “ parks,” as they were 
called, were divided among the conquerors, whose 
descendants—the “ Perkeniers ”—much mixed in blood, 
held them as freehold on condition that they delivered 
the entire produce to the Government at a fixed rate. 
The Bandanese having been exterminated, it became 
necessary to get other labour, and this was done by a 
wholesale system of slave-catching in the less known 
islands, Siau in the Sangir chain supplying a large 
number. Later, when the carrying trade in slaves 
