CLOVE AND CINNAMON. 
33 
At present it is freely cultivated, and may be exported to any 
port in the world, on paying a duty of three shillings the 
pound. The value of the cinnamon exported in 1834, was 
^32,741|A, an amount very much less than for several pre- 
vious years." 
The following account is given of a visit to a cinnamon 
plantation: — 
" We alighted at the mansion of Mr. L , and, after 
paying our respects to the ladies, were led through the cin- 
namon grounds; but there was no odor, no " spicy breezes," 
nor could we perceive any thing like a cinnamon smell, not even 
when the very bark, still attached to the stick, however, was 
put under our noses. At the season of cutting, I was told by 
Mr. L , the odor was any thing but agreeable, bearing 
more of the hercine offensiveness, than of the spicy aroma 
upon which poets love to dwell. The leaves, however, which 
are from five to eight inches long, by about three broad, and 
of a dark shining green, when mature, emit a strong smell 
of cloves, if broken or rubbed in the hands. The cinnamon 
(the spice) is the true bark, outside of which there is a taste- 
less, cellular cuticle, which the cinnamon peeler scrapes off 
with his knife before he removes the spicy bark. Were it 
not for this cuticle, the essential oil might be evaporated by 
the heat of the climate, and leave but an inodorous, tasteless, 
substance, instead of the aromatic, which is so highly prized. 
" Garden, sir !" replied a midshipman, when asked how he 
liked the cinnamon garden — " garden, sfr! — it is nothing but 
a wilderness of green bushes and shrubs and such, in fact, 
it is. The cinnamon, when not interfered with, grows into a 
tree, twenty feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter at 
the base of the trunk ; but when cultivated for the sake of 
its bark, it is not allowed to exceed eight or ten feet, with a 
diameter from one to two inches. The stalks, which shoot up 
in a cluster of eight or ten together, are cut once in about 
three years close to the ground. On Mr. L 's planta- 
