24 
PEPPER. 
many  of  which  might  become  a  source  of  commercial  profit, 
besides  being  advantageous  to  the  consumer.  As  an  example  of 
this,  the  most  familiar  illustration  is  tea,  which,  but  200  years 
since,  was  scarcely  known  in  this  country,  the  Dutch  East  India 
Company  having  sent,  in  1664,  two  pounds  as  a  present  to  the 
king.  When,  however,  an  importation  of  a  few  pounds  took 
place  three  years  later,  there  was  probably  some  prejudice 
against  its  general  adoption.  We  venture  to  doubt  that,  as  a 
new  commodity  in  our  own  day,  the  pure  aroma  of  tea  would 
find  little  favor  at  first  with  the  general  public,  though  now, 
thanks  to  the  energy  and  enterprise  of  modern  commerce,  the 
tea  trade  employs  upwards  of  60,000  tons  of  British  shipping, 
besides  bringing  an  enormous  revenue  to  the  Government. 
What  we  have  said  of  tea,  might  also  be  said  of  many  other 
products,  including  pepper,  with  which  we  now  propose  to  deal ; 
even  Pliny  of  old  expresses  some  surprise  that  an  article,  as  he 
says,  possessing  neither  flavor  nor  appearance  to  recommend  it, 
should  become  of  such  general  use  as  it  had  in  his  day. 
In  a  commercial  sense,  the  word  pepper  has  scarcely  any 
restrictions  or  limit ;  nearly  everything  hot  or  pungent  comes 
under  the  designation.  Thus,  we  have  cayenne  pepper,  which, 
in  reality,  is  produced  from  various  species  of  capsicum  ;  mela- 
gueta  pepper,  the  seeds  of  Amomum  Melagueta,  and  Ethiopian 
pepper,  the  fruits  or  Habzelia  dEthiopica.  These,  in  the  cus- 
toms returns,  are  all  classed  under  the  head  "pepper,"  so  that 
it  is  difficult  to  tell  the  exact  amount  of  true  pepper  imported  ; 
but,  in  a  botanical  sense,  peppci"  is  known  as  the  product  of  one 
plant  only,  and  that  the  Piper  nigrum.  To  show  the  importance 
of  this  article  in  British  commerce,  as  well  as  the  large  revenues 
it  brings  to  the  Treasury,  we  cannot  do  i  etter  than  briefly  trace 
the  history  ;  nd  development  of  the  pepper  trade.  It  seems 
pretty  clear  that  its  uses  were  well  known  to  the  ancient  Greeks ; 
as  a  medicine,  it  was  also  early  known,  being  employed  as  such 
by  Hippocrates.  We  quote  the  following  interesting  paragraph 
from  Simmonds's  u  Commercial  Products  of  the  Vegetable  King- 
dom:"— Pliny,  the  naturalist,  states  that  the  price  of  pepper  in 
the  market  of  Borne  in  his  time  was,  in  English  money,  9s.  4d. 
per  pound,  and  thus  we  have  the  price  of  pepper  at  least  1774 
