TROPICAL SPICES.

    The Cinnamon Gardens of Ceylon—Immense profits of the Dutch—Decline of the Trade—Neglected state of the Gardens—Nutmegs and Cloves—Cruel monopoly of the Dutch—A Spice Fire in Amsterdam—The Clove Tree—Beauty of an Avenue of Clove Trees—The Nutmeg Tree—Mace—The Pepper Vine—The Pimento Tree.

Although the beautiful laurel whose bark furnishes the most exquisite of all the spices of the East, is indigenous to the forests of Ceylon, yet, as no author previous to the fourteenth century mentions its aromatic rind among the productions of the island, there is every reason to believe that the cinnamon, which in the earlier ages was imported into Europe through Arabia, was obtained first from Africa, and afterwards from India. That the Portuguese, who had been mainly attracted to the East by the fame of its spices, were nearly twenty years in India before they took steps to obtain a footing at Colombo, proves that there can have been nothing very remarkable in the quality of the spice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and that the high reputation of the Ceylon cinnamon is comparatively modern, and attributable to the attention bestowed upon its preparation for market by the Portuguese, and afterwards on its cultivation by the Dutch.

Long after the appearance of Europeans in Ceylon, cinnamon was only found in the forests of the interior, where it was cut and brought away by the Chalias, an emigrant tribe which, in consideration of its location in villages, was bound to go into198 the woods to cut and deliver, at certain prices, a given quantity of cinnamon properly peeled and ready for exportation.

This system remained unchanged so long as Portugal was master of the country, but the forests in which the spice was found being exposed to constant incursions from the Kandyans, the Dutch were compelled to form enclosed plantations of their own within range of their fortresses. The native chieftains, fearful of losing the profits derived from the labour of the Chalias, who were attached as serfs to their domains, and whose work they let out to the Dutch, were at first extremely opposed to this innovation, and endeavoured to persuade the Hollanders that the cinnamon would degenerate as soon as it was artificially planted. The withering of many of the young trees seemed to justify the assertion, but on a closer examination it was found that boiling water had been poured upon the roots. A law was now passed declaring the wilful injury of a cinnamon plant a crime punishable with death, and by this severity the project was saved.

The extent of the trade during the time of the Dutch may be inferred from the fact, that the five principal cinnamon-gardens around Nejombo, Colombo, Barberyn, Galle, and Maduro were each from fifteen to twenty miles in circumference. Although they were only first planted in the year 1770, yet before 1796, when Colombo was taken by the English, their annual produce amounted to more than 400,000 lbs. of cinnamon, as much as the demands of the market required.

The profits must have been enormous, for cinnamon was then at least ten times dearer than at present, the trade being exclusively in the hands of the Dutch East Indian Company, which, in order to keep up the price, restricted the production to a certain quantity, and watched over its monopoly with the most jealous tyranny. No one was allowed to plant cinnamon or to peel it, and the selling or importing of a single stick was punished as a capital offence. Since that time the cultivation of the cinnamon laurel having been introduced into many other tropical lands, competition has reduced prices, and the spice which was formerly the main product of Ceylon is now of very inferior importance. The cinnamon-gardens, whose beauty and luxuriance has been so often vaunted by travellers, have partly been sold, partly leased to private individuals, and though less199 than a century has elapsed since they were formed by the Dutch, they are already becoming a wilderness. Those which surround Colombo on the land side exhibit the effects of a quarter of a century of neglect, and produce a feeling of disappointment and melancholy. The beautiful shrubs which furnish this spice have been left to the wild growth of nature, and in some places are entirely supplanted by an undergrowth of jungle, while in others a thick cover of climbing plants and other parasites conceals them under masses of verdure and blossom. It would, however, be erroneous to suppose that the cinnamon-gardens have been universally doomed to the same neglect. Thus Professor Schmarda, who visited Mr. Stewart’s plantation two miles to the south of Colombo, admired the beautiful order in which it was kept. A reddish sandy clay and fine white quartz sand form the soil of the plantation. White sand is considered as the best ground for the cinnamon tree to grow on, but it requires an abundance of rain (which is never wanting in the south-western part of the island), much sun, and many termites. For these otherwise so destructive creatures do not injure the cinnamon trees, but render themselves useful by destroying many other insects. They consequently remain unmolested, and everywhere raise their high conical mounds in the midst of the plantation. The aspect of a well-conditioned cinnamon-garden is rather monotonous, for though the trees when left to their full growth attain a height of forty or fifty feet, yet, as the best spice is furnished by the shoots that spring from the roots after the chief stem has been removed, they are kept as a kind of coppice, and not allowed to rise higher than ten feet.

Nutmegs and cloves, the costly productions of the remotest isles of the Indian Ocean, were known in Europe for centuries before the countries where they grow had ever been heard of. Arabian navigators brought them to Egypt, where they were purchased by the Venetians, and sold at an enormous profit to the nations of the West. But, as is well known, the commercial grandeur of the City of the Lagunes was suddenly eclipsed after Vasco de Grama discovered the new maritime road to the East Indies, round the Cape of Good Hope (1498); and when, a few years later, the countrymen of the great navigator conquered the Moluccas (1511), they for a short time monopolised200 the whole spice trade much more than their predecessors had ever done before. But here also, as in Ceylon, the Portuguese were soon obliged to yield to a stronger rival; for the Dutch now appeared upon the scene, and by dint of enterprise and courage soon made themselves masters of the Indian Ocean. In 1605 they drove the Portuguese from Amboyna, and before 1621 had elapsed the whole of the Moluccas were in their possession. Five-and-twenty years later, Ceylon also fell into their hands, and thus they became the sole purveyors of Europe with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmegs. Unfortunately, the scandalous manner in which they misused their power throws a dark shade over their exploits. For the better to secure the monopoly of the spice trade, they declared war against nature itself, allowed the trees to grow only in particular places, and extirpated them everywhere else. Thus the planting of the nutmeg tree was confined to the small islands of Banda, Lonthoir, and Pulo Aij, and that of the clove to Amboyna. Wherever the trees were seen to grow in a wild state they were unsparingly rooted up, and the remainder of the Moluccas were occupied and subjugated for no other reason. The natives were treated with unmerciful cruelty, and blood flowed in torrents to keep up the prices of cloves and nutmegs at an usurious height.

When the spices accumulated in too large a quantity for the market, they were thrown into the sea or destroyed by fire. Thus M. Beaumare, a French traveller, relates that on June 10, 1760, he beheld near the Admiralty at Amsterdam a blazing pile of cinnamons and cloves, valued at four millions of f............