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 into 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 less 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 monopolised 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 florins, and an equal quantity was to be burnt the
next day. The air was perfumed with their delicious fragrance, the
essential oils freed from their confinement distilled over, mixing
in one spicy stream, which flowed at the feet of the spectators; but
no one was suffered to collect any of this, or, on pain of heavy
punishment, to rescue the smallest quantity of the spice from the
flames.
Fortunately these distressing scenes--for it is painful to see man,
under the impulse of an insatiable greed, thus wilfully destroying
the gifts of Nature--belong to the history of the past. The reign of
monopoly has ceased even in the remote Moluccas, and their ports are
now, at length, thrown open to the commerce of all nations; for the
spice trees having been transplanted into countries beyond the control
of the Dutch, the ancient system could not possibly be maintained any
longer.
The clove tree belongs to the far-spread family of the myrtles; the
small lanceolate evergreen leaves resemble those of the laurel, the
flowers growing in bunches at the extremity of the branches. When they
first appear, which is at the beginning of the rainy season, they are
in the form of elongated greenish buds, from the extremity of which
the corolla is expanded, which is of a delicate peach-blossom colour.
The corolla having fallen off, the calyx turns yellow, and then red;
when it is beaten from the tree, and dried in the sun. If the fruit
be allowed to remain longer on the tree the calyx or clove gradually
swells, the embryo seed enlarges, and the pungent properties of the
clove are in great part dissipated.
The whole tree is highly aromatic, and the foot-stalks of the leaves
have nearly the same pungent quality as the calyx of the flowers.
‘Clove trees,’ says Sir Stamford Raffles, ‘as an avenue to a residence,
are perhaps unrivalled--their noble height, the beauty of their form,
the luxuriance of their foliage, and, above all, the spicy fragrance
with which they perfume the air, produce, on driving through a long
line of them, a degree of exquisite pleasure only to be enjoyed in the
clear light atmosphere of the Eastern Archipelago.’
In spite of the endeavours of the Dutch to confine the nutmeg tree to
the narrow precincts of Banda, it has likewise extended its range not
only over Sumatra, Mauritius, Bourbon, and Ceylon, but even over the
western hemisphere. It is of a more majestic growth than the clove, as
it attains a height of fifty feet, and the leaves of a fine green on
the upper surface, and grey beneath, are more handsome in the outline,
and broader in proportion to the length. When the trees are about nine
years old, they begin to bear. They are diœcious, having male or barren
flowers upon one tree, and female or fertile upon another. The flowers
of both are small, white, and bell-shaped; the embryo-fruit appearing
at the bottom of the female flowers in the form of a little reddish
knob. When ripe, it resembles in appearance and size a small peach, and
then the outer rind, which is about half an inch thick, bursts at the
side, and discloses a shining black nut, which seems the darker from
the contrast of the leafy network of a fine red colour with which it is
enveloped. The latter forms the Mace of commerce, and having been laid
to dry in the shade for a short time, is packed in bags and pressed
together very tightly.
[Illustration: NUTMEG.]
The shell of the nut is larger and harder than that of the filbert,
and could not, in the state in which it is gathered, be broken without
injuring the nut. On that account the nuts are successively dried in
the sun and then by fire-heat, till the kernel shrinks so much as to
rattle in the shell, which is then easily broken.
Although not so costly as cloves or cinnamon, pepper is of a much
greater commercial value, as its consumption is at least a hundred
times greater. It grows on a beautiful vine, which, incapable of
supporting itself, twines round poles or mango and other trees of
straight high stems. As these are stripped of the lower branches, the
vine embraces the trunk, covering it with elegant festoons and rich
bunches of fruit in the style of the Italian vineyards.
[Illustration: PEPPER PLANT.]
The leaf of the pepper plant is large, resembling that of the ivy,
and of a bright green; the blossoms appear in June, soon after the
commencement of the rains; they are small, of a greenish white, and
are followed by the pungent berries, which hang in large bunches,
resembling in shape those of grapes, but the fruit grows distinct on
little stalks like currants.
This valuable spice grows chiefly on the Malabar Coast, in Sumatra,
Borneo, Java, Singapore; its cultivation has also been introduced in
Cayenne and the West Indies. The black and white sorts of pepper are
both the produce of the same plant.
The best white peppers are supposed to be the finest berries, which
drop from the tree, and, lying under it, become somewhat bleached
by exposure to weather; the greater part of the white pepper used
as a condiment is, however, the black merely steeped in water, and
decorticated, by which means the pungency and real value of the spice
are diminished; but having a fairer and more uniform appearance when
thus prepared, it fetches a higher price.
Jamaica is the chief seat of the magnificent myrtle (Myrtus pimenta),
which furnishes the pimento of commerce. This beautiful tree grows
to the height of about thirty feet, with a smooth, brown trunk, and
shining green leaves resembling those of the bay. In July and August
a profusion of white flowers, filling the air with their delicious
odours, forms a very pleasing contrast to the dark foliage of its
wide-spreading branches. It grows spontaneously in many parts of the
island, particularly on the northern side, in high spots near the coast.
When a new plantation is to be formed, no regular planting or sowing
takes place, for, as Edwards (‘History of Jamaica’) observes, ‘the
pimento tree is purely a child of Nature, and seems to mock all the
labours of man in his endeavours to extend or improve its growth; not
one attempt in fifty to propagate the young plants, or to raise them
from the seeds in parts of the country where it is not found growing
spontaneously, having succeeded. For this reason, a piece of land is
chosen, either in the neighbourhood of a plantation already formed,
or in a part of the woodland where the pimento-myrtles are scattered
in a native state. The land is then cleared of all wood but these
trees, which are left standing, and the felled timber is allowed to
remain, where it falls to decay, and perishes. In the course of a year,
young pimento plants are found springing up on all parts of the land,
produced, it is supposed, in consequence of the ripe berries having
been scattered there by the birds, while the prostrate trees protect
and shade the tender seedlings. At the end of two years the land is
thoroughly cleared, and none but the most vigorous plants, which come
to maturity in about seven years, are left standing.’
The berries are carefully picked while yet green, since, when suffered
to ripen, they lose their pungency. One person on the tree gathers the
small branches, and three others, usually women and children, find
full employment in picking the berries from them. The produce is then
exposed to the sun for about a week, when the berries lose their green
hue and become of a reddish brown. When perfectly dry, they are in
a fit state for exportation. In favourable seasons, which, however,
seldom occur above once in five years, the pimento crop is enormous, a
single tree having been known to yield one hundredweight of the dried
spice. From its combining the flavour and properties of many of the
oriental aromatics, pimento has derived its popular name of allspice,
and, from its being cheaper than black pepper, its consumption is very
great.
[Illustration: MANTICHORA MYGALOIDES.]