one hundred and fifty years; the trees, therefore, are
of very different sizes. Here at Amboina it is not
expected to bear fruit before its twelfth or fifteenth
year, and to cease yielding when it is seventy-five
years old. Its limited distribution has always attracted
attention, and Rumphius, who describes it as
“ the most beautiful, the most elegant, and the most
precious of all known trees,” remarks: “ Hence it appears
that the Great Disposer of things in Hia -wisdom,
allotting His gifts to the several regions of the
world, placed cloves in the kingdom of the Moluccas,
beyond which, by no human industry, can they be
propagated or perfectly cultivated.” In the last observation,
however, he was mistaken, for since his
time it has been successfully introduced into the island
of Penang, in the Strait of Malacca, and Sumatra,
Bourbon, Zanzibar, and the coast of Guiana and
the West India Islands. The clove is the flower-bud,
and grows in clusters at the ends of the twigs. The
annual yield of a good tree is about four pounds and
a half, and the yearly crop on Amboina, Haruku,
Saparua, and Husalaut, the only islands where the
tree is now cultivated, is 350,000 Amsterdam pounds.*
It is, however, extremely variable and uncertain—for
example, in 1846 it was 869,727 Amsterdam pounds,
but in 1849 it was only 89,923, or little more than
one-tenth of what it was three years before. Piga-
fetta informs us that, when the Spanish first came to
the Moluccas, there were no restrictions on the culture
or sale of the clove. The annual crop at that
* According to official statements, the total yield from 1675 to 1854
was 100,034,086 Amsterdam pounds.
time, 1521, according to the same authority, reached
the enormous quantity of 6,000 bahars, 3,540,000
pounds of r uncleaned,” and 4,000 bahars, 2,360,000
pounds of 11 cleaned ” cloves, about seventeen times
the quantity obtained at the present time. Though
this statement at first appears incredible, it is strengthened
by the fact that the two ships of Magellan s
fleet that reached Tidore, one of the Spice Islands,
were filled with cloves during a stay of only twenty-
four days. When the buds are young they are
nearly white, afterward they change to a light green,
and finally to a bright red, when they must at once
be gathered, which is done by picking them by hand,
or beating them off with bamboos on to cloths spread
beneath the trees. They are then simply dried in
the sun, and are ready for the market. In drying,
their color is changed from red to black, the condition
in which we see them. They are gathered twice
a year, at about this time, in June, and again in the
last of December. The leaves, bark, and young
twigs also have some peculiar aroma, and at Zanzibar
the stems of the buds are also gathered and find a
ready sale. The favorite locations of this tree are
the high hill-sides, and it is said that it does not
thrive well on low lands, where the loam is fine and
heavy. The soil best adapted to it appears to be a
loose, sandy loam. In its original habitat it grows
chiefly on volcanic soil, but in Amboina and the other
islands, where it is now cultivated, it has been found
to flourish well on loams formed by the disintegration
of recent sandstone and secondary rocks. The
native name for this fruit is cfi67iki: perhaps a corrup