Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1884 — Cloves. [ARTICLE]

Cloves.

If you will look on the map of Oceanica, in the division of Malaysia, you will find a group of tiny islands nestled in between Celebes and Papua, known as the Molucca or Spice Islands, from the great quantity of cloves, nutmegs and mace obtained from them. Although they look so small, they are of great value on account of the spice trees. The Portuguese and Spaniards both found them about the year 1521; but Antonio de Brito, a Portuguese navigator, took possession of them in the name of his King, and that nation held them until the Dutch (assisted by the natives) drove them out in the first part of the seventeenth century and took possession of them themselves. This they have held until the present time, with the exception of a brief period in 1796, when the English conquered them from the Dutch, but soon restored them.

The clove tree was found on only five islands in its native state, and on the Island of Amboyna, where the natives had begun to cultivate it. As soon as the Dutch obtained possession they began to destroy all the clove trees except on the Island of Amboyna, in order to make the spice scarce, and so increase the price. Every year, until 1824, an expedition of soldiers and laborers was sent from Holland to the Moluccas with orders to destroy every clove tree there except those on Amboyna. During the short time the English held possession of the islands, they carried clove-trees to Bourbon and Mauritius. In 1830 they were planted on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar, and from the latter island about 7,000,000 pounds are exported every year; these are worth over $400,000. They are also raised in Sumatra, Malacca, Cayenne, and Brazil; but the best still come from Amboyna. The clove-tree is from fifteen to forty feet high. It has a perfectly straight trunk, covered with a smooth, olivecolored bark. From where the branche! begin, it has the form of a pyramids the leaves are a dark green, and very glossy; the flowers grow in clusters, and are of a reddish hue; the fruit is about the size and shape of an olive, perhaps not quite as large, and when ripe is dark red. The part that we use as spice is the flower-buds, which are gathered just before they open. They aretdried by the smoke of wood fires, or by being exposed to the rays of the sun. By drying they are changed from red to a deep brown. They look so much like a nail with a round head that both the Portuguese and Spaniards gave them a name which meant nail in their language, and which has since become our English word, clove. The French called them fragrant-nail, on account of their delicious odor. All parts of the tree are fragrant,—bark, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Cloves are used in cooking, in medicine, -or for embalming or preserving bodies from decay. An oil is also obtained from them, which is much used in perfumery.