Spices #248511

The history of the cultivation and use of spices is perhaps the most romantic story of any vegetable product. From the earliest known eras of civilisation spices were eagerly sought in all parts of the world. The earliest explorers in their search after gold paid almost as much attention to drugs and spices, and it was the pursuit of these as much as anything which led to the first rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, and the colonisation of the East Indies. Later, the greed of the Dutch in maintaining the monopoly of the Eastern spice-trade led to the founding of the Straits Settlement colony, while the pepper gardens of southern India, the vanilla of Mauritius and the Seychelles, the cinnamon and cardamoms of Ceylon all played im portant parts in the opening up of these countries to Western civilisation and Western trade. It must be noticed that the greater part of the spices that have been valued by man are derived from the Asiatic tropics, while the other quarters of the globe have produced comparatively few. Thus we have the following distribution.