Note 2 — Letters from Pedro de Acuña to Felipe III

The botanical name of the clove is Caryophyllus aromaticus. See Crawfurd’s excellent account, both descriptive and historical, [59n] of this valued product, in his Dict. of Indian Islands, pp. 101–105. Cf. the account by Duarte Barbosa, in East Africa and Malabar (Hakluyt Soc. publications No. 35, London, 1866), pp. 201, 219, 227; he says, among other things: “And the trees from which they do not gather it for three years after that become wild, so that their cloves are worth nothing.” Crawfurd says: “It is only in its native localities, the five small islets [Moluccas] on the western coast of the large island of Gilolo, that it is easily grown, and attains the highest perfection. There, it bears in its seventh or eighth year, and lives to the age of 130 or 150.” He also states that the Dutch, in their attempt to secure the monopoly of the clove trade, exterminated the clove trees from the Moluccas, and endeavored to limit their growth to the five Amboyna islands, in which they had introduced the clove.