A few months ago his son arrived here from Amboina, with twenty-two thousand nutmeg plants, and upwards of six thousand cloves, which are already in my nurseries, and flourishing like those which preceded them.  About the time the nutmegs fruited one clove tree flowered.  Only three of the original importation had survived their transit and the accidents attending their planting out.  Its buds are now filling, and I hope to transmit specimens of them also.  The Malay chiefs have eagerly engaged in the cultivation of their respective shares.  I have retained eight thousand nutmegs as a plantation from which the fruit may hereafter be disseminated.  Every kind of soil and every variety of situation has been tried.  The cloves are not yet widely dispersed, for, being a tender plant, I choose to have them under my own eye.

...

Since the death of Mr. Campbell Mr. Roxburgh has been appointed to the superintendence, and the latest accounts from thence justify the sanguine expectations formed of the ultimate importance of the trade; there being at that period upwards of twenty thousand nutmeg trees in full bearing, capable of yielding annually two hundred thousand pounds weight of nutmegs, and fifty thousand pounds of mace.  The clove plants have proved more delicate, but the quality of their spice equal to any produced in the Moluccas.

CULTURE LEFT TO INDIVIDUALS.

It is understood that the Company has declined the monopoly of the trade and left the cultivation to individual exertion; directing however that its own immediate plantations be kept up by the labour of convicts from Bengal, and reserving to itself an export duty of ten per cent on the value of the spices.

CAMPHOR.

Among the valuable productions of the island as articles of commerce a conspicuous place belongs to the camphor.

This peculiar substance, called by the natives kapur-barus,* and distinguished by the epithet of native camphor from another sort which shall be mentioned hereafter, is a drug for which Sumatra and Borneo have been celebrated from the earliest times, and with the virtues of which the Arabian physicians appear to have been acquainted.  Chemists formerly entertained opinions extremely discordant in regard to the nature and the properties of camphor; and even at this day they seem to be but imperfectly known.  It is considered however as a sedative and powerful diaphoretic:  but my province is to mention such particulars of its history as have come within my knowledge, leaving to others to investigate its most beneficial uses.

(Footnote.  The word kapur appears to be derived from the Sanskrit karpura, and the Arabic and Persian kafur (from whence our camphor) to have been adopted from the language of the country where the article is produced.  Barus is the name of a place in Sumatra.)

PLACE OF GROWTH.

The tree is a native of the northern parts of the island only, not being found to the southward of the line, nor yet beyond the third degree of north latitude.  It grows without cultivation in the woods lying near to the sea-coast, and is equal in height and bulk to the largest timber trees, being frequently found upwards of fifteen feet in circumference.