On the arrival of those foreign well-armed ships under the guns of the fortress, the governor sent to demand, with Castilian arrogance, who the intruders were, and by whose authority and with what intent they presumed to show themselves in those waters.  The reply was that they came in the name and by the authority of their High Mightinesses the States-General, and their stadholder the Prince of Orange; that they were sworn enemies of the King of Spain and all his subjects, and that as to their intent, this would soon be made apparent.  Whereupon, without much more ado, they began a bombardment of the fort, which mounted thirty-six guns.  The governor, as often happened in those regions, being less valiant against determined European foes than towards the feebler oriental races on which he had been accustomed to trample, succumbed with hardly an effort at resistance.  The castle and town and whole island were surrendered to the fleet, and thenceforth became virtually a colony of the republic with which, nominally, treaties of alliance and defence were, negotiated.  Thence the fleet, after due possession had been taken of these new domains, sailed partly to Bands and partly to two small but most important islands of the Moluccas.

In that multitude of islands which make up the Eastern Archipelago there were but five at that period where grew the clove—­Ternate, Tydor, Motiel, Makian, and Bacia.

Pepper and ginger, even nutmegs, cassia, and mace, were but vulgar drugs, precious as they were already to the world and the world’s commerce, compared with this most magnificent spice.

It is wonderful to reflect upon the strange composition of man.  The world had lived in former ages very comfortably without cloves.  But by the beginning of the seventeenth century that odoriferous pistil had been the cause of so many pitched battles and obstinate wars, of so much vituperation, negotiation, and intriguing, that the world’s destiny seemed to have almost become dependent upon the growth of a particular gillyflower.  Out of its sweetness had grown such bitterness among great nations as not torrents of blood could wash away.  A commonplace condiment enough it seems to us now, easily to be dispensed with, and not worth purchasing at a thousand human lives or so the cargo, but it was once the great prize to be struggled for by civilized nations.  From that fervid earth, warmed from within by volcanic heat, and basking ever beneath the equatorial sun, arose vapours as deadly to human life as the fruits were exciting and delicious to human senses.  Yet the atmosphere of pestiferous fragrance had attracted, rather than repelled.  The poisonous delights of the climate, added to the perpetual and various warfare for its productions, spread a strange fascination around those fatal isles.