A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History; of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and; Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the; Present TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History; of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and; Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the; Present Time
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
This valuable spice grows only in Amboina and the other five Molucca
islands, and in the islands of Meao, Cinomo, Cabel, and Marigoran. The
Indians call cloves _calafoor_, while the inhabitants of the Moluccas
call them _chinke_. The clove-tree is much like the laurel, but its
leaves are narrower, resembling those of the almond and willow. Even
the wood and leaves taste almost as strong as the cloves themselves.
These trees bear a great quantity of branches and flowers, and each
flower produces a single clove. The flowers are at first white, then
green, and at last grow red and pretty hard, and are properly the
cloves. While green, their smell is sweet and comfortable, beyond all
other flowers. When ripe, the cloves are of a yellow colour, but
after being gathered and dried, they assume a smoky and black hue. In
gathering, they tie a rope round each bough, and strip off the whole
of its produce by force, which violence injures the tree for the next
year, but it bears more than ever in the following season. Others beat
the trees with long poles, as we do walnut-trees, when the cloves fall
down on cloths spread on the ground to receive them. The trees
bear more fruit than leaves, the fruit hanging from the trees like
cherries. Such cloves as are sold in the Indies are delivered just as
procured from the trees, mixed with their stalks, and with dust and
dirt; but such as are to be transported to Holland are carefully
cleaned and freed from the stalks. If left ungathered on the tree,
they grow large and thick, and are then termed _mother-cloves_, which
the Javanese value more than the others, but the Dutch prefer the
ordinary cloves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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