Great Britain derived a duty from it for centuries, and as late as 1623 this duty was five shillings, or about $1.20 per pound. English grocers were known as “Peppers.” Even in 1823 the duty was two shillings and six pence per pound. The pepper alluded to by Pliny at his time in Rome must have been the product of Malabar, the nearest part of India to Europe, and must have cost in Malabar about 2d. per pound. It probably went to Europe by crossing the Indian and Arabian oceans with the easterly monsoon, sailing up the Red Sea, crossing the desert, and then going down the Nile, and making its way along the Mediterranean. This voyage in our time can be made in one month; at that time it probably took eighteen months. Transit and custom duties must have been paid over and over again and there must have been plenty of extortion. These facts will explain how pepper could not be sold in the Roman market under fifty-six times its prime cost. Immediately previous to the discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope we find that the price of pepper in the market of Europe had fallen to 6s. a pound, or 3s. 4d. less than in the time of Pliny. What probably contributed to this fall in price was the superior skill in navigation of the now converted Mohammedan Arabs, Turks, and Venetians, and the extension of their commerce in the Eastern Archipelago, which abounded in pepper. Black pepper was then for many years considered a very choice article and, like gold, silver, and precious stones, it was possessed only by persons of wealth, and was for generations found only on royal tables and those of the rich and noble who aspired to rank with the rulers of the realm. The British gave up the chief pepper ground of the world, which was the grand Island of Sumatra, to the Dutch for the small Dutch colony in Western Africa, which has involved both nations in little wars and has cost the Dutch more lives and money than it is worth; but prestige must also be sustained, and general after general returned with a shattered reputation from the “_Atyeh_,” as the Dutch called Acheen. When the East India Company first formed a settlement on the coast of Sumatra, it directed its attention to produce large growths of pepper. A stipulation was made with some of the native chiefs, binding them to compel their subjects each to cultivate a certain number of pepper vines, and the whole product was to be delivered to the company’s agents at a price far below the actual cost of cultivation and harvesting. The chiefs for a long time enforced obedience to this arbitrary measure and their success in this was supposed to be permanently assured by granting them an allowance proportionate to the quantity of pepper delivered.