This arbitrary practice was too keenly felt by the natives to be endured, and, the influence of the chiefs soon declining and the people becoming negligent in the cultivation, the annual supply fell off. The chiefs, unable longer to maintain their despotic practice, abandoned to the agents of the company the task of obliging the people to labor that others might reap. Now the rights of the people are more respected and the injustice of the methods formerly used are fully acknowledged; the cultivation of pepper in Sumatra, as well as elsewhere, is free. Perhaps the earliest writer to describe the extent of the cultivation of pepper was Linschoten. He speaks of its coming from Mala or Malabar, and his friend and commentator of pepper, Paludanus, enters into a long account of its medicinal virtues. “It warmeth the mawe,” he writes, “and consumeth the cold slymenes thereof to ease the payne in the mawe which proceedeth of rawnesse and winde, it is good to eat fyve pepper cornes everie morning. He that hath a bad or thick sight, let him use pepper cornes with annis fennel seed and cloves for there by the mystinesse of the eyes which darken the sight is cleared and driven away.” But in modern medicine it is very little used, being rarely prescribed except indirectly as an ingredient of some compound. Black pepper is the dried fruit of the _piper nigrum_, a perennial climbing shrub indigenous to the forests of _Travancore_, a native state in India, province of Madras, and of Malabar, a province of India, from which it has been introduced into the other countries mentioned. Two species of piper will be found under drugs, “Cubebs” and a third falls within the range of the articled drugs “_Kava-Kava_,” and _Narcotics_; and two others are dealt with under “_Narcotics_.” There remain then for description as spice, black pepper, white pepper, long pepper, and Ashantee pepper. In planting a new garden where no wild pepper vines are to be had, level land is selected which borders on a river or small stream without much sloping, but not so low as to be liable to any overflow from the stream, as the land must be kept well drained. Pepper is a hardy plant and will grow on almost any soil, but not on old, worn-out plantations or on poor sandy or clay soil, as more depends on the soil than on the cultivation. It should not be planted on hillsides because the earth will wash from the roots in time of rains. The best soil for pepper culture is a well-drained vegetable loam; swamp lands are very good in a hot climate with heavy rains.