Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/399

ARTICLES OF EXPORTATION. 3S3 no means the case. The principal labour is in the first culture of the ground, and the planting of the trees. In the culture of clove trees, there is in J5 years only the labour of preparing one acre of land, and of planting, rearing, and reaping 75 trees, which will in that time give a produce of S4',750 lbs. In that of pepper, there will be in the same time the labour of the preparation of 31 acres of land, and the rearing of 5805 vines and props. The produce will be 74^)014 lbs. The relative expence of growing these two pro- ducts, according to the system o£ Jbrced culture, will aflPord another means of determining their re- lative prices. In Amboyna, 50 clove trees are as- signed to the care of one man ; in Bencoolen 500 pepper vines. The produce of the labourer in the first case is 2181 lbs., and that of the second ^03 ;T lbs. This would seem to imply that the na- tural price of the clove, the cost of rearing it, is really smaller than that of pepper. We have a further means of judging of their re- lative cost by the prices given respectively for them by the monopolists. The real price paid to the cultivator for cloves is 3id. per lb. avoirdupois, or nearly eight Spanish dollars per picul of 133] lbs. In Bencoolen there is paid for pepper in all about 4tutt per picul. We may again compare the prices determined by these data with the natural market rate of the com-