Nutmeg Plantations

Nutmeg Plantations in the The Banda Islands

"A large part of the nutmegs in the world, and the best in the world, have been produced commercially in the Banda Islands since the early sixteenth century. I discovered that the natural beauty of the plantations which are carefully cultivated forests, the solid dignity of four centuries of building and planting by nutmegnates with the means to create surroundings both comfortable and elegant, and the leisure with which all activity, from picking the ripe seed to drinking Bols at the club, is carried on, all combine to produce an atmosphere of peculiar and concentrated charm. Since the sixteenth century the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and for a time the English, have farmed the rich volcanic soil for the one indigenous product it produces better than any other spot in the world.

Galleons wallowed and clippers sped across 15,000 miles of ocean with countless tons of the precious nuts, completing the process of transmuting the belchings of the primeval crater of which Gunung Api is but a tiny grandchild into substantial fortunes. Most of the buildings on the island are made of stone, and this largely marble brought from Europe on return trips of the nutmeg ships. With this marble, they laid the floor of the church, from time to time raising a slab and interring one or another deceased citizen beneath, as many centuries-old epitaphs testify. One proprietor even imported from the Paris Exposition of 1900 an entire house of pink granite, complete with wrought iron balconies. Still another, homesick for the night sounds of his native lowlands, sent for a company of frogs, whose descendants still entertain the Bandanese with their song.

The little nuts were once more precious than they are now; control of the islands, once won, had to be maintained by force of arms. To control the market, the Dutch for years prohibited the transplantation of the nutmeg tree, even going to the length of dipping the nut sold whole in lime to prevent it from sprouting roots....

Because nutmeg tees insist on shade, the plantations are forests of great Canary trees. Not more than 60' high, these form a protective roof over the little nut trees which live gratefully under them like lambs under their mothers. There is no underbrush, and scarcely a leaf is allowed to lie on the gravel paths that wind through the woods....

A loincloth-clad Malayan walks slowly about, his practiced eye cocked upward for a fruit of just the right shade of yellow for plucking. He fingers the foliage with a little wicker trap on the end of a bamboo pole (he followed an expert picker for six months to learn how to judge and pick the fruit), gives a little twist, lowers the trap, throws away the split outer flesh, and pops the glistening mahogany nut, covered with a tracery of brilliant scarlet mace, into a basket hung from his waist. Because the nutmeg ripens at all times of the year, this unhurried harvesting never ends, bringing in a steady flow of guilders from the consumers of apple pies and eggnogs." [pp. 240-242]