“No?” said I interrogatively, wondering what the harmless clove, which forms such an important unit in the “sugar and spice and all things nice” combination of culinary seasoning, could possibly have to do with the slave-trade of East Africa.
“No, sir,” he answered emphatically, with the air of a man who well knew what he was talking about and was certain of his facts, “it can’t be done. You see, at certain times of the year, about a month after the rainy season ends, in September, the cloves ripen, and it takes a good many hands to pick ’em all and gather them in. Did you ever see them growing, sir?”
“I can’t say I ever have,” I responded, “although, of course, I’ve read about them.”
“Well, sir, the cloves grow on tall, biggish-sized trees—”
“Dear me!” I said, interrupting him, “why, I thought they were the fruit of some little shrub like currants and capers.”
“Oh, no! They grow on trees, and some of a goodish height too. The cloves are the bud or blossom of the tree before the flower comes; and they must be picked early in time, or else they’re not fit for anything. Their name, ‘cloves’—I don’t know whether you are aware on it, sir—is from the little things resembling a small nail—clavo, as it’s called in the Spanish.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“That’s it, then,” he replied, proceeding with his explanation. “Now, of course you can see that the cloves must be got off the trees before the blossom ripens too much, but as the sun is so terribly hot and such a miasma comes up from the places where the trees grow only niggers can stand the exposure; and so it is that slave labour is wanted, for no whites could undertake the job, and the Arab merchants, you may be sure, wouldn’t do it themselves, in spite of the large demand for cloves in the European markets—that is, so long as they can get slaves to do it for ’em.”
“How do they gather them?” I asked.
“Why, they have queer-shaped ladders, just of the same sort as those little things they put in pots of garden musk to train the plants on, broad at one end and narrow at the other—something like a triangular grating—so that a lot of the niggers can stand on it at a time and pick away from the same tree, on which, perhaps, there are millions of buds to be taken off in less than no time. When they are all gathered they’re spread out in the sun and dried, and then sent off in bags to whoever wants ’em.”