Spices and How to Know Them

by Walter M. Gibbs

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.

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.

The vine may be propagated either from the seed or by cuttings. When berries are selected for seed they are first soaked for three days, when the outer coat can be removed. The seed is then dried in the shade, after which it is sown by drills in nursery beds, which are made in the usual manner in good moist soil in a shady locality. Frequent watering will be necessary, if it be a dry time, until the plants have four leaves, when they will be ready for planting.

The land to be planted is to be cleared of underbrush. Sometimes large trees are burned by setting fire to their trunks. The tree will then decay and will be attacked by insects and will become a heap of rotten dust. This dust is washed by the rain around the roots of the vines, making a good fertilizer.

The land cleared is next well planted and hoed and is lined out 7 × 7 feet, and holes are dug two feet square and fifteen inches deep, which are filled with good soil or leaf mold if it can be secured. In filling these holes they should not be heaped, as depressions are better for the plant, but care should be taken that all that portion of the plant underground in the nursery should be buried in the garden.