Cloves are now exported in large amounts from Zanzibar and its neighboring island Pemba, twenty miles distant. They are cultivated there by all classes, from the Sultan to the humblest of his subjects. Zanzibar cloves, being very dry, do not lose much in weight by drying and may be stored for some time and will not mold, but the Pemba production arrives in a damp condition and must be sold or milled at once to save loss from shortage. The Zanzibar cloves are larger than the Pemba variety and have a reddish head by which they may be known, while the dry Pemba cloves, by reason of the greater amount of moisture they contain, have a darker color. The Zanzibar cloves, being well cultivated, are very fine, but the Pemba, having more rains, have an advantage over the Zanzibar in quantity, but they are lacking in quality. Zanzibar Island is fifty miles long by twenty miles wide, and alone produces 7,000,000 pounds of cloves annually, and Pemba a much larger quantity. Pemba is divided into two districts, Weti in the north and Chaki in the south. The two islands produce 90 per cent. of all the cloves raised in the world.
Whole cloves have a great affinity for water. Some exporters have taken advantage of the fact by attempting to place their sacks in a position aboard vessels where they may imbibe water and increase their weight, much to the detriment of the clove.
Cloves in their natural state lose from 50 to 60 per cent. in drying. One frasila of thirty-five pounds of freshly gathered cloves is equal to but half a frasila when dried. The difference in shortage between cloves at Zanzibar and on their arrival in Europe is about 8 per cent. Only about two-thirds of a clove garden is depended on for bearing, one-third being allowed for barren young trees. The tree in its native islands begins to bear when from four to five years old and is at its prime at twelve years; but in Amboina and other Molucca islands, Haruka, Saparua, and Naesalaut, it does not bear much until it is from ten to twelve years old, and it requires much more attention.
The tree yields but one crop each year, which, on an average, is about seven pounds. A good healthy orchard at maturity produces about 375 pounds to the acre, less one-third for young trees, or about 300 pounds. The yield is often fifteen to twenty pounds to a tree, and we have records of trees which bore as high as seventy-five pounds at the age of 150 years. The ordinary life of a tree is from twenty to thirty years, though it varies much in different localities. When the clove tree becomes old and worthless for bearing it will have a ragged appearance.
Cloves are shipped to native ports in hides and are sometimes exported in sacks made from split cocoanut leaves, containing 133⅓ pounds each, called “piculs,” also in twenty-two-pound packages called “kilos.” They are more often exported in double mats in bags called “frales,” of eighty to 100 pounds (called by the natives “mankunda”). These bags are preferred to gunny sacks, though there is more shortage, a fact which is strangely marked, since the mats, though double, admit a large amount of dampness.
CITY OF ZANZIBAR
VIEW OF ZANZIBAR HARBOR
The average annual consumption of cloves throughout the world has been estimated at 11,000,000 pounds. No cloves were exported from Singapore in the year 1904, but the city of Penang exported in that year $7,373.91 worth, and Colombo, Ceylon, exported 115 hundred weight of cloves and mace in the same year. A transverse section of the lower part of a clove shows a dark rhomboid zone, the tissue on either side of which is of a lighter hue, which is chiefly made up of about thirty fibro-vascular bundles, another stronger bundle traversing the center of the clove. The outer layer of this, beneath the epidermis and belonging to it, we find to be a debris of no apparent structure, consisting of numerous cells and fibro-vascular bundles within their spiral vessels, with deep shreds of brown cellular matter attached. There are also tissues bordering on the oil cells. These cells are frequently as many as 300 micro-millimeters in diameter.