chap, xii CLOVES
13
field-fares
do during the vintage. As the nut is strong it intoxicates the birds
and causes them to fall dead upon the spot, and immediately the ants
which abound in the country eat off their feet. It is on this account
that it is commonly said that a Bird of Paradise with feet1 has
never been seen. This is, however, not precisely true, for I have seen
three or four with their feet intact, upon which the ants had not had
time to operate. A French merchant, named Contour, sent one which had
feet, from Aleppo, to King Louis XIII, who prized it much for its
beauty.
But notwithstanding all the Dutch can do to prevent it, cloves can be obtained at Macassar, in the Isle of Celebes,1 without
the spice passing through their hands, because the islanders buy in
secret from the captains and soldiers of the Dutch forts at the places
where the cloves grow, giving them in exchange rice and other
necessaries of life, without which, being miserably paid, they would be
unable to subsist. Whilst commerce was vigorously pushed by the
English, they acted as though their object was to destroy that of the
Dutch. Having bought a parcel of cloves at Macassar they sent them to
all the places where the Dutch were accustomed to deal, and selling
them at a cheap price, sometimes even at a loss, by this means they
ruined the clove trade of the Dutch. For it is an established custom in
India that the first who fixes the price' of any article of merchandise
constrains all others, by his example, to sell at the same rate during
the year. It is for this reason that the Dutch established a factory at
Macassar, where their officers raise the price of cloves as high as
they can when the King of the Island opens the sale. They make
considerable presents to the King in order to induce him to uphold the
price, which neither the English nor the Portuguese, in the miserable
state in which their affairs are to-day, are able to prevent.8
1
As is well known, the true origin of this fable about the apodas is,
that the natives who prepare the plumes of the Birds of Paradise for
decorative purposes remove the feet from the skins, and as the birds
were in early times only known by these dried and stitched-up skins,
the idea spread that they had no feet. Tavernier's explanation shows
the tenacity of the myth (Ency. Brit., iii. 978; Linschoten, i. 118; Pinkerton, Voyages, ix. 625).
* See the account of cloves in Linschoten, ii. 81 ff.
