chap, xii CINNAMON MANUFACTURE 15
and
second only are removed, the latter being considered to be much the
best. As for the third, it is not touched, for if the knife cuts it the
tree dies. This is an art which the natives learn from their youth.
Cinnamon costs the Dutch more than is generally believed. For the King
of the island of Ceylon, otherwise called the King of Kandy,1
from the name of the capital town, being a sworn enemy of the Dutch
because they did not keep their promise with him, as I have elsewhere
related, sends troops every year with the intention of surprising them
when they go to collect the cinnamon. It is for this reason that the
Dutch are obliged to have 1500 or 1600 armed men to defend an equal
number while engaged in removing the bark of the cinnamon, and they are
obliged to feed these labourers for the remainder of the year in
addition to the expenditure on the garrisons in several parts of the
island. These great outlays enhance the price of the cinnamon ; it was
not so in the time of the Portuguese, who did not incur this
expenditure, but placed all to profit. The cinnamon tree bears a fruit
like an olive, but it is not eatable. The Portuguese used to gather
quantities of it, which they placed in cauldrons with water together
with the small points of the ends of the branches, and they boiled the
whole till the water was evaporated ; when cooled the upper portion of
what remained was like a paste of white wax, and at the bottom of the
cauldron there was camphor. Of this paste they made tapers, which they
used in the churches during the services at the annual festivals, and
as soon as the tapers were lighted the church was perfumed throughout
with an odour of cinnamon. They have often been sent to Lisbon for the
King's chapel. Formerly the Portuguese procured cinnamon from the
countries belonging to Rajas in the neighbourhood of Cochin.2
But since the Dutch have taken this town, and have become masters of
the coast of Ceylon, where the cinnamon grows, they find that what
comes from the neighbourhood of Cochin injures the trade, because,
being not so good as that of Ceylon, it was sold at a low price, and
they destroyed all the places where it grew ; thus there-is no cinnamon
now but that of Ceylon,
1 Or Candy, as in the original.
* Bastard cinnamon. (See vol. i, p. 187.]
