nce of hard
cheese, is much esteemed by the Malays for mixing with the preparation
of betel, which they are in the habit of chewing; and considerable
quantities have lately been imported to this country, where it is used
for dyeing colors, and for tanning leather. The demand for gambier
here is on the increase; and when better known to our chemists, it
will probably be found applicable to many other purposes than those to
which it is at present applied.

There were, in 1850, 400 gambier and pepper plantations on the island
of Singapore; each measures or occupies on an average an area of 500
fathoms square, and employs eight to ten hands to cultivate and
manufacture the gambier and pepper. There are some pepper plantations
in addition, and they have been found to answer very well without any
gambier being cultivated with them. Gambier cultivation is generally a
losing undertaking, but it is adopted to obtain the refuse of the
leaves for manuring the pepper vines, and also to employ the people in
the plantations; it besides affords the proprietors the means of
getting monthly sums to carry on the cultivation of pepper, which
affords two crops yearly. There were formerly 600 plantations in
Singapore, but the reason already assigned, and the formation of spice
plantations contiguous have caused the abandonment of all those near
the town. Each plantation must have an equal extent of forest land to
that cultivated with gambier and pepper, to enable the manufacture of
the gambier being carried on, and each gambier plantation, of 500
fathoms square, contains about 3,500 pepper vines, which yield on an
average two catties per vine, or 70 piculs of pepper, and about 170
piculs of gambier annually;--a good plantation will, however, yield
sometimes as much as 120 piculs of pepper, and 200 piculs of gambier,
and a bad one as little as 40 to 50 piculs of pepper, and 60 to 80
piculs of gambier. Were it not for the enormous commission charged by
the agents of these plantations, from whom the cultivators get all the
advances, it would prove a profitable cultivation. The rates of
commission charged generally are as follows:--Per picul of gambier,
fifteen to twenty-five cents; per picul of pepper, thirty to forty
cents; and if the price of the former is below one-and-a-half dollars,
and the latter below three-and-a-half dollars per picul, a small
reduction is made in the rates of commission. On every picul of rice
supplied to the planter