ominally, treaties of alliance and defence were, negotiated.
Thence the fleet, after due possession had been taken of these new
domains, sailed partly to Bands and partly to two small but most
important islands of the Moluccas.

In that multitude of islands which make up the Eastern Archipelago there
were but five at that period where grew the clove--Ternate, Tydor,
Motiel, Makian, and Bacia.

Pepper and ginger, even nutmegs, cassia, and mace, were but vulgar drugs,
precious as they were already to the world and the world's commerce,
compared with this most magnificent spice.

It is wonderful to reflect upon the strange composition of man. The world
had lived in former ages very comfortably without cloves. But by the
beginning of the seventeenth century that odoriferous pistil had been the
cause of so many pitched battles and obstinate wars, of so much
vituperation, negotiation, and intriguing, that the world's destiny
seemed to have almost become dependent upon the growth of a particular
gillyflower. Out of its sweetness had grown such bitterness among great
nations as not torrents of blood could wash away. A commonplace condiment
enough it seems to us now, easily to be dispensed with, and not worth
purchasing at a thousand human lives or so the cargo, but it was once the
great prize to be struggled for by civilized nations. From that fervid
earth, warmed from within by volcanic heat, and basking ever beneath the
equatorial sun, arose vapours as deadly to human life as the fruits were
exciting and delicious to human senses. Yet the atmosphere of pestiferous
fragrance had attracted, rather than repelled. The poisonous delights of
the climate, added to the perpetual and various warfare for its
productions, spread a strange fascination around those fatal isles.

Especially Ternate and Tydor were objects of unending strife. Chinese,
Malays, Persians, Arabs, had struggled centuries long for their
possession; those races successively or simultaneously ruling these and
adjacent portions of the Archipelago. The great geographical discoveries
at the close of the fifteenth century had however changed the aspect of
India and of the world. The Portuguese adventurers found two rival
kings--in the two precious islands, and by ingeniously protecting one of
these potentates and poisoning the other, soon made themselves masters of
the field. The clove trade was now entirely in the hands of the strangers
from the antipodes. Goa becam