AMBOYNA, one of the Molucca or Spica Islands, in the eastern seas, is a mountainous place, abundantly furnished with trees and underwood. Sulphur is produced among the hills, some of which are encrusted with a copious efflorescence of that mineral. The earliest visit made to Amboyna by any Euro peans was in 1511, when the Portuguese traded to, and afterwards took possession of it.
They held it till driven out by the Dutch in the sixteenth century ; about which time the English East India Company also wished to have a share in the valuable spice trade of this and the other Molucca Islands. From that time to the present, except for a short period during the last war, the island has belonged to the Dutch. Tho main object of the different European powers, who endea voured to possess themselves of Amboyna, was to monopolize the trade in cloves, the cultivation of which spice forms the principal object of industry with the natives. With the
desire of keeping the cultivation of the clove tree completely within their power, the Dutch caused it to be extirpated from every island belonging to them except Amboyna, where they provided for a sufficient production of the spice, by obliging every native family to rear a certain number of clove-trees. In the prosecution of their plans the island was divided into 4,000 allotments, each one of which was expected to support 125 trees, and a law was passed in 1720 rendering it com pulsory upon the natives to make up the full complement. The number of trees upon the island accordingly amounted to 500,000, the average produce of which exceeded one mil lion of pounds of cloves annually.