This Increase Of Price
Made The Natives Very Desirous Of Furnishing Me, So That I Certainly Had
Procured A Full Lading In A Month, Had Not The Dutch Overawed The
Natives, Imprisoning Them, And Threatening To Put Them To Death, Keeping
Strict Guard On All The Coasts.
Most of these islands produce abundance
of cloves; and those that are inhabited of any note, yield the following
quantities, one year with another.
Ternate 1000 bahars, Machian 1090,
Tidore 900, Bachian 300, Moteer 600, Mean 50, Batta China 35; in all
3975 bahars, or 2,633,437 1/2 English pounds, being 1175 tons, twelve
cwts. three qrs. and nine and a half libs. Every third year is far
more fruitful than the two former, and is therefore termed the great
monsoon.
It is lamentable to see the destruction which has been brought upon
these islands by civil wars, which, as I learnt while there, began and
continued in the following manner: At the discovery of these islands by
the Portuguese, they found fierce war subsisting between the kings of
Ternate and Tidore, to which two all the other islands were either
subjected, or were confederated, with one or other of them. The
Portuguese, the better to establish themselves, took no part with
either, but politically kept friends with both, and fortified themselves
in the two principal islands of Ternate and Tidore, engrossing the whole
trade of cloves into their own hands. In this way they domineered till
the year 1605, when the Dutch dispossessed them by force, and took
possession for themselves.
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