their
rapid cultivation; everywhere gardens were laid out, studies promoted,
new varieties of the favorite flower sought for. In a short time the
fever became general; on every side there swarmed unknown tulips, of
strange forms, and wonderful shades or combinations of colors, full of
contrasts, caprices, and surprises. Prices rose in a marvelous way;
a new variegation, a new form, obtained in those blest leaves was an
event, a fortune. Thousands of persons gave themselves up to the study
with the fury of insanity; all over the country nothing was talked of
but petals; bulbs, colors, vases, seeds.

The mania grew to such a pass that all Europe was laughing at it.
Bulbs of the favorite tulips of the rarer varieties rose to fabulous
prices; some constituted a fortune; like a house, an orchard, or a
mill; one bulb was equivalent to a dowry for the daughter of a rich
family; for one bulb were given, in I know not what city, two carts
of grain, four carts of barley, four oxen, twelve sheep, two casks
of wine, four casks of beer, a thousand pounds of cheese, a complete
dress, and silver goblet. Another bulb of a tulip named "Semper
Augustus" was bought at the price of thirteen thousand florins. A bulb
of the "Admiral Enkhuysen" tulip cost two thousand dollars. One day
there were only two bulbs of the "Semper Augustus" left in Holland,
one at Amsterdam and the other at Haarlem, and for one of them there
were offered, and refused, four thousand six hundred florins, a
splendid coach, and a pair of gray horses with beautiful harness.
Another offered twelve acres of land, and he also was refused. On the
registers of Alkmaar it is recorded that in 1637 there were sold in
that city, at public auction, one hundred and twenty tulips for the
benefit of the orphanage, and that the sale produced one hundred and
eighty thousand francs.

Then they began to traffic in tulips, as in State bonds and shares.
They sold for enormous sums bulbs which they did not possess, engaging
to provide them for a certain day; and in this way a traffic was
carried on for a much larger number of tulips than the whole of
Holland could furnish. It is related that one Dutch town sold twenty
millions of francs' worth of tulips, and that an Amsterdam merchant
gained in this trade more than sixty-eight thousand florins in the
space of four months. These sold that which they had not, and those
that which they never could have; the market passed from hand to hand,