wet season,
and as hot as a place you've heard of, sir, when the sou'-west monsoon
blows off the African shore. I was there when Sir Bartle Frere came to
interview the old sultan to try and make him sign a treaty to put down
the slave-trade; but it was all no go--the old sultan was too wide-awake
for that, and, indeed, treaty or no treaty, we can never quite stop the
dealing in slaves between the Arabs on the one hand and the clove-
growers on the other."

"No?" said I interrogatively, wondering what the harmless clove, which
forms such an important unit in the "sugar and spice and all things
nice" combination of culinary seasoning, could possibly have to do with
the slave-trade of East Africa.

"No, sir," he answered emphatically, with the air of a man who well knew
what he was talking about and was certain of his facts, "it can't be
done. You see, at certain times of the year, about a month after the
rainy season ends, in September, the cloves ripen, and it takes a good
many hands to pick 'em all and gather them in. Did you ever see them
growing, sir?"

"I can't say I ever have," I responded, "although, of course, I've read
about them."

"Well, sir, the cloves grow on tall, biggish-sized trees--"

"Dear me!" I said, interrupting him, "why, I thought they were the
fruit of some little shrub like currants and capers."

"Oh, no! They grow on trees, and some of a goodish height too. The
cloves are the bud or blossom of the tree before the flower comes; and
they must be picked early in time, or else they're not fit for anything.
Their name, `cloves'--I don't know whether you are aware on it, sir--is
from the little things resembling a small nail--_clavo_, as it's called
in the Spanish."

"I didn't know that," I said.

"That's it, then," he replied, proceeding with his explanation. "Now,
of course you can see that the cloves must be got off the trees before
the blossom ripens too much, but as the sun is so terribly hot and such
a miasma comes up from the places where the trees grow only niggers can
stand the exposure; and so it is that slave labour is wanted, for no
whites could undertake the job, and the Arab merchants, you may be sure,
wouldn't do it themselves, in spite of the large demand for cloves in
the European markets--that is, so long as they can get slaves to do it
for 'em."

"How do they gather them?" I asked.

"Why, they have queer-shaped ladders, just of the same sort as those
little thi