Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/76

 Ixvi. AX mTEODUCTORY object is easily supplied, for as the seeds [of spices] iare procured without difficulty, any quantity may speedily be cultivated " — (p. 426). Matra's example was followed by Sir George Young, who gave it as his opinion that ''the country is everywhere capable of producing all kinds of spice, likewise the fine oriental .cotton, indigo, cofiEee, tobacco, with every species of the sugar- cane; also tea, silk, and madder'^ — (p. 480). Considering the great sagacity displayed by both those men in their estimate of a country practically unknown to the world of their time, it is a whimsical fact that their predictions on the subject of the spice trade still remain to be realised. Of all the products mentioned by them, the cloves and nutmegs have hitherto made the smallest show ; every ounce of them consumed in the colony from the days of Phillip having been grown for us by our old iriends the Dutch — ^the great purveyors of spices to mankind. Digitized byCjOOQlC