Cinnamon

One of my favorite treks in Seychelles is a 5 hour hike up and down Mar aux Cochon (the swamp of the pigs), a steep climb to one of the granite peaks on Mahè. The walk up is in a dense rainforest through palms, endemic trees and spice plants like vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. The reason the area is named after pigs is that back in 1800 Swiss missionaries worked in this area and introduced pigs and cows. But their main purpose was running a cinnamon distillery. At the height of the cinnamon industry there were 83 distilleries on the island. Today there are only a handful. Cinnamon is no longer as popular and the islands' folk became more interested in tourism after the airport was opened back in 1970s. But cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg are not endemic to Seychelles. And cinnamon in particular changed the islands completely as once it was introduced the climate suited the shrub and it took over the forests. It was introduced in 1772 by Pierre Poivre singlehandedly (quite literally as he lost one hand in a battle). He convinced the French Colony to finance his endeavor to introduce spiced to Seychelles in order to help break the Dutch monopoly on spices. Having undertaken a night raid on the Dutch farms on one of the islands near Mauritius he planted seedlings on a farm called Jardin du Roi in 1780. There is an interesting story behind this because a few years later having struggled with establishing the farm a French ship arrived in Seychelles unaware of Pierre presence and activity. As the ship knew about the hostility toward France it flew an English flag. The workers on the farm were given explicit instructions not to allow the English to get there hands on the spices and they therefore set fire to the farm only to find out later that the ship was in fact French! But Cinnamon had found its new home. And there is now renewed interest in this sweet smelling spice and we may see the establishment of new distilleries soon.