"Provost set out in May 1769 for the Spice Islands.. ..Poivre had been a tireless collector of intelligence on the islands, and his sources informed him of the discovery of a small, uninhabited island northwest of Ternate called Miao, where spices grew in abundance and the Dutch were not especially vigilant as to its security.."

Jefferson now turned his attention from the commercial success of his southern countrymen to their health. In the summer of 1787 he began to wonder whether the culture of dry rice might "enable us to get rid of those ponds of stagnant water so fatal to human health and life." He had been reading the Voyages d'un Philosophe by Pierre Poivre, a man who had traveled the Far East as a missionary - first for the Catholic faith and then for French colonial agriculture. During an adventurous life, in which he was captured three times by the British, Poivre introduced the nutmeg, clove, and other Asian plants to the colonies of Isle de France and Bourbon (today Mauritius and Reunion). To break the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade, he too resorted to smuggling, and even to night raids. But it was Poivre's description of the mountain rice of Vietnam, a country ruled by philosopher-princes, that particularly caught Jefferson's attention.