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Head camphor is usually purchased from those who procure it at the rate of six Spanish dollars the pound, or eight dollars the catty, and sells in the China market at Canton for nine to twelve dollars the pound, or twelve to fifteen hundred dollars the pekul of a hundred catties or one hundred thirty-three pounds and a third, avoirdupois.
Nineteen thousand pekul* of tin are brought every year from -Palambam, or Sumatra, to the company's stores on -Onrust, which is sent in their ships to China.
It is exceedingly cheap; the pekul, which is equal to 124 lbs. English avoirdupois, costing from one dollar and three-quarters to two dollars and a half. The costume of both sexes, among the lower orders, consists of broad trousers and long upper garments, and is remarkable for its excessive filth.
It has been commonly supposed that the people of China or Japan prepare a factitious substance resembling native camphor, and impregnated with its virtues by the admixture of a small quantity of the genuine, which is sold to the Dutch factory for thirty or forty dollars the pekul, sent to Holland, and afterwards refined to the state in which we see it in our shops, where it is sold at eight to twelve shillings the pound.
The company send annually from hence to Europe 20,000 pekul of pepper, for which they pay on an average two stivers and an half per pound, and sell it in Europe for fourteen stivers per pound: they also export annually 200,000 pekul of coffee, at two stivers and an half per pound, which is sold in Holland at ten stivers per pound.
When of superior quality it sells for two thousand dollars, and I have been assured that some small choice samples have produced upwards of thirty dollars per catty.* It is estimated that the whole quantity annually brought down for sale on the western side of the island does not exceed fifty pekul.
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