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Updated: May 6, 2025
The workman could, therefore, in six days earn half the amount, viz., eight and a quarter reals at a rate of one and three-eighths reals per day. The day's pay at that time was half a real, and board a quarter of a real, making together three-quarters of a real. By daily pay. Half share. The workman therefore earned daily 0.75 r. or 1.375 r. Wages amounted to per picul 12. 6 r. or 8. 25 r.
This state of affairs occasioned the laying out of many new plantations, the produce of which, when it came on the market, after three years, was valued at $3.50 per picul, in consequence of the prices having returned to their normal condition; and even then it paid to take up an existing plantation, but not to lay out a new one.
It produces in one year two hundred piculs of wax, fifty piculs of tortoise-shell, ten piculs of best camphor, and as much inferior; ten piculs of birds'-nests, at ten dollars the catty; 1st camphor, twenty-five; rattans, one dollar per picul; tortoise-shell, one dollar the catty; wax, twenty the picul. Articles required are the same as at Borneo Proper.
The road connecting the two seas, laid out by an active alcalde in 1847, and maintained up to 1852, was however, at the date of my inquiry, in so bad a condition that a picul of abacá paid two reals freight for this short distance, in the dry season; and in the wet season it could not be forwarded for double the price.
Either a great wrath or a great sorrow overcame the boy; he skulked past, asked us to lie down on our shelves, where we had our beds, to give him room, and then set to work. In parting with the men after our safe arrival at Chung-king, we left with them about seven-eighths of the picul and were not at all regretful.
The text of the Article respecting opium is as follows: 'Opium will henceforth, pay thirty taels per picul import duty. The importer will sell it only at the port. It will be carried into the interior by Chinese only, and only as Chinese property; the Foreign trader will not be allowed to accompany it.
The plantations are worked either by the owner or by day-laborers, who, when the market prices are very low, take half share of the crop harvested by them. In these cases an industrious workman may obtain as much as one picul in a week. During my stay exceptionally low prices ruled sixteen and one-half reals per picul undelivered.
In 1871, when the culture system was in full operation, there were 39,000 bouws, or 70,000 acres, under sugar-cane, giving employment to 222,000 native families, and ninety-seven sugar-mills had been started. One-third of the produce was delivered to Government at the rate of eight florins per picul, and the remaining two-thirds were sold by the manufacturers in open market.
In 1865 the picul in Manila never cost less than $7 which two years previously was the maximum value; and it rose gradually, until $9.50 was asked for ordinary qualities.
Poling and rowing through a maze of junks, our little floating caravan, with the two magnates on board, and their picul of rice, their curry and their sugar, and slenderest outfits, bowled along under plain sail, the fore-deck packed with a motley team of somewhat dirty and ill-fed trackers, who whistled and halloed the peculiar hallo of the Upper Yangtze for more wind.
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