To the West India planters, which is
not likely to be interrupted, until the Hadj is regularly re-
established, the principal traffic of which was in coffee.
The next chief article of exportation is sponges; they are procured on
the sea shore; but the best are found at a little depth in
[p.168]the sea. The demand for them during the last two years has been
very trifling; but I was told that fifty bales of twelve thousand
sponges each might be yearly furnished; their price is from twenty-five
to forty piastres per thousand. Soap is exported to Tarsous, for
Anatolia and the Greek islands, as well as alkali for its manufacture,
which is procured in the eastern desert. It is a curious fact, that soap
should also be imported into Tripoli from Candia; the reason is that the
Cretan soap contains very little alkali; here one-fourth of its weight
of alkali is added to it, and in this state it is sold to advantage. The
other exports are about one hundred or one hundred and twenty quintals
of galls from the Anzeyry mountains: of yellow wax, from Libanus, about
one hundred and twenty quintals, at about one hundred and fifty piastres
per quintal; of Rubia tinctorum [Arabic], which grows in the plains of
Homs and Hamah, about fourteen hundred quintals, at from twenty to
twenty-four piastres per quintal; of scammony, very little; of tobacco,
a few quintals, which are sent to Egypt.
