In These Fortified Stations In Machian, When I Was There, The
Dutch Had 120 European Soldiers; Of Whom Eighty Were At Tafasoa,
Thirty At Nofakia, And Ten At Tabalola.
The isle of Machian is the
richest in cloves of all the Molucca islands; and, according to report,
yields 1800 bahars in the great monsoon.
The Dutch have one large fort
in the island of Bachian, and four redoubts in the isle of Moteer. The
civil wars have so wasted the population of these islands, that vast
quantities of cloves perish yearly for want of hands to gather them;
neither is there any likelihood of peace till one party or the other be
utterly extirpated.
Leaving them to their wars, I now return to our traffic, and shall shew
how we traded with the natives, which was mostly by exchanging or
bartering the cotton cloths of Cambaya and Coromandel for cloves. The
sorts in request and the prices we obtained being as follows:
Candakeens of Baroach six cattees of cloves; candakeens of Papang,
which are flat, three cattees; Selas, or small bastas, seven and
eight cattees; Patta chere Malayo sixteen cattees; five cassas
twelve cattees; coarse of that kind eight cattees; red Batellias, or
Tancoulas, forty-four and forty-eight cattees; Sarassas chere Malayo
forty-eight and fifty cattees; Sarampouri thirty cattees; Chelles,
Tapsiels, and Matafons, twenty and twenty-four cattees; white
Cassas, or Tancoulos, forty and forty-four cattees; the finest
Donjerijus twelve, and coarser eight and ten cattees; Pouti Castella
ten cattees; the finest Ballachios thirty cattees; Pata chere Malayo
of two fathoms eight and ten cattees; great Potas, or long four
fathoms, sixteen cattees; white Parcallas twelve cattees; Salalos
Ytam twelve and fourteen cattees; Turias and Tape Turias one and
two cattees; Patola of two fathoms, fifty and sixty cattees; those of
four fathoms and of one fathom at proportional prices; for twenty-eight
pounds of rice, a dollar; Sago, which is a root of which the natives
make their bread, is sold in bunches, and was worth a quarter of a
dollar the bunch; velvets, sattins, taffetics, and other silk goods of
China were much in request.
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