Being Desirous To Keep Up The Price Of Our Cloth, And Hearing
That The Dutch Had A Great Quantity, I
Had a conference with Brower, the
chief of their factory, proposing that we should mutually fix prices
upon such cloths
As we both had, and neither of us, in any respect, sell
below the prices agreed upon; for performance of which, I offered to
enter into mutual bonds. In the morning, he seemed to approve of this
proposal, but ere night he sent me word that he disliked it, alleging
that he had no authority from his masters to make any such agreement.
Next morning he shipped away a great store of cloth to different
islands, rating them at low prices, as at twenty, eighteen, and sixteen
dollars the mat, that he might the more speedily sell off his own, and
glut the market before ours came forwards.
Pepper, ungarbled, which cost 1 3/4 dollars at Bantam the sack, was
worth at our coming ten tayes the pecul, which is 100
cattea of Japan, or 130 pounds English. A taye is worth
five shillings sterling. A rial of eight, or Spanish dollar, is worth
there in ordinary payment only seven mas, or three shillings and
sixpence sterling, one mas being equal to a single rial. The pecul
of tin was worth thirty tayes; the pecul of elephants teeth
eighty tayes: Cast iron six tayes the pecul: Gunpowder twenty-three
tayes the pecul: Socotrine aloes the cattee, six tayes: Fowling-pieces
twenty tayes each:
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