Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/342

 326 INTEUCOLONIAL COMMERCE. As a manufacturing people, the Japanese are in- ferior to their neighbours, the Chinese, although in some particular wares they excel all people. Their lacquered work is of inimitable beauty and perfection, and some of their wrought silks, par- ticularly their crapes, the most exquisite fabrics that can be conceived. Their porcelain is inferior to that of China, but though coarse, substantial and durable. That the manufactures of Japan should be more costly than those of China may perhaps be, in a great measure, ascribed to the high price of the raw materials in a country not fertile, and which can receive no supply from abroad. To describe all the foreign commodities which the Japanese, a rich, luxurious, and numerous people, inhabiting the same climate with ourselves, and having the same essential wants, would require, would perhaps embrace all that a manufacturing and commercial people could supply, from their own industry or that of their colonies. The sugar- cane is not cultivated in Japan, and sugar consti- tutes one of the most considerable articles of the cargos of the Dutch and Chinese. The Dutch sold their coarse sugar at near 20 Spanish dollars the picul of 125 Dutch lbs. probably about ten times the price paid for it. The higher ranks are principally clothed in silks ; the lower orders in cotton. The dress which covers the under part of the body of both ranks is usually made of a kind of