Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/400

 384 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF modity before violence or impolicy interfered with it. The companions of Magellan, in 1521, purchased cloves at the Moluccas at the following rates by bar- ter : For ten yards of good scarlet broad cloth they received a bahar of cloves weighing 594^ lbs, avoir- dupois ; and for fifteen yards of middling cloth the same quantity. If we take the value of the finest broad cloth at 24s. per yard, * we shall have the price of the cloves at nearly 12 Spanish dollars per picul. In 1599, the Dutch, in their first voyage, obtained their cloves in the Moluccas at the rate of lOj^ Spanish dollars, which proba- bly included some charges and duties, for, in the following year, regular contracts were entered in- to as low as ^f^ Spanish dollars. The price paid for pepper at this time in the markets of the west- ern part of the Archipelago was -6 Spanish dollars. From all these data, we may fairly conclude that the natural price of growing cloves cannot, at all events, be more than 50 per cent, higher than that of growing pepper, — that that price may be about 6 Spanish dollars, and would, in a free state of the market, be to the exporter not more than 8 Spa- nish dollars. The clove trade is naturally divided into the three following periods, — when it was conducted by the natives through many steps, and reached the distant Wealth of Nation Sf Baok I. chap. ii.