Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/401

 ARTICLES OF EXPORTATION. 385 nations of Europe by precarious voyages and distant land journeys, — when it reached them partly through that channel and partly through the Portuguese by the new route, — when the nations of Europe com- peted for the commodity in the markets of the Mo- luccas and of Europe, — and, lastly, when the supre- macy of the Dutch was fully established and exclud- ed all competition. In the first period, if we imagine the Arabs, Malays, and Chinese, to have purchas- ed cloves in the Moluccas at their natural market rate, or 8 Spanish dollars, we may then trace them on their way to Europe. At Siinda Calapa, or the modern Batavia, one of the emporia at which the traders of the west obtained cloves, Linschoten informs us, that the commodity was to be obtain- ed at from 12^ Spanish dollars to 15^, or at an average of nearly 14 Spanish dollars, which would afford a reasonable profit between the Moluccas and Java in the rude state of commerce and navi- gation which prevailed. When the cloves, pur- chased at the emporia of the west, had reached as far as the Caspian, and thus made two sea voyages with a tedious, expensive, and dangerous land journey, they cost no more than 91jj77 Spanish dollars, or were enhanced 551 per cent. * Munn informs us, that the price of cloves, when they had got as far as Aleppo, was 140 /^J^^ Spanish dollars. VOL. III. B b
 * Edwards in Hakluyt's Collection, Vol. II. p. 291.