Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/434

 418 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF are objects either of domestic and foreign commerce, or both. The principal are camphor, benzoin, lignum aloes, dragon's-blood, sassafras, sapan wood, and morinda. The camphor of Sumatra and Bor- neo is divided in commerce into three sortSy ac- cording to quality, the relative values of which to each other may be estimated in the proportions of 25, 14, and 4. The price of this article depends upon the factitious value which the Chinese attach to it, and to its limited production in nature. A pound avoirdupois of the best kind usually sells in China at the exorbitant price of about 18^^^^- Spa- nish dollars, or L. 4, 4s. 4^d., while the camphor of Japan, which does not apparently differ from it, and is equally esteemed every where else, sells for the 78th part of this amount, or costs no more than Is. Id. per pound. The best camphor is purchased at Barus, in Sumatra, always the empo- rium of the commodity, and which strangers usu- ally affix to its name, at about 8 Spanish dollars per cattiy or 27s. per pound, which, it is remark- able enough, is nearly the price assigned to it by Beaulieu in the first French voyage to the Archi- pelago two centuries back. Benzoin^ or frankincense, called in commercial language Benjamin, is a more general article of commerce than camphor, though its production be confined to the same islands. Benzoin is divid- ed in commerce, like camphor, into three .sor/5, ac-