Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/440

 424 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF moist and undried state, he sits down and ties them up in bundles of one hundred, each rattan being doubled before being thus tied up. After drying, they are fit for the market without further prepara- tion. From this account of the small labour expend- ed in brinofinn; them to market, they can be sold at a very cheap rate. The Chinese junks obtain them in Borneo, at the low rate of five Spanish dollars per hundred bundles, or five cents for each hun- dred rattans, or thirty-seven for a penny. The natives always vend them by tale, but the resident European merchants and the Chinese by weight, counting by the picul. According to their quali- ty, and the relative state of supply and demand, the European resident merchants dispose of them at from 1;; to 21 dollars the picul. In China the price is usually about 3l dollars per picul, or 7^ per cent, above the average prime cost. In Ben- gal they are sold by tale, each bundle of a hundred rattans bringing about 20|d. Of materials of cordage, the only ones deserving of notice as articles of commerce are the gomiiti : the material resembling black horse-hair, qbtained from the Ai^en palm, as described in the book on Agriculture ; and uMte rope, or Manilla rope or cordage, manufactured, as stated already, from the epidermis of a species of musa or banana. The fibres of the first singular substance are stronger, more durable, but less pliant than those of the coir