Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/457

 ARTICLES OF EXPORTATION. 441 sary food among a sensual people, who seek them under the imagination that they are powerful to- nics. A picul of shark's fins usually sells in China as high as 32 Spanish dollars, or at L. 6, Is. per cwt. which high price makes it evident, that they are no more than articles of luxury for the use of the rich. In the market of Macassar the ordinary price is about 15 Spanish dollars per picul, or L. 2, l6s. Sjd per cwt. Tripang swala^ or sea- slug, (holothurion,) is a much more important article of commerce than the two just mentioned, and constitutes, in quantity and value, the most considerable article of the exports of the Indian islands to China, unless, perhaps, we except pep- per. There are fisheries of tripang in every coun- try of the Archipelago, from Sumatra to New Guinea. The fish being found chiefly on coral reefs, and never on flat muddy shores, the most consider- able fisheries are consequently to the eastward from Celebes to New Guinea and Australasia, where the formation of the land is most favourable. The most productive are the fisheries among the Aroe islands and those in the Gulf of the Car- pentaria, and generally on all the north-west coast of New Holland, called, by the Bugis fishermen, MarejCy and by the Chinese, Lam-hai. The tripang is an unseemly looking substance, of a dirty brown colour, hard, rigid, scarcely pos- sessing any power of locomotion, nor appearance