people to the Company are very considerable; and
that which is exacted of them for liberty to wear their hair, is by no
means the least. They are paid monthly, and, to save the trouble and
charge of collecting them, a flag is hoisted upon the top of a house in
the middle of the town when a payment is due, and the Chinese have
experienced that it is their interest to repair thither with their money
without delay.

The money current here consists of ducats, worth a hundred and
thirty-two stivers; ducatoons, eighty stivers; imperial rix-dollars,
sixty; rupees of Batavia, thirty; schellings, six; double cheys, two
stivers and a half; and doits, one fourth of a stiver. Spanish dollars,
when we were here, were at five shillings and five-pence; and we were
told, that they were never lower than five shillings and four-pence,
even at the Company's warehouse. For English guineas we could never get
more than nineteen shillings upon an average; for though the Chinese
would give twenty shillings for some of the brightest, they would give
no more than seventeen shillings for those that were much worn.

It may perhaps be of some advantage to strangers to be told that there
are two kinds of coin here, of the same denomination, milled and
unmilled, and that the milled is of most value. A milled ducatoon is
worth eighty stivers; but an unmilled ducatoon is worth no more than
seventy-two. All accounts are kept in rix-dollars and stivers, which,
here at least, are mere nominal coins, like our pound sterling. The
rix-dollar is equal to forty-eight stivers, about four shillings and
six-pence English currency.[163]

[Footnote 163: The reader need scarcely be informed, that the statements
given in the text as to the respective value of the coin, are fitted to
the circumstances of the period at which the account of the voyage was
published. It was thought unnecessary to correct them to the present
times in this place.--E.]

SECTION XL.

_The Passage from Batavia to the Cape of Good Hope. Some Account of
Prince's Island and its Inhabitants. Our Arrival at the Cape of Good
Hope. Some Remarks on the Run from Java Head to that Place, and to Saint
Helena. The Return of the Ship to England_.[164]

[Footnote 164: The original contains some remarks on the language of
Prince's Island, and a comparative view of it with the Malay and
Javanese. These have been omitted, because another opportunity will
present of treating the subject more fully t