hite saunders, of which the largest logs are accounted the best, and
which sells at Bantam for 20 dollars the pekul, at the season when the
junks are here. Wax likewise is brought from thence in large cakes,
worth at Bantam 18, 19, 20, and even 30 dollars the pekul, according to
quantity and demand. Great frauds are practised with this article, so
that it requires great attention in the purchaser, and the cakes ought
to be broken, to see that nothing be mixed with it. The commodities
carried there for sale are chopping knives, small bugles, porcelain,
coloured taffetas, but not blacks, Chinese _frying-pans_,[149] Chinese
bells, and thin silver plates beaten out quite flat, and thin like a
wafer, about the breadth of a hand. There is much profit made in this
trade, as the Chinese have sometimes given four for one to our men who
had adventured with them.

[Footnote 149: Perhaps, as stated in conjunction with bells, _gongs_ are
here meant, which are not unlike frying-pans.--E.]

_Banda_ is in the latitude of 5 deg. S. and affords great store of mace and
nutmegs, together with oil of two sorts. It has no king, being ruled by
a sabander, who unites with the sabanders of Nero, Lentore, Puloway,
Pulorin, and Labatacca, islands near adjoining. These islands were all
formerly under the dominion of the King of Ternate, but now govern
themselves. In these islands they have three harvests of mace and
nutmegs every year; in the months of July, October, and February; but
the gathering in July is the greatest, and is called the _arepootee_
monsoon. Their manner of dealing is this: A _small bahar_ is ten cattees
of mace, and 100 of nutmegs; a great bahar being 100 cattees of mace,
and 1000 of nutmegs. The cattee is five libs. 13-1/2[150] ounces
English, and the prices are variable. The commodities in request at
these islands are, Coromandel cloth, _cheremallay_, _sarrasses_,
chintzes or pintadoes of five colours, fine _ballachos_, black girdles,
_chellyes_, white calicos, red or stammel broad-cloths, gold in coin,
such as English rose-nobles and Dutch ducats and dollars. But gold is so
much preferred, that you may have as much for the value of 70 dollars
in gold as would cost 90 dollars in silver. Fine china basons without
rims are likewise in request, together with damasks of light gay
colours, taffetas, velvets, china-boxes, gilded counters, gold chains,
gilt silver cups, bright and damasked head-pieces, fire-arms, but not
many swor