s twenty to twenty-five cents commission is
charged; this includes the interest of money advanced, which is never
charged. A gambier and pepper plantation is valued or estimated at
about 400 dollars on an average. The following is supposed to be a
correct estimate, on an average, of the yearly expenditure and returns
of a gambier and pepper plantation of 500 fathoms square, viz:--

EXPENDITURE.
drs. c. men. drs. c.
Eight men at 31/2 dollars and 7 Java rupees per
month, wages for headman and labourers
respectively 22.70 12 272.40
Five piculs of rice, including commission, say 6.50 12 81.60
Fish, &c. 5 12 60.0
Boat or cart hire to carry rice and produce 13/4 12 21.0
------
435.0

PRODUCE.

170 piculs of gambier, valued at l dollar 45 cents
per picul, less 15 cents commission chargeable,
nett 221.30 -- ---
70 piculs of pepper, at 41/2 dollars, less 40 cents
per picul commission, nett 287.0 -- 508.0

Yearly profit, 73 dollars, or about L15.

Several gambier and pepper plantations have been abandoned in
Singapore, partly from the ground being impoverished, but more
particularly from the exhaustion of the forest adjacent to their
estates. The exhaustion of the trees by yearly consumption deprives
the planters of the necessary fire wood which is used for the boiling
down of the gambier. A gambier plantation gets exhausted in fifteen
years, either from the want of firewood or the land getting
impoverished.

There are about 200 plantations at Johore, and the produce of gambier
for the season of 1851 was calculated at 30,000 piculs.

This shrub was, at one period, cultivated with success at Pinang and
other places to the eastward, but as Java was the principal market for
the produce, and the Dutch had levied a duty of twelve Java rupees per
picul on it, the cultivation at the former island did not repay its
cost, and it was accordingly abandoned. Prices have been lately
advancing, and the Chinese are talking of trying it again. The plant