o
are by much the finest and largest shells of any hitherto known in
commerce, being superior to those coming from the Persian Gulf.

Pearls are also brought from Sooloo, but they are seldom of any great
size or value.

Gold is brought to Manilla from the same place, both in dust and in
small bars, but not in any great quantity.

The ships engaged in this trade are generally absent about six months
from Manilla, which they leave in March or April, and return to, after
coasting about and disposing of all their cargoes, in September or
October; no new voyages being undertaken by them until the following
year.

During June and July, the most active trade is said to be carried on,
as the number of traders annually frequenting the island from those
in the neighbourhood, is much greater than at other times.

Besides the trade with Sooloo, a ship is absent nearly every year
to Ternate, and other places of the Moluccas, where they usually
manage to get their goods ashore, without paying the heavy duties
which the Dutch have imposed upon them. The months of December or
January being the usual time for starting for the Moluccas, these
traders generally begin the busy season at Manilla by the purchase of
grey shirtings and domestics, by adding which to goods very similar
to those suited for Sooloo, they are enabled to have two strings to
their bow, should the prices in the Moluccas be low; as they can,
in that case, stand over to Sooloo in June, when they are usually
able to dispose of their investments.

CHAPTER XXX.

The insolence of the Sooloo men has at various times drawn down on
them the wrath of the Spanish authorities, who, in 1848, and also
shortly after I left Manilla, towards the end of 1850, were making
arrangements for punishing them, as they afterwards did, with some
severity, about the beginning of this year.

The Datos, and their families, are like the old Danes, or Norsemen,
born to be seamen; and the barbarous state of their native country
preventing the establishment of a mercantile marine, their energies
have marked out a scheme of warlike adventure on the sea, to succeed
in which their natural quickness and duplicity of character eminently
qualify them.

A young Sooloo chief, whose ambitious or restless temper will not
permit him to remain an idle man at home, where his passions for
cruelty and voluptuous excess could scarcely fail to ruin him in
a few years--surrounded as he is there by s