516 DESCRIPTION OF a considerable quantity of British stationary ware. At present, the greatest quantity of the paper con- sumed in the Indian Islands is Chinese ; but, as the vast superiority of that of British manufacture is well known among the natives, it would soon supplant the imperfect manufacture of China, if it could be imported on terms of equality. * Raw and wrought silks have been articles of demand in the markets of the Archipelago in every age of their foreign trade. China, and not Eu- rope, has supplied the consumption of the islanders
- It may amuse the reader to see the sketch of an invest-
ment of European goods, proposed by a most judicious trader, upwards of a century ago. The writer is giving instructions for carrying on the trade at the port of Banjarmassin in Borneo. " As to an investment outward," says he, " a small matter for a private trader may turn out to account; viz. iron bars, small steel bars, small looking-glasses, hangers with buckhorn handles, sheet lead, beautiful callimancoes, knives without forks, proper mixture of cutlery ware ; the smallest sort of spike nails, twenty-penny nails, small grapplings of about forty pounds weight, iand small guns, from one to two hundred ■weight, without carriages ; red leather hoofs, spectacles, pro- per sortment of clock-work, small arms, brass mounting bell- mouth-iron blunderbusses, ordinary horse pistols, gunpowder, a few scarlet worsted stockings " &c. — Beeckman's Voyage to Borneoy p. 151. — This will appear no trifling list, if we ad- vert to the limited market of Banjarmassin, and to the imper- fection and costliness of the European manufactures of the age;
