Besides sandalwood and beeswax, the Chinese export honey and slaves to Batavia. The present price of honey is 18 cents per pound and slaves are sold for 25 and from to 40 rix dollars each. At Batavia, the price of each is nearly doubled.
The streams that come down from the mountains in the central part of the island are said to be auriferous in a considerable degree, but the natives are very jealous of the Europeans coming to the knowledge of their riches.
Some years ago, a party of 40 were sent out to search and collect gold by the Dutch, but these were all cut off by the natives, and the force of the Dutch never having been great on the island, the attempt has not been repeated.
There is at present only one Portuguese settlement in Timor, which the Dutch call Deeli, and I suppose the place in our charts called Doloo, on the north side of the island. The only white man there is the governor, who still continues to be appointed from Goa, and he pays 12,000 rupees for his appointment. The sandalwood and wax and honey, which the Portuguese and other vessels carry from Deeli to China under his monopoly, he fixes the price and suffers none to sell but himself. The Portuguese settlements of Laplas, Sesial, and some smaller ones are abandoned, but they are occasionally visited by their former masters as also by the Dutch and others. Their settlement of Larntock in the island of Flores is also left by itself, but visited occasionally as the former.
The Dutch settlement of Coepang is in a very low state at this time, owing to the late war. Their communications with Batavia are almost altogether cut off, and trade consequently destroyed. When the English took Coepang*, the Malays committed great depredations, burning the church, the government house, and some other principal buildings, the fort fired shot into the country and everything was confusion. The Dutch say that the Lt. governor who a half bred Malay was the instigator of all its mischief; however, it appears that several English were killed and in the end the place was abandoned.
They now seem to be repairing the mischief done to their town and plantations and making further inclosures.
I saw some pleasant villas upon the border of the river, a little settlement without the town and one which was superior to the rest stands upon the shore of the bay, a little to the westward. A spring of water takes its course through this by many small artificial channels, one leading to a fish pond, and then another into a bath and others watering the coconut and two other kinds of palm trees, which shade the villa and the numerous huts of the slaves attached to the plantation.
There is a square before the house shaded by trees of other kinds, from whence, through a portal, you come upon a beach of Coepang bar. The prevailing winds in summer are from the north-west, blow directly from the water up the great avenue to the house and can be admitted in any quantity by means of screens with which the verandas around the house are hung. The villa, with many of the other most agreeable places near the town, is the property of Zerfun van Este, widow of Adrian van Este Esq., who was governor here in 1789. I was not a little surprised to hear Mynheen Neiertzo say, that if the place were sold, it would probably go for 900 rix dollars or £180.
The upper strata of stone in the neighbourhood of Coepang is calcareous, but the basis seems to be of a different kind and is probably argillaceous.
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