Spanish dollars were rated at 5s. 4d. according to the Dutch company's regulations, but their currency at Coepang was sixty stivers or pence; whence it arose that to a stranger receiving dollars, they would be reckoned at 5s. 4d. each, but if he paid them it was at 5s. Besides dollars, the current coins were ducatoons, rupees, and doits, with some few gold rupees of Batavia; but the money accounts were usually kept in rix dollars, an imaginary coin of 4s.
I made many inquiries concerning the Malay trepang fishers, whom we had met at the entrance of the Gulph of Carpentaria, and learned the following particulars. The natives of Macassar had been long accustomed to fish for the trepang amongst the islands in the vicinity of Java, and upon a dry shoal lying to the south of Rottee; but about twenty years before, one of their prows was driven by the north-west monsoon to the coast of New Holland, and finding the trepang to be abundant, they afterwards returned; and had continued to fish there since that time. The governor was of opinion, that the Chinese did not meet them at Timor-laoet, but at Macassar itself, where they are accustomed to trade for birds nests, trepang, sharks fins, etc.; and it therefore seems probable that the prows rendezvous only at Timor-laoet, on quitting Carpentaria, and then return in a fleet, with their cargoes.
The value of the common trepang at Canton, was said to be forty dollars the picol, and for the best, or black kind, sixty; which agrees with what I had been told in Malay Road, allowing to the Chinese the usual profit of cent. per cent. from Macassar to their own country.
About ten days before our arrival, a homeward-bound ship from India had touched at Coepang; and had we been so fortunate as to meet with her, it might have enabled me to put in execution the plan I had formed of sending an officer to England, and returning to the examination of the north and north-west coasts of Terra Australis. This plan was now frustrated; and the sole opportunity of writing to Europe was by captain Johnson, who expected to sail for Batavia in May, and promised to forward our letters from thence. I committed to his care an account of our examinations and discoveries upon the East and North Coasts, for the Admiralty; with the report of the master and carpenter upon the state of the ship, and the information I had obtained of the trepang fishery.
Our supplies for the ship, procured at Coepang, were rice, arrack, sugar, and the palm syrup called gulah; with fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables during our stay, and for ten days afterwards. The animal food consisted of young karabow, a species of buffalo, and of small pigs and kids; the karabow being charged at eight, the pigs at five, and kids at two rix dollars each. Vegetables were dear and not good, and for many of the fruits we were too early in the season; but cocoa-nuts, oranges, limes, bananas, and shaddocks were tolerably plentiful. Tea, sugar candy, and some other articles for our messes, were purchased at the little shops kept by the Chinese-Malays; and poultry was obtained along-side by barter.
To judge from the appearance of those who had resided any length of time at Coepang, the climate is not good; for even in comparison with us, who had suffered considerably, they were sickly looking people. Yet they did not themselves consider the colony as unhealthy, probably from making their comparison with Batavia; but they spoke of Diely, the Portuguese settlement, as very bad in this respect. Captain Baudin had lost twelve men from dysentery, during his stay at Coepang, and I found a monument which he had erected to his principal gardener; but it was even then beginning to decay.
The latitude of our anchorage, three-fifths of a mile to the north of Fort Concordia, was 10° 8' 2" from seven meridian altitudes of the sun; but these being all taken to the north, I consider it to be more correctly, 10° 8½' S.
Longitude of the anchorage and fort, from fifty four sets of lunar distances, of which the particulars are given in Table VII. of the Appendix No. I., 123° 35' 46" E.
Lieutenant Flinders took altitudes from the sea horizon, between April 1 p.m. and 8 a.m., for the rates of the time keepers; the mean of which, with the errors from mean Greenwich time at noon there on the last day of observation, were as under:
Earnshaw's No. 543, slow 2h 57' 14.56", and losing 16.73", per day, Earnshaw's No. 520, fast 1h 57' 19.28", and losing 33.99", per day;