The method of curing the trepang is thus described by Captain Flinders: "They get the trepang by diving, in from three to eight fathoms water; and where it is abundant, a man will bring up eight or ten at a time. The mode of preserving it is this: the animal is split down on one side, boiled, and pressed with a weight of stones; then stretched open by slips of bamboo, dried in the sun, and afterwards in smoke, when it is fit to be put away in bags, but requires frequent exposure to the sun. A thousand trepang make a picol, of about 125 Dutch pounds; and 100 picols are a cargo for a proa. It is carried to Timor and sold to the Chinese, who meet them there; and when all the proas are assembled, the fleet returns to Macassar. By Timor, seemed to be meant Timor-laoet; for when I inquired concerning the English, Dutch, and Portuguese there, Pobasso (the rajah in command) knew nothing of them: he had heard of Coepang, a Dutch settlement, but said it was upon another island.
"There are two kinds of trepang. The black, called baatoo, is sold to the Chinese for forty dollars the picol; the white, or gray, called koro, is worth no more than twenty. The baatoo seems to be what we found upon the coral reefs near the Northumberland Islands; and were a colony established in Broad Sound or Shoalwater Bay it might perhaps derive considerable advantage from the trepang. In the Gulf of Carpentaria we did not observe any other than the gray slug."*
(*Footnote. Flinders volume 2 page 231.)
After having fished along the coast to the eastward until the westerly monsoon breaks up, they return, and by the last day of May each detached fleet leaves the coast without waiting to collect into one body. On their return they steer North-West, which brings them to some part of Timor, from whence they easily retrace their steps to Macassar, where the Chinese traders meet them and purchase their cargoes. At this time (1818) the value of the trepang was from forty to fifty dollars a picol;* so that if each vessel returns with 100 picols of trepang, her cargo will be worth 5000 dollars. Besides trepang, they trade in sharks' fins and birds' nests, the latter being worth about 3000 dollars the picol.
(*Footnote. The value of the trepang in 1822 was much less; the price had fallen to twenty-five dollars the picol.)
Dramah informed me that there are several rivers upon the coast, but that in procuring water from them they are generally attacked by the Maregas, whom they describe as treacherous and hostile, and by whom they are frequently defeated; for the Indians attack them only when they are unprepared. Their small canoes are frequently stolen from them, which accounts for the one we captured from the natives of Goulburn Island.
A perpetual warfare exists between them, so that it would be a difficult matter for us to procure a friendly communication with a people who cannot, of course, discriminate between us and the Malays. I regretted to hear this, for our force was so small that I feared we should, in our future visits to the coast, be frequently attacked, and perhaps be under the necessity of convincing them of the destructive power of our weapons, which they must first experience before they can dread their fatal effects.
During our stay at Coepang the thermometer ranged between 75 and 91 degrees. The latitude of the flag-staff was observed by several observations to be 10 degrees 9 minutes 40 seconds. No observations were taken for the longitude, on account of my being confined to my bed with an attack of ague, the effects of which remained upon me for some time afterwards; but the result of those made by Captain Flinders and Commodore Baudin were so satisfactory that I had no hesitation in taking the mean of the two, 123 degrees 35 minutes 46 seconds, for the correction of my chronometers, and for the purpose of comparing with the longitudes I had assigned to several parts of the coast that we had just left.
Before we sailed from Coepang the departure of a vessel for Batavia furnished me with the opportunity of acquainting the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty of my progress; and the letter fortunately arrived in time to contradict a report that had reached England of our "having been wrecked on the South Coast at Cape Northumberland, and that all hands had perished." This report could never be satisfactorily traced to its author, but it was supposed to have been spread by the man who commanded the Mermaid before she was purchased by the government, in revenge for his having lost his employment.
On the 13th we completed everything, and embarked our stock.