When the result of an adventure is good, the traders look upon these presents and bad debts as necessary expenses incurred to conciliate the authorities of the place, without whose good-will they would be quite unable to prosecute the trade, and in this sort of commerce the Chinese are adepts, although no Europeans could manage it, or would carry it on while upon such a footing.
The ships most suited for the trade are small vessels, of about 200 tons, and their cargoes consist of an infinite variety of goods, each lot being generally of small value. The invoices of a cargo usually cover many pages of paper, and it is no easy matter to make them up without the assistance of intelligent Chinese, who have themselves been engaged in the traffic, and are well acquainted with the place and the people to be dealt with.
Some of the principal cotton manufactures sent to that market from Manilla consist of chintz prints, jaconets and mulls, white shirtings, cambrics, bandana, kambaya, and other descriptions of handkerchiefs; also, iron and hardware, glassware, coarse China earthenware, silk, cloths, copper work, &c.
Ships are in the habit of touching at some port of the Philippines, generally the Island of Panay, there to load and fill up with rice, sugar, tobacco, oil, and several other articles in small quantities. Rice is generally taken from its being always in demand by the Sooloomen, whose habits and feelings little suit them for its production, even when the nature of the country admits of its being grown. The Chinese usually take down a large quantity of a kind of cloth made in their own country, which habit has substituted for money, a piece of it of the usual size being always reckoned as a dollar.
The Sooloomen pay for their purchases in various articles, of which the edible birds’-nests are the most valuable. They are classified by the traders as of two sorts: white, and feathered; of which, the first sort is the most valuable, being generally worth about its weight in silver, or if very good, a little more; but should its colour tend to a red or darkish tinge, it is depreciated in value and is not worth so much.
The feathered sort, called so because the edible substance, of which the Chinamen make soup, is covered by the birds’ down and feathers, is very much lower in price than the white kind, being worth nearly two dollars a pound, or I believe it is generally roughly taken as being only about one-tenth part as valuable as the white.
Tortoise-shell they collect and sell at very high prices, the bulk of it going over to supply the China market with that article, a small quantity only being annually sent to Europe.
Bêche de mer, or tripang, is a sort of fish or sea-slug, found on the coral reefs, &c., of the neighbourhood, which, when cured and dried, is generally shaped something like a cucumber.
It is minced down into a sort of thick soup by the Chinese, who are extremely fond of it,—and indeed with some reason, as when well cooked by a Chinaman, who understands the culinary art, the tripang is a capital dish, and is rather a favourite among many of the Europeans at Manilla.
There are thirty-three different varieties enumerated by the Chinese traders and others skilled in its classification; for being brought to Manilla in large quantities for that purpose, for the China market, it has become a peculiar business of itself by the dealers in it, and varies in price, according to quality, from fifteen to thirty dollars per pecul of 140 lbs. English.