The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 19 of 55 / 1620-1621 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century.

by Unknown

It will carry one hundred picos of quicksilver, which will gain seventy or eighty per cent.

It will carry five hundred picos of vermilion, which will gain as much as the quicksilver.

It will carry two or three [hundred?] picos of sugar, and the money will be gained once and a half over.

It will carry one or two thousand picos of China-wood, the money invested for which will be increased two or three times.

It will carry two thousand picos of brass bracelets, which cost five taes six maçes, and seven taes per pico delivered in Machan. The money is doubled. They are used in Bengala.

It will carry about two hundred picos of camphor, which goes to Portugal.

It carries a considerable quantity of earthenware of all sorts. The money is gained once and a half over.

It carries a great number of gilded beds, tables, and writing desks.

Much fine colored unwoven silk. It costs eighteen and nineteen maçes and two taes per cate. Some of the gilded beds are generally sold for three or four hundred cruzados. It carries many coverlets worked on frames; canopies, bed-curtains, and hangings; short cloaks of the same handiwork, made by the same Chinese; besides other trifles, and many gold chains exquisitely wrought.

The Portuguese pay duties at Malaca of seven and one-half per cent on the merchandise which they carry from China, without selling or unloading anything in that city.