districts they are obliged to
pass. Upon the proposal of striking out any new road the question always
asked by these intermediate people is, apa ontong kami, what is to be our
advantage?

PRICE.

When brought to our settlements it was formerly purchased at the rate of
eighteen Spanish dollars the tail, or about three pounds five shillings
the ounce, but in later times it has risen to twenty-one dollars, or to
three pounds eighteen shillings the ounce. Upon exportation to Europe
therefore it scarcely affords a profit to the original buyer, and others
who employ it as a remittance incur a loss when insurance and other
incidental charges are deducted. A duty of five per cent which it had
been customary to charge at the East India-house was, about twenty years
ago, most liberally remitted by the Company upon a representation made by
me to the Directors of the hardship sustained in this respect by its
servants at Fort Marlborough, and the public benefit that would accrue
from giving encouragement to the importation of bullion. The long
continuance of war and peculiar risk of Indian navigation resulting from
it may probably have operated to counteract these good effects.

It has generally been thought surprising that the European Companies who
have so long had establishments in Sumatra should not have considered it
an object to work these mines upon a regular system, with proper
machinery, and under competent inspection; but the attempt has in fact
been made, and experience and calculation may have taught them that it is
not a scheme likely to be attended with success, owing among other causes
to the dearness of labour, and the necessity it would occasion for
keeping up a force in distant parts of the country for the protection of
the persons engaged and the property collected. Europeans cannot be
employed upon such work in that climate, and the natives are unfit for
(nor would they submit to) the laborious exertion required to render the
undertaking profitable. A detailed and in many respects interesting
account of the working a gold mine at Sileda, with a plate representing a
section of the mine, is given by Elias Hesse,* who in the year 1682
accompanied the Bergh-Hoofdman, Benj. Olitzsch, and a party of miners
from Saxony, sent out by the Dutch East India Company for that purpose.
The superintendent, with most of his people, lost their lives, and the
undertaking failed. It is said at Padang that the metal proved to be