emp, to France, Spain, and Madeira
for wine and lead, to the French West Indies for molasses to be turned
into rum, to New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond for flour, provisions,
and tobacco. These shipments were assembled in the warehouses on Derby
Wharf and paid for the teas, coffees, pepper, muslin, silks, and ivory
which the ships from the Far East were fetching home. In fourteen years
the Derby ships made one hundred and twenty-five voyages to Europe and
far eastern ports and out of the thirty-five vessels engaged only one
was lost at sea.

It was in 1785 when the Grand Turk, on a second voyage, brought back
a cargo of silks, teas, and nankeens from Batavia and China, that "The
Independent Chronicle" of London, unconsciously humorous, was moved to
affirm that "the Americans have given up all thought of a China trade
which can never be carried on to advantage without some settlement in
the East Indies."

As soon as these new sea-trails had been furrowed by the keels of Elias
Hasket Derby, other Salem merchants were quick to follow in a rivalry
which left no sea unexplored for virgin markets and which ransacked
every nook and corner of barbarism which had a shore. Vessels slipped
their cables and sailed away by night for some secret destination with
whose savage potentate trade relations had been established. It might
be Captain Jonathan Carnes who, while at the port of Bencoolen in
1793, heard that pepper grew wild on the northern coast of Sumatra. He
whispered the word to the Salem owner, who sent him back in the schooner
Rajah with only four guns and ten men. Eighteen months later, Jonathan
Carnes returned to Salem with a cargo of pepper in bulk, the first
direct importation, and cleared seven hundred per cent on the voyage.
When he made ready to go again, keeping his business strictly to
himself, other owners tracked him clear to Bencoolen, but there he
vanished in the Rajah, and his secret with him, until he reappeared with
another precious cargo of pepper. When, at length, he shared this trade
with other vessels, it meant that Salem controlled the pepper market of
Sumatra and for many years supplied a large part of the world's demand.

And so it happened that in the spicy warehouses that overlooked Salem
Harbor there came to be stored hemp from Luzon, gum copal from Zanzibar,
palm oil from Africa, coffee from Arabia, tallow from Madagascar, whale
oil from the Antarctic, hides and wool from the Rio de la Plata