The price for many years paid to the cultivators for their produce was ten Spanish dollars or fifty shillings per bahar of five hundredweight or five hundred and sixty pounds.  About the year 1780, with a view to their encouragement and the increase of investment, as it is termed, the sum was augmented to fifteen dollars.  To this cost is to be added the custom above mentioned, varying in different districts according to specific agreements, but amounting in general to one dollar and a half, or two dollars on each bahar, which is distributed amongst the chiefs at an annual entertainment; and presents are made at the same time to planters who have distinguished themselves by their industry.  This low price, at which the natives submit to cultivate the plantations, affording to each man an income of not more than from eight to twelve dollars yearly, and the undisturbed monopoly we have so long possessed of the trade, from near Indrapura northward to Flat Point southward, are doubtless in a principal degree to be attributed to the peculiar manner in which this part of the island is shut up, by the surfs which prevail along the south-west coast, from communication with strangers, whose competition would naturally produce the effect of enhancing the price of the commodity.  The general want of anchorage too, for so many leagues to the northward of the Straits of Sunda, has in all ages deterred the Chinese and other eastern merchants from attempting to establish an intercourse that must be attended with imminent risk to unskilful navigators; indeed I understand it to be a tradition among the natives who border on the sea-coast that it is not many hundred years since these parts began to be inhabited, and they speak of their descent as derived from the more inland country.  Thus it appears that those natural obstructions, which we are used to lament as the greatest detriment to our trade, are in fact advantages to which it in a great measure owes its existence.  In the northern countries of the island, where the people are numerous and their ports good, they are found to be more independent also, and refuse to cultivate plantations upon any other terms than those on which they can deal with private traders.

CULTIVATION OF PEPPER.

In the cultivation of pepper (Piper nigrum, L.)* the first circumstance that claims attention, and on which the success materially depends, is the choice of a proper site for the plantation.  A preference is usually given to level ground lying along the banks of rivers or rivulets, provided they are not so low as to be inundated, both on account of the vegetable mould commonly found there, and the convenience of water-carriage for the produce.  Declivities, unless very gentle, are to be avoided, because the soil loosened by culture is liable in such situations to be washed away by heavy rains.  When these plains however are naked, or covered with long grass only, they will not be found to answer without the assistance of the