the produce.  This was particularly experienced in the year 1775, when, for a period of about eight months, scarcely a shower of rain fell to moisten the earth.  The vines were deprived of their foliage, many gardens perished and a general destruction was expected.  But this apparent calamity was attended with a consequence not foreseen, though analogous to the usual operations of nature in that climate.  The natives, when they would force a tree that is backward to produce fruit, strip it of its leaves, by which means the nutritive juices are reserved for that more important use, and the blossoms soon begin to show themselves in abundance.  A similar effect was displayed in the pepper gardens by the inclemency of the season.  The vines, as soon as the rains began to descend, threw out blossoms in a profusion unknown before; old gardens which had been unprolific for two or three years began to bear; and accordingly the crop of 1776/1777 considerably surpassed that of many preceding years.

TRANSPORTATION OF PEPPER.

The pepper is mostly brought down from the country on rafts (rakit), which are sometimes composed of rough timbers, but usually of large bamboos, with a platform of split bamboos to keep the cargo dry.  They are steered at both head and stern, in the more rapid rivers with a kind of rudder, or scull rather, having a broad blade fixed in a fork or crutch.  Those who steer are obliged to exert the whole strength of the body in those places especially where the fall of water is steep, and the course winding; but the purchase of the scull is of so great power that they can move the raft bodily across the river when both ends are acted upon at the same time.  But, notwithstanding their great dexterity and their judgment in choosing the channel, they are liable to meet with obstruction in large trees and rocks, which, from the violence of the stream, occasion their rafts to be overset, and sometimes dashed to pieces.

It is a generally received opinion that pepper does not sustain any damage by an immersion in seawater; a circumstance that attends perhaps a fourth part of the whole quantity shipped from the coast.  The surf, through which it is carried in an open boat, called a sampan lonchore, renders such accidents unavoidable.  This boat, which carries one or two tons, being hauled up on the beach and there loaded, is shoved off, with a few people in it, by a number collected for that purpose, who watch the opportunity of a lull or temporary intermission of the swell.  A tambangan, or long narrow vessel, built to contain from ten to twenty tons, (peculiar to the southern part of the coast), lies at anchor without to receive the cargoes from the sampans.  At many places, where the kwallas, or mouths of the rivers, are tolerably practicable, the pepper is sent out at once in the tambangans over the bar; but this, owing to the common shallowness of the water and violence of the surfs, is attended with considerable risk.  Thus the pepper is conveyed