TRADE.

The natives of the sea-coast exchange their benzoin, camphor, and cassia (the quantity of gold-dust is very inconsiderable) for iron, steel, brass-wire, and salt, of which last article a hundred thousand bamboo measures are annually taken off in the bay of Tappanuli.  These they barter again with the more inland inhabitants, in the mode that shall presently be described, for the products and manufactures of the country, particularly the home-made cloth; a very small quantity of cotton piece-goods being imported from the coast and disposed of to the natives.  What they do take off is chiefly blue-cloth for the head, and chintz.

FAIRS HELD.

For the convenience of carrying on the inland-trade there are established at the back of Tappanuli, which is their great mart, four stages, at which successively they hold public fairs or markets on every fourth day throughout the year; each fair, of course, lasting one day.  The people in the district of the fourth stage assemble with their goods at the appointed place, to which those of the third resort in order to purchase them.  The people of the third, in like manner, supply the wants of the second, and the second of the first, who dispose, on the day the market is held, of the merchandise for which they have trafficked with the Europeans and Malays.  On these occasions all hostilities are suspended.  Each man who possesses a musket carries it with a green bough in the muzzle, as a token of peace, and afterwards, when he comes to the spot, following the example of the director or manager of the party, discharges the loading into a mound of earth, in which, before his departure, he searches for his ball.  There is but one house at the place where the market is held, and that is for the purpose of gaming.  The want of booths is supplied by the shade of regular rows of fruit-trees, mostly durian, of which one avenue is reserved for the women.  The dealings are conducted with order and fairness; the chief remaining at a little distance, to be referred to in case of dispute, and a guard is at hand, armed with lances, to keep the peace; yet with all this police, which bespeaks civilization, I have been assured by those who have had an opportunity of attending their meetings that in the whole of their appearance and deportment there is more of savage life than is observed in the manners of the Rejangs, or inhabitants of Lampong.  Traders from the remoter Batta districts, lying north and south, assemble at these periodical markets, where all their traffic is carried on, and commodities bartered.  They are not however peculiar to this country, being held, among other places, at Batang-kapas and Ipu.  By the Malays they are termed onan.

ESTIMATE BY COMMODITIES INSTEAD OF COIN.

Having no coin all value is estimated among them by certain commodities.  In trade they calculate by tampangs (cakes) of benzoin; in transactions among themselves more commonly by buffaloes:  sometimes brass wire and sometimes beads are used as a medium.  A galang, or ring of brass wire, represents about the value of a dollar.  But for small payments salt is the most in use.  A measure called a salup, weighing about two pounds, is equal to a fanam or twopence-halfpenny:  a balli, another small measure, goes for four keppeng, or three-fifths of a penny.