58 Kenneth S. Latourette, 



had obtained control of the sources of the wood and payment 

 was made by the Americans in goods, specie, and in one instance, 

 a ship. In 1825 or 1826, Kotzebue estimated the annual export 

 of sandal wood at $300,000 a year, 18 but this is excessive, as the 

 largest single year s (1822) importation to Canton on American 

 ships was $268,22O. 19 



The trade, however, was a wasteful one, and consequently 

 short lived. Sandal wood had disappeared from the Hawaiian 

 Islands by about 1830. On the Fijis it was exhausted by about 

 the same time. 20 Discovered on the Marquesas Group in 1810, 

 it was practically all exported in seven years. 21 The importa 

 tions to Canton which in 1822 had amounted to 26,822 peculs 22 

 worth $268,220, had by 1833 declined to the sum of $8,935. 

 - As sandal wood disappeared, a new product, beche de mer, 

 was discovered in many of the same localities, and the voyages 

 to the South Seas continued for a number of years longer. They 

 came to be largely in the hands of Salem sea captains 23 and year 

 after year ships went out from the old witch town, hired natives 

 to gather the animal, built huts for cleaning and curing it, sold 

 it at Manila 24 to Chinese epicures, at from ten to twenty cents 

 a pound, 25 and brought home cargoes from the Philippines or 



18 Otto von Kotzebue, A New Voyage round the World, in the years 

 1823,1824,1825,1826. 2v. London. 1830. 2:191-192. 



19 Pitkin, Stat. View, ed. 1835, p. 304. 



20 Charles Wilkes, in Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedi 

 tion during the years 1838-1842, 5 v., Philadelphia, 1845, 3 : 202, writing 

 of it in 1840 says, &quot;It has for many years past been exhausted.&quot; Dix, 

 Wreck of Glide, pp. 30-36, in 1820 said, &quot;Its scarcity hardly repays the 

 labor of searching for it.&quot; 



21 M. Camille de Roquefeuil, A Voyage round the World between the 

 years 1816-1819. London, 1823, p. 3. He visited the islands in 1817 and 

 makes this statement. 



22 Parl. Papers, 1830, No. i, App. 4, pp. 722-723. 



23 Thomas Williams and James Calvert, missionaries to the Fijis, in a 

 work published in London, 1856, said that the traffic on the island in 

 sandal wood, tortoise shell, and beche de mer &quot;has been and still ,is 

 chiefly in the hands of Americans from the port of Salem.&quot; Osgood and 

 Batchelder, Salem, p. 170. 



24 This was to avoid the port charges in China. Journal of the Ship 

 &quot;Emerald.&quot; 



25 $15 to $25 a pecul (i33 l /3 Ibs.). Wilkes, U. S. Exploring Expedition, 



