B4 



Productioks 



Pepper. 



Sanguis 

 Dracoms. 



MALAYAN ISLES. 



have endeavored to form fettlements at Succadana, Samha^ and 

 many other places, ^atas has its fultan. Thefe fovereigns com- 

 mand the trade of the illand, and furnifli the European fliips, 

 who happen to arrive, with cargoes of pepper, the ftaple of the 

 country ; that article is brought down from the interior parts, 

 and fold to the 'Europeans, or to the commercial Afiatic nations. 



It is to Captain Daniel Beeckman that we owe the bell ac- 

 count of Borneo ; he vifited it in the beginning of this cen- 

 tury, and publi(hed his account in the year 1718. At p. 36 he 

 gives the following lift of the productions of the country, which 

 abounds with pepper, the beft dragon's blood, bezoar, moft ex- 

 cellent camphor, pine apples, citrons, oranges, lemons, water 

 melons, mufk melons, plantains, banana, coco nuts, and all forts 

 of fruit that are generally found in any part of the Eaji Indies ; 

 the mountains yield diamonds, gold, tin and iron ; the forefts, 

 honey, cotton, deer, goats, buffaloes, wild oxen, wild hogs, fmall 

 horfes, bears, tigers, elephants, and a multitude of monkies. 



The pepper grows far up the country, and is collected by the 

 very pooreft people only ; they have all the different forts, black, 

 white, and long. 



Sanguis Draconis, or dragon's blood, is a gum, the exudation 

 of certaui trees, of a bloody color. There is a conjedture that 

 this is the Cinnaberis of Diofcorides, lib. v. c. 69. Pliny, lib. 

 xxxiii. c. 7, fays that the name is htdian ; and then fables, that 

 it is the Sanies of the dragon oppreffed by the weight of an ele- 

 phant expiring with the bite, and that the Cinnaberis is the 

 mixed blood of each animal. The antients procured under this 

 notion the real drug, and ufed it in medicine. It was often adul- 

 terated 



