Coepang Bay.] TERRA AUSTRALIS. 
company's regulations, but their currency at Coepang was sixty 
stivers or pence ; whence it arose that to a stranger receiving 
dollars, they would be reckoned at $s. \d. each, but if he paid them it 
was at 5, v. Besides -dollars, the current coins were ducatoons, rupees, 
and doits, with some few gold rupees of Batavia ; but the money 
accounts were usually kept in rix dollars, an imaginary coin of 4.0 
I made many inquiries concerning the Malay trepang fishers, 
whom we had met at the entrance of the Gulph of Carpentaria, 
and learned the following particulars. The natives of Macassar 
had been long accustomed to fish for the trepang amongst the 
islands in the vicinity of Java, and upon a dry shoal lying to the 
south of Rottee ; but about twenty years before, one of their prows 
was driven by the north-west monsoon to the coast of New Hol- 
land, and finding the trepang to be abundant, they afterwards re- 
turned ; and had continued to fish there since that time. The 
governor was of opinion, that the Chinese did not meet them at 
Timor-laoet, but at Macassar itself, where they are accustomed to 
trade for birds nests, trepang, sharks fins, &c. ; and it therefore 
seems probable that the prows rendezvous only at Timor-laoet, on 
quitting Carpentaria, and then return in a fleet, with their cargoes. 
The value of the common trepang at Canton, was said to be 
forty dollars the picol, and for the best, or black kind, sixty; which 
agrees with what I had been told in Malay Road, allowing to the 
Chinese the usual profit of cent, per cent, from Macassar to their 
own country. 
About ten days before our arrival, a homeward-bound ship 
from India had touched at Coepang ; and had we been so fortunate 
as to meet with her, it might have enabled me to put in execu- 
tion the plan I had formed of sending an officer to England, and 
returning to the examination of the north and north-west coasts 
of 1 erra Australis. This plan was now frustrated ; and the sole 
opportunity of writing to Europe was by captain Johnson, who. 
expected to sail for Batavia in May, and promised to forward our 
letters from thence. I committed to his care an account of our 
vol. 11 . LI 
257 
1808. 
April. 
