20 6 
A JOURNEY FROM MADRAS THROUGH 
CHAPTER 
Account of 
the com- 
merce from 
the custom- 
house of- 
ficers. 
Buffaloes of the northern breed are sometimes employed, es- 
pecially by cloth-merchants ; their great size enabling them with 
convenience to support a bulky article. They are very fine animals, 
and their common load is 15 Maunds, or about 410 lb. with which 
they travel at the rate of 12 or 15 miles a day; but they require 
higher feeding than the bullock does. 
The people who transport salt and grain generally use asses, or a 
very poor kind of bullock. The ass carries from 40 to 50 Seers 
measure, or from lyVo bushel to l-j—- bushel. They can travel 
about six miles a day, and are all males purchased from the washer- 
men who breed them. Two men take charge of twelve loaded 
asses. These creatures get nothing to eat but what they can pick 
up by the sides of the road. Their cost is from 1^ to 2 Pagodas , or 
from 10^. O^d. to 135. 5±d. 
The bullocks employed by these people are treated much in the 
same manner as the asses; but each carries from 60 to 80 Seers of 
gram, or from bushels to bushels. Merchants, who deal 
in betel-nut , pepper, &c. have sometimes had recourse to this poor 
kind of conveyance ; but it is very rarely done, the slowness with 
which these cattle travel rendering the dealer liable to suffer great 
loss from fluctuations in the markets. 
This is the information collected from all the most respectable 
merchants of the place. According to the custom-house accompts 
the imports are salt; sugar; sugar-candy; coco-nuts; betel-nut; 
pepper; cut , or terra japonica; ginger; capili , patunga root, and 
muddi dyes; wax; lac; steel; false gilded paper; indigo ; sandal-wood; 
salt-petre; sulphur; yellow arsenic; cinnabar; brass and copper, 
wrought and unwrought; lead; zinc; paper; dates; casturi, a kind 
of turmeric; benjamin; sompa, one of the carminative seeds; asa- 
foetida; camphor; cardamoms; cloves; nutmegs; mace; gopichandam , 
a clay used by the Brahmans for making their marks ; rudrakshi s 
a fruit used by the, Brahmans for their beads; almonds; opium; 
golai , a kind of opium ; sajiacallu, the stone used for powdering 
