OF BORNEO PROPER. 
527 
tlier very valuable drug met with in this island, which is a stone he 
calls the Pork-stone, valued at so high a rate, as to be worth no less 
than three hundred crowns a piece. The Indian physicians, it seems, 
are of opinion, that, by exhibiting to their patients the water in 
which the stone has been steeped, they can infallibly discover whe¬ 
ther they will live or die.”* 
Radermacher in 1775 gives the following account of the produc¬ 
tions of Brune.f “ The products are pearls, bird nests, wax, slaves , 
rice and camphor. The Borneo camphor is the best, and after it 
follows that of Baras on Sumatra, both of which flow as a pure gum 
out of a tree hitherto unknown. Of the Bornean there is annually 
sold about 35 pikuls of 125 pounds for 3,200 dollars; and of the 
Sumatran 20 pikuls for 2,200 dollars. But the Japanese, which is 
a decoction of the leaves of a kind of laurel tree, yields not more 
than 50 dollars the pikul. The goods taken here are tin, cloth of 
different kinds and Javanese produce, particularly rice.”J 
We can give no accurate details respecting the commerce of Bru- 
ne in previous centuries. The Borneans themselves appear to have 
always carried on a considerable external trade. The foreign mer¬ 
chants who most regularly visited them, and whose import and ex¬ 
port cargoes were the most valuable, were Chinese from China, 
Siam, arid Kamboja. European vessels also made visit from time 
to time, and the port must have long been frequented by traders 
from various parts of the Archipelago, and particularly from the is¬ 
lands to the northward. 
When European and Chinese vessels ceased to visit the country 
in the early part of this century the only external trade until the 
establishment of Singapore appears to have been in praus to Sambas 
Pontianak, Tringanu, Linga and Malacca. § 
* Harris vol. 1. p. 307. 
•f Verhandeligen van bet Bat. Genools. vol. II. p 56. 
t The substance of this account is borrowed by Hr. Leyden in his sketch 
of Borneo p. 6. (Vcrhandelingcn van bet Bat. Genools. vol. vii.) with¬ 
out acknowledgment 
§ Hunt’s sketch of Borneo p. 58. 
[%* The want of space obliges us to postpone the third of these short es¬ 
says—“ On the Chinese intercourse with Borneo”—till our next number.] 
