chap, xiv FRAUDS BY THE COMPANY'S BROKER 33
local
wholesale merchants who have made themselves masters of the trade, but
its brokers will be able to await the arrival of foreign merchants who
will come to carry away its goods, or rather, because they will have
the means to have them exported to the places where they will
themselves be able to dispose of them.
It
should be remarked, besides, that it is profitable to carry gold and
silver to India in bullion rather than in coin, because gold and silver
are not valued in India except by their standard, and because there is
always a deduction on coined money on account of the cost of minting.1
Should
the broker be unfaithful, he is, moreover, able to come to an
understanding with the master of the Mogul's mint, established in every
port in the Empire, and to value the gold or silver, coined or in bars,
at a lower standard than it really is, by telling the Commander and his
Council that in the assay which has been made at the mint it is found
to be only of such a standard. But it is easy to prevent this fraud,
provided the Commander is upright and intelligent, if he sends for one
of the native refiners of gold and silver, who can easily be found, and
who understand how to assay metals perfectly, and if he sees it done in
his own presence.2
This is what the Sieur Waikenton3
did for the Dutch Company, in whose name he managed a factory at '
Käsim-bäzär, where he received each year from 6,000 to 7,000 bales
1 See vol. i, p. 7.
2
Ball received from Mr. J. Twigg of the N. W. P. Civil Service, the
following account of the operations of one of these native assayers, as
witnessed by himself. The object assayed was an ornament consisting of
an alloy of gold and silver, which was first hammered ont thin ; it was
then heated in nitric acid, the vessel used being a broken glazed
English tea-cup ; after some time, the silver being then dissolved out,
the thin plate of gold was removed and fused with borax, the furnace
being an old clay potsherd, and the fuel charcoal burnt under a mouth
blow-pipe. The resulting gold button was then weighed, and the silver
was precipitated by means of a piece of copper thrown into the
solution. The nitric acid had been prepared by distillation of a
mixture of saltpetre and iron sulphide (Pyrites). See Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Wheatley, in. 103 ft. ; Ency. Brit., ii. 776 ff. For modern Indian methods Sir E. D. Maclagan, Monograph on the Gold and Silver Work of the Panjab, p. 16 f. ' See vol. i. 107.
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