chap. xxiii AMBERGRIS 109
exceeding
most other flames. This profusion and waste explain the reason why
amber is one of the best articles of merchandise that one could carry
to China if trade had been open to foreigners, but the Dutch Company
strictly reserve to themselves the trade in it—the Chinese coming to
buy it from them at Batavia.
I
am unwilling to finish this chapter without making some remarks on
ambergris also. We do not very well know either how it is formed or
where it is found ; but it would appear as though it can only be in the
seas of the East, although it has sometimes been found on the English
and other European coasts.1 The largest quantity of it is
found on the coast of Melinda, principally towards the mouths of the
rivers, and especially at the mouth of that which is called Rio di Sena.2 When
the Governor of Mozambique returns to Goa at the close of three years,
the term of his government, he generally brings with him about 300,000
pardos' worth of ambergris, and the pardo, as I have elsewhere said,
amounts to 27 sols
1
Ambergris, as is now well known, consists of the faeces of the Cachelot
or Sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, which inhabits the Indian
Ocean. Multitudes of small cuttlefish are swallowed whole, and their
horny beaks are not digested. This causes irritation, which produces
ambergris (Dr. C. F. Sonntag, London Zoological Society ; cf. Daily Mail, 10th May 1922). Garcia da Orta (Drugs and Simples of India, 24)
in his chapter on ambergris speaks of ambergris containing beaks of
birds. These were no doubt the beaks of the cuttlefish upon which these
whales feed. A form of this story is told by Barbosa (ed. Dames, ii.
107), who says ambergris is the guano of birds which has been swallowed
and voided by whales. Chardin (iv. 47) doubts the connexion with birds,
but mentions a number of alternative myths as to its origin. Ainslie
and Watt (Materia Medica, i. 15-17 ; Commercial Products, 64)
give an interesting account of it, and refer to a vegetable ambergris
yielded by a tree in Guiana. Ainslie says, like many other authors,
that the best ambergris was obtained on the coast of Madagascar. (See Voyage of F. Leguat, Hakluyt Society, ii. 152 ft.) In the Daily Press there
once appeared a paragraph headed ' An Ambergris King ', in which one
William A. Atkins.the owner of a fleet of Cape Cod whalers, is
described as having the monopoly of the ambergris trade of America—the
ambergris being for equal weight worth more than gold. Owing to
ambergris being called ambra by some nations, very erroneous
statements occur in many authorities as to the distribution in the East
of true amber, for which it has been mistaken. (See Economic Geology of India.)
5 The Zambezi, see p. 126 below.
