him
from England, and two services of silver, the whole being worth,
perhaps, 25,000 ecus. He wanted to sell me all, but I bought only one
of the strings of diamonds for 2,600 reales, for the stones on the
other string were too foul; and as for the vessels of silver, if money
had still been coined at Batavia I would certainly have been able to
buy them. They coined there formerly, but all their coins contained
more than ten per cent, of alloy. This was done on account of the
Chinese, who prefer silver to gold, as I have elsewhere remarked,1 because they have no silver mines in their own country,2
and they used to carry into China as much of the silver money which was
coined at Batavia as they could. These were reales, half reales, and
quarter reales, which have no other mark than that of the Company, as
is to be seen in the figure which I give here.3 On one side
was a vessel, and on the other a V, an O, and a C, interlaced, these
three letters signifying in Dutch ' Vor Oost Indien Compagnie ', i. e.
for the Company of the East Indies.
This
lasted for some years ; but in the end all the nations of the East, who
had trade with the Dutch, began to be tired of it, especially the
people whose sovereigns did not coin silver money ; for in fact there
are very few who coin after one passes beyond the Empire of the Great
Mogul, and it is still bar silver only which comes from Japan. As for
gold, there are many Kings who coin it, as the King of Pegu, the King
of Achin, and the King of Macassar ; and besides their golden money,
they have also copper and tin money. The Chinese—who are careful in all
things—in selling their goods calculate according to the standard of
the silver ; for when they have come home, they reduce all that they
received in foreign countries to their own standard, and keep it in
ingots.
The
principal part of the profit derived from these reales which were
coined at Batavia, used to go into the purses of the General, the
Councillors, and the Master of the Mint. The
1 See vol. ii. 122.
2 There are silver mines in China, in the island of Hainan and elsewhere (Ency. Brit., vi. 178; S. W. Williamm The Middle Kingdom, i. 244).
* This figure is not reproduced here.
