Remonstrantie 9.6

9.6

A small vessel, or tauri, sails every year in September for Achin, carrying black baftas, candekins, tricandis, chelas, and other cotton goods for that coast, and returns about March with tin, pepper, and a certain amount of other spices brought there by the people of Macassar. There remains no other regular voyage worth mentioning. For the last four or five years, since the Portugese have lost Ormuz, the trade of the Surat merchants with Persia has been carried as freight by the English ships, or by ours; they consign chiefly cotton goods, turbans, and girdles from Golconda and Mangapatnam, which are sent to Ispahan. Practically none of the goods which we carry on freight compete with what we ourselves send to Persia, so that this traffic is a great benefit to them without causing any injury to us, and the freight covers the expenses of the Company's ships. Some merchants who own tauris, or small vessels, send them along with our ships, laden with cotton, rice, or other goods of low grade, but no one dares to sail from any port to Ormuz unaccompanied, because (when our ships have left) the Portuguese frigates keep guard, and make prize of whatever they capture, so that Ormuz is now nothing but a deserted nest.