Travels in India (Tavernier) 85.2.7

85.2.7

The pursers also take part in it, but as for the merchants and sub-merchants, they disdain for the most part these small profits, and content themselves with their own shipments. Otherwise, by another artifice, when a merchant has some bales of rich goods, as of those Deccan caps, which are sometimes worth as much as 400 écus, or of these ornis of Burhanpur, of which I have spoken above, which serve to make veils for the ladies of Persia, Constantinople, and other places in Asia and Europe — when, I say, a merchant has some bales of valuable goods which should pay high duty to the Prince of the place where they are to be loaded, as soon as they are on board, the purser and captain, who are in league with the merchant, place on each the Company’s mark, and after reaching the store of the place where they have been landed with the goods of the Company, they are removed at night in secret to the house of the merchant.