Note 1 — Appendix: Buying and Selling Prices of Oriental Products
Reading edition
The Malucas Islands yield from year to year four thousand four hundred bars of cloves. Each bar is six hundred and forty libras. If his Majesty would make himself master of this, as well as of the nutmeg and mace, and establish his factories—in Yndia, in Ormuz,1 for the nations who come from all Asia to trade for it; and in Lisboa, for Europa and the Yndias—it would be worth [from one year to another?] three million seven hundred pesos at the least, as I reckon it; because in India each libra of [304] cloves is worth at Ormuz one peso, and in Lisboa a greater sum, while in the West Yndias it is worth more than two pesos.2 Averaging them all together, it will be equivalent to ten reals per libra, which will amount to three million five hundred and twenty thousand pesos.... It will cost his Majesty to buy the cloves, in cloth, silks, and other things which the natives value, eighty thousand pesos; while the navigation and the pay of the factors will amount to one hundred and twenty thousand, all amounting to two hundred and thirty thousand pesos. Consequently, there will be a clear profit on the cloves of three million two hundred and ninety thousand pesos.