Note 2 — Appendix: Buying and Selling Prices of Oriental Products

The editors of Voyage of Pyrard de Laval (ii, p. 357, note) say of the clove: “It is curious that this spice seems not to have been known to the Romans, nor to any Europeans till the discovery of the Moluccas by the Portuguese.” Duarte Barbosa, in East Africa and Malabar (Stanley’s trans., Hakluyt Society edition, London, 1866), pp. 219–220, quotes cloves from Maluco as worth per bahar in Calicut 500 and 600 fanoes; and, when clean of husks and sticks, 700 fanoes, 19 fanoes being paid as export duty. At Maluco they were worth from one to two ducats per bahar, and in Malacca as much as fourteen. Captain John Saris (see Satow’s edition of Voyage of Capt. John Saris, Hakluyt Society publications, p. 33) bought cloves for “60 rials of 8 per Bahar of 200 Cattyes.”