Note {3} — Chapter LXXXII

Note 3.—We have referred in a former note (ch. lxxvii. note 7) to an apparent change in regard to the Chinese consumption of pepper, which is now said to be trifling. We shall see in the first chapter of Bk. III. that Polo estimates the tonnage of Chinese junks by the number of baskets of pepper they carried, and we have seen in last note the large estimate by Giov. d’Empoli of the quantity that went to China in 1515. Galvano also, speaking of the adventure of Fernão Perez d’Andrade to China in 1517, says that he took in at Pacem a cargo of pepper, “as being the chief article of trade that is valued in China.” And it is evident from what Marsden says in his History of Sumatra, that in the last century some tangible quantity was still sent to China. The export from the Company’s plantations in Sumatra averaged 1200 tons, of which the greater part came to Europe, the rest went to China.