ing the woods, and sweeping the shores, these native merchants become the carriers to the more distant markets. The natural demands and necessities which must exist in so extensive an Archipelago, in which the employment and condition of the inhabitants are so various, give rise to a constant intercourse between them, and consequently to an extensive native trade, which, from its nature, must be beyond the reach of fiscal regulation.
The whole of this population, at least, on the Malay peninsula, and throughout the islands, have imbibed a taste for Indian and European manufactures, and the demand is only limited by their means. Artificial impediments may, for a time, have checked these means; but in countries where, independently of the cultivation of the soil, the treasures of the mines seem inexhaustible, and the raw produce of its forests has in all ages been in equal demand; it is not easy to fix limits to the extension of these means. These people have not undergone the same artificial moulding; they are fresher from the hand of nature, and the absence of bigotry and inveterate prejudice
