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ANAM. 345
preter states that dog's flesh is sold here. The shops
are of convenient size, in which the wares are disposed
to the best advantage. One circumstance it was im-
possible to overlook, as it exhibits a marked difference
of taste and manners in this people from that of the
nations of India. Articles of European manufacture
have, amongst the latter, in many instances, usurped
the use of their own ;
and you can scarcely name any
thing of European manufacture which is not to be had
in the bazars. Here, with the sole exception of three
or four case bottles, of coarse glass, there was no
article whatever to be found that bore the least resem-
blance to any thing European. A different standard
of taste prevails. A piece of cotton cloth was scarcely
to be seen. Crapes, satins, and silks are alone in use,
the greater number of them the manufacture of China
or of Tongkin, there being, in fact, little or no manu-
facturing industry here. The articles which they
themselves had made, were not numerous. I may specify
the following : handsome and coarse mats, matting
for the sails of boats and junks, coarse baskets, gilt
and varnished boxes, umbrellas, handsome silk purses,
in universal use, and carried both by men and women,
iron nails, and a rude species of scissors. Every thing
else was imported from the surrounding countries.
In exchange, their territory affords rice in abundance,
cardamoms, peppe^, sugar, ivory, betel, &c. There
are a few wealthy Chinese who carry on an extensive
trade here ; the bulk of the people are miserably poor,
and but few amongst them are in a condition to trade
but upon the most limited scale. Few of the shops in
the bazars appear to contain goods of greater value
than might be purchased for forty or sixty dollars,
and the greater number are not worth half that sum.
It is difficult to conceive that a population so extensive