5,000 peculs of white rice, bought ready for shipment at the mill, at $2-1/4 per pecul $11,250 00
Export duty on valuation, which can generally be managed to be got at a good deal under the market price; say at $1-1/2 per pecul, at 4-1/2 per cent. $337 50 Boat and coolie hire, shipping 200 00 ------ 537 50 ---------- $11,787 50
Commission for purchasing and shipping, &c., at 5 per cent. 589 37 ---------- $12,376 87
This is about equal to its price if purchased and cleaned in another manner; for instance:--
1,000 cavans province rice, costing, say, 10-1/2 rials per cavan, = $1,312 50
will generally produce 85 per cent. clean white rice, fit for shipping, and 10 per cent. broken rice, which can be sold at about 5-1/4 rials per cavan, = 65 62
thus 150 cavans (equal to about 820 peculs) will --------- cost $1,246 88
Add the expenses of receiving on board the native boats, measuring there, landing, re=measuring, cleaning, bags and bagging, averaging from about 70 to 80 cents. per pecul of cleaned rice, say at 75 cents, = 615 00 --------- $1,861 88
or equal to $2-27/100 per pecul for clean white rice, ready for shipment.
_Sugar._--Although the cane is cultivated to a greater or less extent throughout all the islands, there are four descriptions of sugar well known in commerce, grown in the Philippines, and these come respectively from the districts of Pampanga, Pangasinan, Cebu, and Saal, after which districts they are named; and the growth of other places producing similar sugars to any of these descriptions, usually passes under one of these names in the market, although Yloylo is sometimes, though rarely, distinguished as a separate quality. The mills employed for expressing the juice from the cane are nearly all of stone; and firewood is usually employed to boil the sugar; for although they have for some years introduced the plan of employing the refuse of the cane for that purpose, it is not yet very general.
A large quantity of the Muscovado sugar made in the country, resembling the descriptions produced in the provinces of Pampanga and Pangasinan, is brought to Manilla for sale, in large conical earthern jars, called _pilones_, each of which weighs a pecul. The Chinese or Mestizos who are engaged in the purifying of sugar are the purchasers of these lots, and most of them are in the habit of sending an agent through the country, with orders to buy up as much of such sugar as they require to keep their establishments at work. They are in the habit of paying these travellers a rial, which at Manilla is the eighth part of a dollar, for every pilone he purchases on their account at the limits they give him. When enough has been collected in one neighbourhood to load a casco or other province boat, it is despatched to their camarine at Manilla, where after being taken from the original pilone, if it has come from Pampanga, it is mixed up together, and placed in another one, with an opening at the conical part, which is placed over a jar into which the molasses distilling from it gradually drop, when the colour of the sugar from being brown becomes of a greyish tinge.