The climate, soil, and state of society on Java, seem to offer peculiar advantages to the extensive cultivation of this plant; and under the direction of skilful manufacturers, the dye stuff might form a most valuable and important export for the European market. The periodical draughts and inundations, which confine the cultivation and manufacture in the Bengal provinces to a few months in the year, are unknown in Java, where the plant might, in favoured situations, be cultivated nearly throughout the whole year, and where at least it would be secure of a prolonged period of that kind of weather, necessary for the cutting. The soil is superior, and a command of water affords facilities seldom to be met with elsewhere; while, from the tenure on which the cultivators hold their land, and the state of society among them, advances on account of the ensuing crop, which in Bengal form so ruinous a part of an indigo concern, are here unnecessary, and would be uncalled for. The dye (_níla_ blue) is prepared by the natives in a liquid state, by infusing the leaves with a quantity of lime: in this state it forms by far the principal dye of the country. Besides the quantity of it consumed within the island, it is sometimes exported to neighbouring countries by native traders, and sold at the rate of from a dollar and a half to three dollars the _píkul_, according as the plant may be in abundance or otherwise. It is impossible to form any idea of the rate at which this species of dye can reasonably be manufactured for the European market, from the prices paid by the Dutch, both because the article was one of those classed by them under the head of forced deliveries, and because the regents, who were entrusted with its exclusive management, not fully understanding the process of making it, conducted it always in a very expensive way, and were frequently exposed to entire failures.