The precious metals have always been a great article of import into Java, as well as into the other regions of the East. In 1770 there was imported into Java from Holland, cash and bullion to the amount of 2,862,176 Java rupees[65], and the sums imported from other quarters in the same year, and raised by bills of exchange on Holland, amounted to 1,419,565 rupees, making in all 4,281,742, or more than half a million sterling. The amount imported in that year was almost as great as that in any subsequent year till 1803, when the importation of precious metals was estimated at 7,617,122 rupees, or nearly a million sterling. This period corresponds with that of the greatest exportation of sugar by the Americans, who, no doubt, imported the precious metals in exchange for their cargoes, as the quantity brought from Holland in the same year amounted only to 448,370 rupees. In the following year (1804) the quantity imported was 6,499,001 rupees, of which none at all came from the mother-country. In forty years, from 1770 to 1810, the total of the imported precious metals amounted to 118,607,472 Java rupees, or nearly three millions annually upon an average. A great portion of this was re-exported to India, China, and the Dutch possessions in the Archipelago, to pay for the articles brought to Batavia for the supply of the European demand. The quantity of goods imported from all quarters of the globe, exclusive of cash and bullion, amounted in the year 1770 to the value in Spanish dollars of 2,350,316, and the exports to 3,318,161, leaving a balance in favour of the exports of 867,845 Spanish dollars. A great part of the exports was destined for Holland, and a great part of the imports came from Holland. The imports from Holland were again re-exported to China, Japan, the Spice Islands, &c. from which, and from Bengal, Ceylon, the coasts of Coromandel and of Malabar, and the Cape of Good Hope and other eastern countries, the other shipments came, and to which the other exports proceeded. The profits on the sale of that portion of the imports of 1770, disposed of in the market of Batavia for the consumption of Java, are stated at 7,895 Spanish dollars, so that, so far as the import trade was concerned, Batavia only became the _entrepôt_ between the mother-country and her other possessions or stations of commercial resort in the Indian seas. The exports of Java almost every year exceeded the imports, as will appear from official returns which follow.