The commerce of this province is inconsiderable, compared with what it might be from its situation; but the numerous taxes, the grinding exactions of the chiefs, and the usury of the mandarins, added to the hateful system of slavery, keep the bulk of the people in a ruinous state of prostration. However, in spite of a scanty population, they manage to export to Bangkok a great quantity of pepper, chiefly cultivated by the Chinese at the foot of the mountains; a little sugar and coffee of superior quality; mats made of rushes, which meet with a ready sale in China; tobacco, great quantities of salted and dried fish, dried leeches, and tortoiseshell. Every Siamese subject, on attaining a certain height, has to pay to Government an impost or annual tribute equivalent to six ticals (eighteen francs). The Annamites of Chantaboun pay this in eagle-wood, and the Siamese in gamboge; the Chinese in gum-lac, every four years, and their tribute amounts to four ticals. At the close of the rainy season the Annamite Christians unite in parties of fifteen or twenty, and set out under the conduct of an experienced man, who heads the expedition, and indicates to the others the trees which contain the eagle-wood; for all are not equally skilled in distinguishing those which produce it; a degree of experience is requisite for this, which can only be acquired by time, and thus much useless and painful labour is avoided. Some remain in the mountains, others visit the large islands of Ko-Xang or Ko-Khut, situated south-east of Chantaboun. The eagle-wood is hard and speckled, and diffuses a powerful aromatic odour when burnt. It is used at the incremation of the bodies of princes and high dignitaries, which are previously kept in the coffins for a twelvemonth. The Siamese also employ it as a medicine. The wood of the tree which yields it--the _Aquilaria Agallocha_ of Roxburgh--is white, and very soft; and the trunk must be cut down, or split in two, to find the eagle-wood, which is in the interior. The Annamites make a kind of secret of the indications by which they fix upon the right trees, but the few instructions given me put me on the right track. I had several cut down, and the result of my observations was, that this substance is formed in the cavities of the trees, and that as they grow older it increases in quantity. Its presence may be pretty surely ascertained by the peculiar odour emitted, and the hollow sound given out on striking the trunk. THE ANNAMITES.