on the very day when the last ships sail, ten per cent. profit may be
obtained upon the first price. The merchants, however, unless pressed
for money, do not sell at this time, but keep their goods in warehouses
for four or five

[p.18] months, during which the price continues to rise; so that if they
choose to wait till the January or February following, they may
calculate with great security upon a gain of from thirty to forty per
cent; and if they transport a part of their goods to Mekka for sale to
the Hadj, their profits are still greater. It is the nature of this
commerce that renders Djidda so crowded during the stay of the fleet.
People repair hither from every port on the Red Sea, to purchase at the
first hand; and the merchants of Mekka, Yembo, and Djidda, scrape
together every dollar they possess, to lay them out in these
purchases. [Some time after the Indian fleet had sailed from Djidda, I
was present when a merchant of great property and respectability called
upon an acquaintance of mine to borrow one hundred dollars, saying, he
had laid out every farthing of his money in India goods which he did not
wish yet to sell, and had, in the mean while, no money left for his
daily expenses. This occurs, I understood, very frequently among them.]
Another cause of the India trade with Djidda being more safe and
profitable is, the arrival of the merchant-ships but once in the year,
at a stated period, and all within a few weeks: there is, therefore,
nothing to spoil the market; the price of goods is settled according to
the known demand and quantity of imports; and it is never known to fall
till the return of the next fleet. In the coffee trade it was the
reverse.

In Syria and Egypt it is the work of several days, and the business of
three or four brokers, to conclude a bargain between two merchants to