Among the products are coco-nuts, sago, fish, trepang, timber, copra, maize, yams and tobacco.
The islands produce some coco-nuts, sago, trepang and timber.
The produce of the Eastern Islands is also collected at its ports for re-exportation to India, China and Europe - namely, gold-dust, diamonds, camphor, benzoin and other drugs; edible bird-nests, trepang, rattans, beeswax, tortoiseshell, and dyeing woods from Borneo and Sumatra; tin from Banka; spices from the Moluccas; fine cloths from Celebes and Bali; and pepper from Sumatra.
Whalers, sealers and traders followed in the wake of explorers, the traders dealing chiefly in copra, trepang, pearls, tortoiseshell, &c. The first actual settlers in the islands were largely men of bad character - deserting sailors, escapers from the penal settlements in Australia and others.
The only means of subsistence is primitive agriculture on a poor soil, turtle and trepang fishery and cattle-rearing.
The yearly export (trepang, turtle and kamuning wood) is valued at only £850 to £1650.
Macassar's trade amounts to about 1,250,000 annually, and consists mainly of coffee, trepang, copra, gums, spices and valuable timber.
The sea yields trepang and pearl shells.
To-day Labuan chiefly exists as a trading depot for the natives of the neighbouring coast of Borneo, who sell their produce - beeswax, edible birds-nests, camphor, gutta, trepang, &c., - to Chinese shopkeepers, who resell it in Singapore.
Turtles, trepang and pearl-shell are of some commercial importance.
Raw and prepared cotton, tobacco, trepang, tortoise-shell, coco-nuts and coco-nut oil, and salt are exported.
The town lies in a fertile plain and deals in rice, trepang and pina.
The fisheries include trepang, turtle and pearl oysters.
