Badung had promised to prepare quarters for its representative. The company designated one of its brightest young men, D. Boelen Schuurman, as its Kuta factor at a salary of fl. 500 per month, placed an order for a factory trading ship, the Merkurius, to be completed and delivered at an early date, and meanwhile chartered the bark Blora at fl. 1,800 per month to get men, goods, and equipment moving Baliwards. On July 30, 1839, the Blora appeared off Kuta, carrying Heer Schuurman, his assistant, G. W. Veenman Bouman, trade goods to the value of fl. 42,000 (inclusive of the linens for the princess), construction materials for a company warehouse, and one healthy young rhinoceros for the Dewa Agung.
Heer Schuurman hustled hopefully ashore only to discover that the Radja had made no provision whatever for his reception. He made his way wearily on foot to Kuta, then by horse to the puri, where the Radja allowed him to wait at the gate, much to the diversion of the public, while deciding whether to receive him. The Radja, whose intelligence in matters of commerce was better than his memory of his own promises, seems already to have been informed that although the ship’s manifest listed one gift rhinoceros, it showed no lead and no cannon.
Schuurman, who may have deemed a rhinoceros token enough of company esteem not just for the Dewa Agung but for all the lesser rulers as well, spent a few frustrating days trying to interest the Radja in his factory and his residence. It finally occurred to him to make a present of a fine sword and to renew assurances of the N.H.M. intentions with regard to the lead and the cannon. The cannon was in fact to be delivered two years later. It cost the company fl. 1,007.95, and it had been cunningly miscast so that the Dutch need never fear looking this gift gun in the mouth. The Radja himself seems never to have tested it out. He made it the nucleus of what was to become rather an extensive palace armory, to which, in 1849, in appreciation of his good behavior during the Dutch–Balinese wars, the government added a mate. The second cannon probably was not miscast; it seems to have come out of current military stock with which the Dutch themselves had just subdued the island.
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