the floor, and one or two small rooms are also sometimes taken off from the sides, the rest of the space under the roof is open, so as freely to admit the air and the light: the particular uses of these different apartments our short stay would not permit us to learn, except that the close room in the centre was appropriated to the women.

The food of these people consists of every tame animal in the country, of which the hog holds the first place in their estimation, and the horse the second; next to the horse is the buffalo, next to the buffalo their poultry, and they prefer dogs and cats to sheep and goats. They are not fond of fish, and, I believe, it is never eaten but by the poor people, nor by them except when their duty or business requires them to be upon the beach, and then every man is furnished with a light casting net, which is girt round him, and makes part of his dress; and with this he takes any small fish which happen to come in his way. The esculent vegetables and fruits have been mentioned already, but the fan-palm requires more particular notice, for at certain times it is a succedaneum for all other food both to man and beast. A kind of wine, called toddy, is procured from this tree, by cutting the buds which are to produce flowers, soon after their appearance, and tying under them small baskets, made of the leaves, which are so close as to hold liquids without leaking. The juice which trickles into these vessels, is collected by persons who climb the trees for that purpose, morning and evening, and is the common drink of every individual upon the island; yet a much greater quantity is drawn off than is consumed in this use, and of the surplus they make both a syrup and coarse sugar. The liquor is called dua, or duac, and both the syrup and sugar, gula. The syrup is prepared by boiling the liquor down in pots of earthen ware, till it is sufficiently inspissated; it is not unlike treacle in appearance, but is somewhat thicker, and has a much more agreeable taste: the sugar is of a reddish brown, perhaps the same with the Jugata sugar upon the continent of India, and it was more agreeable to our palates than any cane sugar, unrefined, that we had ever tasted. We were at first afraid that the syrup, of which some of our people ate very great quantities, would have brought on fluxes, but its aperient quality was so very slight, that what effect it produced was rather salutary than hurtful. I have already

observed, that it is given with the husks of rice to the hogs, and that they grow enormously fat without taking any other food: we were told also, that this syrup is used to fatten their dogs and their fowls, and that the inhabitants themselves have subsisted upon this alone for several months, when other crops have failed, and animal food has been scarce. The leaves of this tree are also put to various uses, they thatch houses, and make baskets, cups, umbrellas, and tobacco pipes. The fruit is least esteemed, and as the blossoms are wounded for the tuac or toddy, there is not much of it: it is about as big as a large turnip, and covered, like the cocoanut, with a fibrous coat, under which are three kernels, that must be eaten before they are ripe, for afterwards they become so hard that they cannot be chewed; in their eatable state they taste not unlike a green cocoa-nut, and,

like them, probably they yield a nutriment that is watery and unsubstantial.

The common method of dressing food here is by boiling, and as fire-wood is very scarce,

and the inhabitants have no other fuel, they make use of a contrivance to save it, that is not wholly unknown in Europe, but is seldom practised except in camps. They dig a hollow under ground, in a horizontal direction, like a rabbit burrow, about two yards long, and opening into a hole at each end, one of which is large and the other small: by the large hole the fire is put in, and the small one serves for a draught. The earth over this burrow is perforated by circular holes, which communicate with the cavity below; and in these holes are set earthen pots, generally about three to each fire, which are large in the middle, and taper towards the bottom, so that the fire acts upon a large part of their surface. Each of these pots generally contains about eight or ten gallons, and it is surprising to see with how small a quantity of fire they may be kept boiling; a palm leaf, or a dry stalk, thrust in now and then, is sufficient in this manner they boil all their victuals, and make all their syrup and sugar. It appears by Frazier's account of his voyage to the South Sea, that the Peruvian Indians have a contrivance of the same kind, and perhaps it might be adopted with advantage by the poor people even of this country, where fuel is very dear.

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Both sexes are enslaved by the hateful and pernicious habit of chewing betel and areca, which they contract even while they are children, and practise incessantly from morning till night. With these they always mix a kind of white lime, made of coral stone and shells, and frequently a small quantity of tobacco, so that their mouths are disgustful in the highest degree both to the smell and the sight: the tobacco taints their breath, and the betel and lime make the teeth not only as black as charcoal, but as rotten too. I have seen men between twenty and thirty, whose fore-teeth have been consumed almost down to the gums, though no two of them were exactly of the same length or thickness, but irregularly corroded like iron by rust. This loss of teeth is, I think, by all who have written upon the subject, imputed to the tough and stringy coat of the areca-nut; but I impute it wholly to the lime they are not loosened, or broken, or forced out, as might be expected, if they were injured by the continual chewing of hard and rough substances, but they are gradually wasted like metals that are exposed to the action of powerful acids; the stumps always adhering firmly to the socket in the jaw, when there is no part of the tooth above the gums: and possibly those who suppose that sugar has a bad effect upon the teeth of Europeans, may not be mistaken, for it is well known that refined loaf sugar contains a considerable quantity of lime; and he that doubts whether lime will destroy bone of any kind, may easily ascertain the fact by experiment.

If the people here are at any time without this odious mouthful, they are smoking. This operation they perform by rolling up a small quantity of tobacco, and putting it into one end of a tube about six inches long, and as thick as a goose-quill, which they make of a palm-leaf. As the quantity of tobacco in these pipes is very small, the effect of it is increased, especially among the women, by swallowing the smoke.

When the natives of this island were first formed into a civil society, is not certainly known, but at present it is divided into five principalities or nigrees: LAAI, SEBA, REGeeua, TIMO, and MASSARA, each of which is governed by its respective raja or king. The raja of Seba, the principality in which we were ashore, seemed to have great authority, without much external parade or show, or much appearance of personal respect. He was about fiveand-thirty years of age, and the fattest man we saw upon the whole island: he appeared to be of a dull phlegmatic disposition, and to be directed almost implicitly by the old man who, upon my presenting him with a sword, had procured us a fair market, in spite of the craft and avarice of the Dutch factors. The name of this person was MANNU DJARME, and it may reasonably be supposed that he was a man of uncommon integrity and abilities, as, notwithstanding his possession of power in the character of a favourite, he was beloved by the whole principality. If any difference arises among the people, it is settled by the raja and his counsellors, without delay or appeal, and, as we were told, with the most solemn deliberation and impartial justice.

We were informed by Mr. Lange, that the chiefs who had successively presided over the five principalities of this island, had lived for time immemorial in the strictest alliance and most cordial friendship with each other; yet he said the people were of a warlike disposition, and had always courageously defended themselves against foreign invaders. We were told

also, that the island was able to raise, upon very short notice, 7300 fighting men, armed with muskets, spears, lances, and targets. Of this force, Laai was said to furnish 2600, Seba 2000, Regeeua 1500, Timo 800, and Massārā 400. Besides the arms that have been already mentioned, each man is furnished with a large pole-axe, resembling a wood-bill, except that it has a straight edge, and is much heavier: this, in the hands of people who have courage to come to close quarters with an enemy, must be a dreadful weapon; and we were told that they were so dexterous with their lances, that, at the distance of sixty feet, they would throw them with such exactness as to pierce a man's heart, and such force as to go quite through his body.

How far this account of the martial prowess of the inhabitants of Savu may be true, we cannot take upon us to determine; but during our stay we saw no appearance of it. We saw, indeed, in the town-house, or house of assembly, about one hundred spears and targets, which served to arm the people who were sent down to intimidate us at the trading-place; but they seemed to be the refuse of old armories, no two being of the same make or length, for some were six, and some sixteen feet long: we saw no lance among them, and as to the muskets, though they were clean on the outside, they were eaten into holes by the rust within; and the people themselves appeared to be so little acquainted with military discipline, that they marched like a disorderly rabble, every one having, instead of his target, a cock, some tobacco, or other merchandise of the like kind, which he took that opportunity to bring down to sell, and few or none of their cartridge-boxes were furnished with either powder or ball, though a piece of paper was thrust into the hole to save appearances. We saw a few swivel guns and pateraros at the town-house, and a great gun before it; but the swivels and pateraros lay out of their carriages, and the great gun lay upon a heap of stones, almost consumed with rust, with the touch-hole downwards, possibly to conceal its size, which might perhaps be little less than that of the bore.

We could not discover that among these people there was any rank of distinction between the raja and the land-owners: the land-owners were respectable in proportion to their possessions; the inferior ranks consist of manufacturers, labouring poor, and slaves. The slaves, like the peasants in some parts of Europe, are connected with the estate, and both descend together; but though the land-owner can sell his slave, he has no other power over his person, not even to correct him, without the privity and approbation of the raja. Some have five hundred of these slaves, and some not half-a-dozen: the common price of them is a fat hog. When a great man goes out, he is constantly attended by two or more of them: one of them carries a sword or hanger, the hilt of which is commonly of silver, and adorned with large tassels of horse-hair; and another carries a bag which contains betel, areca, lime, and tobacco. In these attendants consists all their magnificence, for the raja himself has no other mark of distinction.

The chief object of pride among these people, like that of a Welshman, is a long pedigree of respectable ancestors, and, indeed, a veneration for antiquity seems to be carried farther here than in any other country: even a house that has been well inhabited for many generations, becomes almost sacred, and few articles either of use or luxury bear so high a price as stones, which having been long sat upon, are become even and smooth: those who can purchase such stones, or are possessed of them by inheritance, place them round their houses, where they serve as seats for their dependants.

Every raja sets up in the principal town of his province, or nigree, a large stone, which serves as a memorial of his reign. In the principal town of Seba, where we lay, there are thirteen such stones, besides many fragments of others, which had been set up in earlier times, and are now mouldering away: these monuments seem to prove that some kind of civil establishment here is of considerable antiquity. The last thirteen reigns in England make something more than 276 years. Many of these stones are so large, that it is difficult to conceive by what means they were brought to their present station, especially as it is the summit of a hill; but the world is full of memorials of human strength, in which the mechanical powers that have been since added by mathematical science, seem to be surpassed; and of such monuments there are not a few among the remains of barbarous antiquity in our own country, besides those upon Salisbury Plain. These stones not only

record the reigns of successive princes, but serve for a purpose much more extraordinary, and probably altogether peculiar to this country. When a raja dies, a general feast is proclaimed throughout his dominions, and all his subjects assemble round these stones; almost every living creature that can be caught is then killed, and the feast lasts for a less or greater number of weeks or months, as the kingdom happens to be more or less furnished with live stock at the time; the stones serve for tables. When this madness is over, a fast must necessarily ensue, and the whole kingdom is obliged to subsist upon syrup and water, if it happens in the dry season, when no vegetables can be procured, till a new stock of animals can be raised from the few that have escaped by chance, or been preserved by policy from the general massacre, or can be procured from the neighbouring kingdoms. Such, however, is the account that we received from Mr. Lange.

We had no opportunity to examine any of their manufactures, except that of their cloth, which they spin, weave, and dye; we did not, indeed, see them employed, but many of the instruments which they use fell in our way. We saw their machine for clearing cotton of its seeds, which is made upon the same principles as those in Europe, but it is so small that it might be taken for a model or a toy; it consists of two cylinders, like our round rulers, somewhat less than an inch in diameter, one of which, being turned round by a plain winch, turns the other by means of an endless worm; and the whole machine is not more than fourteen inches long, and seven high; that which we saw had been much used, and many pieces of cotton were hanging about it, so that there is no reason to doubt its being a fair specimen of the rest. We also once saw their apparatus for spinning; it consisted of a bobbin, on which was wound a small quantity of thread, and a kind of distaff filled with cotton; we conjectured, therefore, that they spin by hand, as the women of Europe did before the introduction of wheels; and I am told that they have not yet found their way into some parts of it. Their loom seemed to be in one respect preferable to ours, for the web was not stretched upon a frame, but extended by a piece of wood at each end, round one of which the cloth was rolled, and round the other the threads; the web was about half a yard broad, and the length of the shuttle was equal to the breadth of the web, so that probably their work goes on but slowly. That they dyed this cloth we first guessed from its colour, and from the indigo which we saw in their plantations; and our conjecture was afterwards confirmed by Mr. Lange's account. I have already observed, that it is dyed in the yarn, and we once saw them dyeing what was said to be girdles for the women, of a dirty red, but with what drug we did not think it worth while to inquire.

The religion of these people, according to Mr. Lange's information, is an absurd kind of paganism, every man choosing his own god, and determining for himself how he should be worshipped; so that there are almost as many gods and modes of worship as people. In their morals, however, they are said to be irreproachable, even upon the principles of Christianity. No man is allowed more than one wife, yet an illicit commerce between the sexes is in a manner unknown among them; instances of theft are very rare; and they are so far from revenging a supposed injury by murder, that if any difference arises between them, they will not so much as make it the subject of debate, lest they should be provoked to resentment and ill-will, but immediately and implicitly refer it to the determination of their king.

They appeared to be a healthy and long-lived people; yet some of them were marked with the small-pox, which Mr. Lange told us had several times made its appearance among them, and was treated with the same precautions as the plague. As soon as a person was seized with the distemper, he was removed to some solitary place, very remote from any habitation, where the disease was left to take its course, and the patient supplied with daily food by reaching it to him at the end of a long pole. Of their domestic economy we could learn but little; in one instance, however, their delicacy and cleanliness are very remarkable. Many of us were ashore here three successive days, from a very early hour in the morning till it was dark, yet we never saw the least trace of an offering to Cloacina, nor could we so much as guess where they were made. In a country so populous this is very difficult to be accounted for; and perhaps there is no other country in the world where the secret is so effectually kept. The boats in use here are a kind of proa.

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This island was settled by the Portuguese almost as soon as they first found their way into this part of the ocean; but they were in a short time supplanted by the Dutch. The Dutch, however, did not take possession of it, but only sent sloops to trade with the natives, probably for provisions to support the inhabitants of their spice islands, who, applying themselves wholly to the cultivation of that important article of trade, and laying out all their ground in plantations, can breed few animals. Possibly their supplies by this occasional traffic were precarious; possibly they were jealous of being supplanted in their turn; but however that be, their East India Company, about ten years ago, entered into a treaty with the Rajas, by which the Company stipulated to furnish each of them with a certain quantity of silk, fine linen, cutlery ware, arrack, and other articles, every year; and the Rajas engaged that neither they nor their subjects should trade with any person except the Company, without having first obtained their consent; and that they would admit a resident on behalf of the Company to reside upon the island, and see that their part of the treaty was fulfilled. They also engaged to supply annually a certain quantity of rice, maize, and calevances. The maize and calevances are sent to Timor in sloops, which are kept there for that purpose, each of which is navigated by ten Indians; and the rice is fetched away annually by a ship which brings the Company's returns, and anchors alternately in each of the three bays. These returns are delivered to the Rajas in the form of a present, and the cask of arrack they and their principal people never cease to drink as long as a drop of it remains. In consequence of this treaty, the Dutch placed three persons upon the island; Mr. Lange, his colleague, the native of Timor, the son of an Indian woman by a Portuguese, and one Frederick Craig, the son of an Indian woman by a Dutchman. Lange visits each of the Rajas once in two months, when he makes the tour of the island, attended by fifty slaves on horseback. He exhorts these chiefs to plant, if it appears that they have been remiss, and observes where the crops are got in, that he may order sloops to fetch it; so that it passes immediately from the ground to the Dutch storehouses at Timor. In these excursions he always carries with him some bottles of arrack, which he finds of great use in opening the hearts of the Rajas with whom he is to deal. During the ten years that he had resided upon this island he had never seen a European besides ourselves, except at the arrival of the Dutch ship, which had sailed about two months before we arrived; and he is now to be distinguished from the natives only by his colour and his dress, for he sits upon the ground, chews his betel, and in every respect has adopted their character and manners. He has married an Indian woman of the island of Timor, who keeps his house after the fashion of her country; and he gave that as a reason for not inviting us to visit him, saying, that he could entertain us in no other manner than the Indians had done; and he spoke no language readily but that of the country.

The office of Mr. Frederick Craig is to instruct the youth of the country in reading and writing, and the principles of the Christian religion; the Dutch having printed versions of the New Testament, a catechism, and several other tracts, in the language of this and the neighbouring islands. Dr. Solander, who was at his house, saw the books, and the copybooks also, of his scholars, many of whom wrote a very fair hand. He boasted that there were no less than six hundred Christians in the township of Seba; but what the Dutch Christianity of these Indians may be, it is not perhaps very easy to guess, for there is not a church, nor even a priest, in the whole island.

While we were at this place, we made several inquiries concerning the neighbouring islands, and the intelligence which we received is to the following effect. A small island to the westward of Savu, the name of which we did not learn, produces nothing of any consequence but areca-nuts, of which the Dutch receive annually the freight of two sloops, in return for presents that they make to the islanders. Timor is the chief; and the Dutch residents on the other islands go thither once a year to pass their accounts. The place is nearly in the same state as in Dampier's time, the Dutch having there a fort and storehouses; and, by Lange's account, we might there have been supplied with every necessary that we expected to procure at Batavia, salt provisions and arrack not excepted. But the Portuguese are still in possession of several towns on the north side of the island, particularly Laphao and Sesial. About two years before our arrival, a French ship was wrecked upon the east coast of