Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/74

 l , 'Came, many years ago, from the Island of Ternate, one of the Moluccas, and gave them their religion and such simple arts as they possessed. It is probably to him that we are to attribute some peculiarities in their mode of worship, such as their temple, with rude images to represent their divinity. The natives wear the Polynesian girdle of barb cloth.

"The houses of the natives are built with small trees and rods, and thatched with leaves. They have two stories, a ground floor and a loft, which is entered by a hole or scuttle through the horizontal partition or upper floor.

"For ornament they sometimes wear in their ears, which are always bored, a folded leaf, and around their necks a necklace made of the shell of the cocoa-nut and a small white sea shell."

With reference to the cruelties detailed in Holden's narrative, Mr. Hale goes on to say:

of the paragraph as to "the images to represent their divinity" unreasonable as coming from a native of that country. It is more probable that, from the lapse of time, a mistake was made in the repetition of the name by a savage, and that a Portuguese, and not a Dutchman, suggested the use of images to represent a divinity.