Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/374

316 amazing violence against the fortifications. Along and almost all around the harbour are the country homes of the inhabitants, which have a pleasing effect to the eye; the road to these by land is through a grove of cocoanut-trees, which forms an agreeable shade. However, this place must be very unhealthy, as very high hills lie close behind the houses and exhale noxious vapours both morning and evening, which make it very precarious to the inhabitants in point of health; they are in general sickly, but particularly the Europeans. I observed in the course of a few hours' stay on shore several people whose legs were swelled in a most extraordinary manner; this the natives account for from the badness of the water and the vapours which arise from the adjoining hills. I have heard that the inhabitants of Malacca are liable to the same disease and from similar causes.

Fish is to be had here in great plenty; poultry of all kinds is very scarce; the fruits are chiefly plantains, pineapples, and pumple noses; the cocoa-nuts are also in great plenty and very good; the bread is tolerable, but the butter execrable, it being little better than train oil; and indeed this is the case in all the Dutch settlements and most other foreign ones, the French and English excepted. We slept on shore that night, and, not being able to sell any part of the cargo, the next morning went on board and sailed immediately. On the 29th of March we saw the land a little to the eastward of Cape Comorin, and the 31st of March came to anchor in the roads of Anjengo, where we found