Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/410

352 cloth itself was universally dyed in the yarn with blue, which, being unevenly and irregularly done, gave the cloth a clouding or waving of colour, not inelegant even in our eyes.

One chirurgical operation of theirs Mr. Lange mentioned to us with great praise, and indeed it appears sensible. It is a method of curing wounds, which they do by first washing the wound in water in which tamarinds have been steeped, then plugging it up with a pledget of the fat of fresh pork. In this manner the wound is thoroughly cleansed, and the pledget renewed every day. He told us that by this means they had a very little while ago cured a man in three weeks of a wound from a lance which had pierced his arm and half through his body. This is the only part of their medicinal or chirurgical art which came to our knowledge; indeed, they did not seem to outward appearance to have much occasion for either, but on the contrary appeared healthy, and did not show, by scars of old sores or any scurviness upon their bodies, a tendency to disease. Some, indeed, were pitted with the smallpox, which Mr. Lange told us had been now and then among them; in which case all who were seized by the distemper were carried to lonely places, far from habitations, where they were left to the influence of their distemper, meat only being daily reached to them by the assistance of a long pole.

Their religion, according to the account of Mr. Lange, is a most absurd kind of paganism, every man choosing his own god, and also his mode of worshipping him, in which hardly any two agree, notwithstanding which their morals are most excellent, Mr. Lange declaring to us that he did not believe that during his residence of ten years upon the island a single theft had been committed. Polygamy is by no means permitted, each man being allowed no more than one wife, to whom he is to adhere during life; even the Radja himself has no more.

The Dutch boast that they make many converts to Christianity; Mr. Lange said that there were 600 in the