Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/446

388 concerning them. Their sheep, of that sort whose ears hang down and have hair instead of wool, are most intolerably bad, lean, and tough to the last degree. They have, however, a few Cape sheep, which are excellent, though intolerably dear. We gave £2:5s. a piece for four, which we bought for sea stock, the heaviest of which weighed only 45 lbs. Their goats are much of a par with their sheep, but their hogs are certainly excellent, especially the Chinese, which are so immensely fat that nobody thinks of buying the fat with the lean. The butcher, when you buy it, cuts off as much as you please, and sells it to his countrymen, the Chinese, who melt it down and eat it instead of butter with their rice. Notwithstanding the excellence of this pork, the Dutch are so prejudiced in favour of everything which comes from the Fatherland, that they will not eat it at all, but use entirely the Dutch breed, which are sold as much dearer than the Chinese here, as the Chinese are dearer than them in Europe.

Besides these domestic animals, their woods afford some wild horses and cattle, but only in the distant mountains, and even there they are very scarce. Buffaloes are not found wild upon Java, though they are upon Macassar, and are numerous in several of the eastern islands. The neighbourhood of Batavia, however, is pretty plentifully supplied with deer of two kinds, and wild hogs, both which are very good meat, and often shot by the Portuguese, who sell them tolerably cheap. Monkeys also there are, though but few in the neighbourhood of Batavia.

On the mountains and in the more desert part of the island are tigers, it is said, in too great abundance, and some rhinoceroses; but neither of these animals are ever heard of in the neighbourhood of Batavia, or indeed any in well-peopled part of the island.

Fish are in immense plenty; many sorts of them very excellent and inconceivably cheap; but the Dutch, true to the dictates of luxury, buy none but those which are scarce. We, who in the course of our long migration in the warm latitudes had learned the real excellence of many of the