Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/480

422 which on the coast of New Holland some of our people were made ill, and some of our hogs poisoned outright. Their method of preparing them to get rid of their deleterious qualities they told me were, first to cut the nuts into thin slices and dry them in the sun, then to steep them in fresh water for three months, afterwards pressing the water from them, and drying them in the sun once more. They, however, were so far from being a delicious food that they never used them but in times of scarcity, when they mixed the preparation with their rice.

Their town, which they called Samadang, consisted of about 400 houses; great part of the old town, however, was in ruins. Their houses were all built upon pillars four or five feet above the ground. The plan of that of Gundang, a man who seemed to be next in riches and influence to the king, will give an idea of them all. It was walled with boards, a luxury which none but the king and he himself had, but in no other respect differed from those of the middling people except in being a little larger. The walls were made of bamboo, platted on small perpendicular sticks fastened to the beams. The floors were also of bamboo, each stick, however, laid at a small distance from the next; so that the air had a free passage from below, by which means these houses were always cool. The thatch, of palm leaves, was always thick and strong, so that neither rain nor sunbeams could find entrance through it. When we were at the town there were very few inhabitants there: the rest lived in occasional houses built in the rice-fields, where they watched the crop to prevent the devastations of monkeys, birds, etc. These occasional houses are smaller than those of the town; the posts which support them also, instead of being four or five feet in height, are eight or ten: otherwise the divisions, etc., are exactly the same.

Their dispositions, as far as we saw them, were very