Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/68

10 not a little on our peculiar excellence in that production. The fat of this was white, like the fat of mutton, but the meat brown and coarse-grained as ours, though much smaller.

The town of Funchiale is situated at the bottom of the bay, very ill-built, though larger than the size of the island seems to deserve. The houses of the better people are in general large, but those of the poorer sort very small, and the streets very narrow and uncommonly ill-paved. The churches here have abundance of ornaments, chiefly bad pictures, and figures of their favourite saints in laced clothes. The Convent of the Franciscans, indeed, which we went to see, had very little ornament; but the neatness with which those fathers kept everything was well worthy of commendation, especially their infirmary, the contrivance of which deserves to be particularly noticed. It was a long room; on one side were windows and an altar for the convenience of administering the sacrament to the sick, on the other were the wards, each just capable of containing a bed, and lined with white Dutch tiles. To every one of these was a door communicating with a gallery which ran parallel to the great room, so that any of the sick might be supplied with whatever they wanted without disturbing their neighbours.

In this convent was a curiosity of a very singular nature: a small chapel whose whole lining, wainscot and ceiling, was entirely composed of human bones, two large thigh bones being laid crossways, with a skull in each of the openings. Among these was a very singular anatomical curiosity: a skull in which one side of the lower jaw was perfectly and very firmly fastened to the upper by an ossification, so that the man, whoever he was, must have lived some time without being able to open his mouth; indeed it was plain that a hole had been made on the other side by beating out his teeth, and in some measure damaging his jawbone, by which alone he must have received his nourishment.

I must not leave these good fathers without mentioning a thing which does great credit to their civility, and at the same time shows that they are not bigots in their religion.