Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/443

] remain till nine at night, each of them being lighted with one or two torches, composed of the resin called dammer, furnished by a species of cycas, of the same name: (dammara alba, Rumph. Amb. vol. ii. chap. xii, tab. 57.) They inclose this resin in sago tree leaves, without any central wick. It burns with very little smoke; but care must be taken to remove the covering, as it is reduced into a cinder, and to trim it level with the resin. Those people are lighted at a very small expence; for a dammer torch, eight inches in length, and about an inch and a quarter in thickness, costs them not one-sixtieth of a penny sterling, and yields a very clear light for three hours. Their cottages are lighted with the same resin.

Besides the fruit, there are some other eatables sold in that Bazar. In a sultry climate, and an extremely humid atmosphere, fish would soon putrefy, if it was not quickly dried; and hence more dried than fresh fish is sold in that market. When the fish is prepared with the smoke of a small fire, its taste is preferred by the inhabitants to that of fresh fish.

The Molucca islands, after having been long under the dominion of the Arabians, the Moors, and the Malays, came at last under that of the Europeans. The Portuguese, the Spaniards, and the Dutch, contended for that dominion, and es- tablished