QTjQ cook's first voyage sept. 



furnished with live stock at the time ; the stones serve 

 for tables. When this madness is over, a fast must 

 necessarily ensue, and the whole kingdom is obliged 

 to subsist upon syrup and water, if it happens in the 

 dry season, when no vegetables can be procured, till 

 a new stock of animals can be raised from the few 

 that have escaped by chance, or been preserved by 

 policy from the general massacre, or can be procured 

 from the neighbouring kingdoms. Such, however, 

 is the account that we received from Mr. Lange. 



We had no opportunity to examine any of their 

 manufactures, except that of their cloth, which they 

 spin, weave, and dye ; we did not indeed see them 

 employed, but many of the instruments which they 

 use fell in our way. We saw their machine for clear- 

 ing cotton of its seeds, which is made upon the same 

 principles as those in Europe, but it is so small that 

 it might be taken for a model, or a toy; it consists of 

 two cylinders, like our round rulers, somewhat less 

 than an inch in diameter, one of which, being turned 

 round by a plain winch, turns the other by means of 

 an endless w T orm ; and the whole machine is not 

 more than fourteen inches long, and seven high; 

 that which we saw had been much used, and many 

 pieces of cotton were hanging about it, so that there 

 is no reason to doubt its being a fair specimen of the 

 rest. We also once saw their apparatus for spinning; 

 it consisted of a bobbin, on which was wound a small 

 quantity of thread, and a kind of distaff rilled with 

 cotton ; we conjectured therefore that they spin by 

 hand, as the women of Europe did before the intro- 

 duction of wheels ; and I am told that they have not 

 yet found their way into some parts of it. Their 

 loom seemed to be in one respect preferable to ours, 

 for the web was not stretched upon a frame, but ex- 

 tended by a piece of wood at each end, round one of 

 which the cloth was rolled, and round the other the 

 threads ; the web was about half a yard broad, and 

 the length of the shuttle was equal to the breadth of 



