152 



SPICY ISLANDS. 



noofes ; \vhcn taken, they will make a vigorous refiflance, and 

 defend themfelves ftoutly with their bills ; they are inftantly 

 killed, exenterated, and the breaft bone taken out, then dried 

 with fmoke and fulphur, and exported to Banda, where they are 

 Ibid for half a rix-dollar> but on the fpot for a fpike nail, or a bit 

 of old iron. They are exported to all parts of hidia and to Ferfta^ 

 to adorn the turbans of people of rank, and even the trappings 

 of the horfes, as I have before mentioned ; they even reach 



I'm' key *. 



No birds have ever had fo much fable mixed with their 

 hiftory ; it was believed, that they remained always floating on the 

 fpicy Indian air, and of courfe not to be in want of legs or feet, of 

 which they were fuppofed to be deftitute ; that when they wanted 

 to deep, they hung themfelves by their two long feathers to the 

 boughs of a tree ; that they performed the adl of love during 

 their flight, and that even ovation, and exclufion of the young- 

 was difcharged in that element, the male receiving the egg in an 

 orifice nature had given it for that purpofe ; that they lived on 

 the dew of Heaven, and had no evacuation like other mortal 

 birds. From their being fo much converfant in the higher 

 regions, the Portuguefe ftyled them PaJJaros dafol, or Sparrows 

 of the Sun ; the iflanders ManU'CO-dewata^ or the birds of God, 

 and moft of the Europeans name them the birds of Paradife. 

 So happily did the opinion work on the little -kings of the iiles, 

 that feeing them defcend (as it often happened) dead from the 

 heavenly regions, they became converts to the truth of the im- 

 mortality of the foul. 



* In the Tpring of 1799, they formed an additional ornament to the elegant^ead drefs of the 

 ^ritifli fair. £. 



The 



