GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 388 



Crimes ajjd Punishments. — Tlie only capital crimes 

 are stated to be those of poisoning and adultery, the latter of 

 which is singular enough, considering in what little estima- 

 tion women are held. Murder and theft are punished by re- 

 taliation and restitution, or selling the criminal into slavery. 

 The Gangam and his Kissey are the grand jury who find 

 the bill, but the accused undergoes a trial by ordeal before 

 the elders of the community. He is made to chew a cer- 

 tain poisonous bark ; if guilty, he keeps it in his stomach 

 and it occasions his death ; if innocent, he throws it up 

 again and he is acquitted of the charge ; and thus the 

 guilt or innocence of a man is made to depend on the 

 strength of his stomach. The practice of poisoning is so 

 common, that the master of a slave always makes him 

 taste his cooked victuals before he ventures to eat of them 

 himself. 



Diseases and Remedies. — The natives in general ap- 

 peared to be healthy ; the diseases under which they mostly 

 laboured, were of the cutaneous kind, few being free from 

 the itch, and scrofula ; leprosy, and elephantiasis were ob- 

 served, and some few cases of fever and duxes occurred. 

 They appeared to be subject also to indolent tumors, and 

 most of them were observed to have large navels. Among 

 the people of the neighbouring towns who came down to 

 Inoa to see the Avhite men that were stationed there, a 

 Mafook brought with him his daughter, a girl of about 

 twelve 3'ears of age, whose skin was perfectly white, but 

 of a pale sickly colour, though the father said she was 



