352 DESCRIPTION OF SAVU CHAP, xv 



cloth itself was universally dyed in the yarn with blue, 

 which, being unevenly and irregularly done, gave the cloth 

 a clouding or waving of colour, not inelegant even in our 

 eyes. 



One chirurgical operation of theirs Mr. Lange mentioned 

 to us with great praise, and indeed it appears sensible. It 

 is a method of curing wounds, which they do by first wash- 

 ing the wound in water in which tamarinds have been 

 steeped, then plugging it up with a pledget of the fat of 

 fresh pork. In this manner the wound is thoroughly 

 cleansed, and the pledget renewed every day. He told us 

 that by this means they had a very little while ago cured a 

 man in three weeks of a wound from a lance which had 

 pierced his arm and half through his body. This is the 

 only part of their medicinal or chirurgical art which came 

 to our knowledge ; indeed, they did not seem to outward 

 appearance to have much occasion for either, but on the 

 contrary appeared healthy, and did not show, by scars of 

 old sores or any scurviness upon their bodies, a tendency to 

 disease. Some, indeed, were pitted with the smallpox, 

 which Mr. Lange told us had been now and then among 

 them ; in which case all who were seized by the distemper 

 were carried to lonely places, far from habitations, where 

 they were left to the influence of their distemper, meat only 

 being daily reached to them by the assistance of a long 

 pole. 



Their religion, according to the account of Mr. Lange, is 

 a most absurd kind of paganism, every man choosing his 

 own god, and also his mode of worshipping him, in which 

 hardly any two agree, notwithstanding which their morals 

 are most excellent, Mr. Lange declaring to us that he did 

 not believe that during his residence of ten years upon the 

 island a single theft had been committed. Polygamy is by 

 no means permitted, each man being allowed no more than 

 one wife, to whom he is to adhere during life ; even the 

 E-adja himself has no more. 



The Dutch boast that they make many converts to 

 Christianity; Mr. Lange said that there were 600 in the 



