1770 MALAYS 407 



The language spoken among them is entirely Malay, or at 

 least so called, for I believe it is a most corrupt dialect. 

 Notwithstanding that Java has two or three languages, and 

 almost every little island besides its own, distinct from the 

 rest, yet none use, or I believe remember, their own language, 

 so that this Lingua Franca Malay is the only one spoken in 

 this neighbourhood, and, I have been told, over a very large 

 part of the East Indies. 



Their women, and in imitation of them the Dutch also, 

 wear as much hair as ever they can nurse up on their heads, 

 which by the use of oils, etc., is incredibly great. It is 

 universally black, and they wear it in a kind of circular 

 wreath upon the tops of their heads, fastened with a 

 bodkin, in a taste inexpressibly elegant. I have often wished 

 that one of our ladies could see a Malay woman's head 

 dressed in this manner, with her wreath of flowers, commonly 

 Arabian jasmine, round that of hair ; for in that method of 

 dress there is certainly an elegant simplicity and unaffected 

 show of the beauties of nature incomparably superior to any- 

 thing I have seen in the laboured head-dresses of my fair 

 country-women. Both sexes bathe themselves in the river 

 constantly at least once a day, a most necessary custom 

 in hot climates. Their teeth also, disgustful as they must 

 appear to a European from their blackness, occasioned by 

 their continued chewing of betel, are a great object of 

 attention : every one must have them filed into the 

 fashionable form, which is done with whetstones by a most 

 troublesome and painful operation. First, both the upper 

 and under teeth are rubbed till they are perfectly even and 

 quite blunt, so that the two jaws lose not less than half a 

 line each in the operation. Then a deep groove is made in 

 the middle of the upper teeth, crossing them all, and itself 

 cutting through at least one-fourth of the whole thickness of 

 the teeth, so that the enamel is cut quite through, a fact 

 which we Europeans, who are taught by our dentifricators 

 that any damage done to the enamel is mortal to the tooth, 

 find it difficult to believe. Yet among these people, where 

 this custom is universal, I have scarce seen even in old people 



