422 BATAVIA TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE CH. xvm 



which on the coast of JSTew Holland some of our people 

 were made ill, and some of our hogs poisoned outright. 

 Their method of preparing them to get rid of their deleterious 

 qualities they told me were, first to cut the nuts into thin 

 slices and dry them in the sun, then to steep them in fresh 

 water for three months, afterwards pressing the water from 

 them, and drying them in the sun once more. They, how- 

 ever, were so far from being a delicious food that they 

 never used them but in times of scarcity, when they mixed 

 the preparation with their rice. 



Their town, which they called Samadang, consisted of 

 about 400 houses; great part of the old town, however, 

 was in ruins. Their houses were all^built upon pillars four 

 or five feet above the ground. The plan of that of Gundang, 

 a man who seemed to be next in riches and influence to the 

 king, will give an idea of them all. It was walled with 

 boards, a luxury which none but the king and he himself 

 had, but in no other respect differed from those of the 

 middling people except in being a little larger. The walls 

 were made of bamboo, platted on small 

 perpendicular sticks fastened to the 

 beams. The floors were also of 

 bamboo, each stick, however, laid at 

 a small distance from the next ; so 

 that the air had a free passage from 

 the vtetuSs are ep cooked* e /! below, by which means these houses 



where strangers or visitors were always COOl. The thatch, of 



palm leaves, was always thick and 



strong, so that neither rain nor sunbeams could find entrance 

 through it. When we were at the town there were very 

 few inhabitants there : the rest lived in occasional houses 

 built in the rice-fields, where they watched the crop to 

 prevent the devastations of monkeys, birds, etc. These 

 occasional houses are smaller than those of the town; the 

 posts which support them also, instead of being four or five 

 feet in height, are eight or ten : otherwise the divisions, etc., 

 are exactly the same. 



Their dispositions, as far as we saw them, were very 



