426 BATAVIA TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE CH. xvm 



carried between Madagascar and Java to make the brown, 

 long-haired people of the latter speak a language similar to 

 that of the black, woolly-headed natives of the other, is, I 

 confess, far beyond my comprehension : unless the Egyptian 

 learning running in two courses, one through Africa, the 

 other through Asia, might introduce the same words, and, 

 what is still more probable, numerical terms into the 

 languages of people who never had communicated with each 

 other. But this point, requiring a depth of knowledge of 

 antiquities, I must leave to antiquarians to discuss. 



14th January. Weighed; our breeze, though favourable, 

 was, however, so slack, that by night we had got no further 

 than abreast of the town, where we anchored. 



20th. Myself, who had begun with the bark yesterday, 

 missed my fever to-day ; the people, however, in general grew 

 worse, and many had now the dysentery or bloody flux. 



22nd. Almost all the ship's company were now ill, either 

 with fluxes or severe purgings ; myself far from well, Mr. 

 Sporing very ill, and Mr. Parkinson very little better : his 

 complaint was a slow fever. 



23rd. Myself was too ill to-day to do anything one of 

 our people died of the flux in the evening. 



24th. My distemper this day turned out to be a flux, 

 attended (as that disease always is) with excruciating pains 

 in my bowels, on which I took to my bed : in the evening 

 Mr. Sporing died. 



25th. One more of the people died to-day. Myself 

 endured the pain of the damned almost. The surgeon of 

 the ship thought proper to order me the hot bath, into 

 which I went four times at the intervals of two hours and 

 felt great relief. 



26th. Though better than yesterday my pains were 

 still almost intolerable. In the evening Mr. Parkinson 

 died, and one more of the ship's crew. 



2Sth. This day Mr. Green, our astronomer, and two of 

 the people died, all of the very same complaint as I 

 laboured under, no very encouraging circumstance. 



