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 
Radja himself has no more. 
The Dutch boast that they make many converts to 
Christianity; Mr. Lange said that there were 600 in the 
