422 BATAVIA TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE = cu. xvir 
which on the coast of New 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, 
aman 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 
é j perpendicular sticks fastened to the 
2 P- beams. The floors were also of 
bamboo, each stick, however, laid at 
ii Ps 7. wellien’s e, pat ® Small distance from the next; so 
where the master and his that the air had a free passage from 
wife sleep; d, part where 2 
the children sleep; ¢, where below, by which means these houses 
the victuals are cooked; J, 
ee 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 
