426 BATAVIA TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE cu. xvi 
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. 
28th. 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. 
