360 S O O L O O. 



fruit, Cocoa and Betel-nut. The vegetables were capsicums, cu- 

 cumbers, yams, sweet-potatoes, garlic, onions, edible fern-roots, and 

 radishes of the salmon variety, but thicker and more acrid in 

 flavour. 



In walking about the parts of the town we were permitted to enter, 

 large slabs of cut granite were seen, which were presumed to be from 

 China, where the walls of canals or streamlets are lined with it. 

 But Dr. Pickering in his rambles discovered pieces that had been 

 cut as if to form a monument, and remarked a difference between it 

 and the Chinese kind. On one or two pieces he saw the mark No. 1, 

 in black paint ; the material resembled the Chelmsford granite, and 

 it occurred to him that the stone had been cut in Boston.* I did not 

 hear of this circumstance until after we had left Sooloo, and have 

 little doubt now that the interdiction against our gentlemen visiting 

 some parts of the town was owing to the fact of the discovery of this 

 plunder. This may have been the reason why they so readily com- 

 plied with my demands, in order to get rid of us as soon as possible, 

 feeling themselves guilty, and being unprepared for defence ; for, of 

 the numerous guns mounted, few if any were serviceable. 



The theft of the pistol was so barefaced an affair, that I made up 

 my mind to insist on its restoration. At the setting of the watch in 

 the evening, it had been our practice on board the Vincennes to fire 

 a small brass howitzer. This frequently, in the calm evenings, pro- 

 duced a great reverberation, and rolled along the water to the sur- 

 rounding islands with considerable noise. Instead of it, on this 

 evening, I ordered one of the long guns to be fired, believing that the 

 sound and reverberation alone would suffice to intimidate such robbers. 

 One was accordingly fired in the direction of the town, which fairly 

 shook the island, as they said, and it was not long before we saw 

 that the rogues were fully aroused, for the clatter of gongs and 

 voices that came over the water, and the motion of lights, convinced 

 me that the pistol would be forthcoming in the morning. In this I 

 was not mistaken, for at early daylight I was awakened by a special 

 messenger from the Datu to tell me that the pistol was found, and 

 would be brought off without delay ; that he had been searching for 



* Since our return, inquiries have been made by him, which resulted in proving that 

 such was in truth their origin, and that the vessel in which they were shipped was for 

 a long time missing. The identical stones which he saw were a part of a monument 

 that was on its way to Canton. 



