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and Betel-nut. The vegetables were capsicums, cucumbers, 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 towm 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 fear they had of the discovery of this plunder. 
This may have been the reason why they so readily complied with my 
demands, in order to get rid of us as soon as possible, feeling them¬ 
selves 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, produced 
a great reverberation, and rolled along the water to the surrounding 
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 it all night, and had at last suc¬ 
ceeded in finding it, as well as the thief, on whom he intended to inflict 
the bastinado. Accordingly, in a short time the pistol was delivered 
on board, and every expression of friendship and good-will given, with 
the strongest assurances that nothing of the kind should happen again. 
* 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. 
