EXPEDITION TO MOLUCCA ISLANDS. G7 



and sell groceries of all sorts. They all hitherto sold arrack, and 

 the consequent drunkenness of the place was abominable. I am 

 happy to observe now, however, that by the new regulations with 

 respect to the duties, this article is put under limitation, and taxed 

 as it should be. The Chinese, when they arrive at a certain age, 

 always prepare their coffins, as a memorandum of the end they 

 must sooner or later necessarily arrive at, and a stimulus to the 

 observance of morality during life ; and certainly they are in gene- 

 ral a very orderly well-behaved people. At every man's door you 

 accordingly see four or five immensely thick planks of which their 

 coffins are to be made. Their burying ground they always choose 

 on a hill, and that called Bocca China derives its name from being 

 chiefly devoted to that purpose. Their tombs are of a particular 

 construction, being surrounded by a considerable space open on 

 one side and semicircular on the other ; some of them formed at a 

 great expense. They always enclose with the dead body, a cer- 

 tain quantity of provision, and sometimes money. From their 

 industry and ingenuity they are very useful to new settlements, 

 and deserve to be delivered from those oppressive impositions 

 Avhicli the Admiral has very wisely put an end to. They are great 

 breeders of hogs, and are generally the persons who slaughter 

 them ; but why the privilege of doing so should become a subject 

 of taxation as in the Dutch Government, and still continued, more 

 than beef, I don't understand : unless it be that they have a parti- 

 cular method of increasing the weight of the pork by introducing 

 water into all its pores, similar to the cheat butchers at home 

 sometimes practise of blowing up meat to make it look well, but 

 still more effectual. They kill beef too, which is very coarse and 

 bad, being all buffalo. There are bullocks and cows here, but 

 very scarce and poor, and the milk and butter, both here and at 

 Penang, are very bad ; the cause is the same in both places ; the soil 

 not being sufficiently cleared, the natural grass in the swamps and 

 jungles is too coarse for bullocks, but is the best for buffaloes, 

 which here grow to a great size and strength, and when taken are 

 very fierce. For the same reason sheep cannot thrive, there is 

 therefore no mutton but from Bengal. 



Almost all the mountains in the Peninsula of Malacca as well as 

 those on Sumatra are impregnated more or less with gold, and 



