146 
TRAVELS IN 
one of his moft favorite fenfualltles, by flogging them till he 
has fmoked as many pipes of tobacco as he may judge the mag- 
nitude cjf the crime to deferve. The government of Malacca, 
according to the manufcript journal of an intelligent officer in 
the expedition againft that fettlement, has adopted the fame 
cuftom of flogging by pipes ; and the fifcal or chief magiftrate, 
or fome of his deputies, are the fmokers on fuch occafions. 
By a refolution of the old government, as unjuft as it was 
inhuman, a peafant was allowed to claim as his property, till 
the age of five-and-twenty, all the children of the Hottentots in 
his fervice to whom he had given in their infancy a morfel of 
meat. At the expiration of this period the odds are ten to one 
that the flave is not emancipated. A Hottentot knows nothing 
of his age ; " he takes no note of time." And though the fpi- 
rit that didated this humane law expanded its beneficence in 
favor of the Hottentot by directing the farmer to regifler the 
birth of fuch children as he may intend to make his flaves, yet 
it feldom happens, removed as many of them are to the diftance 
of ten or twelve days' journey from the Drofdy, that the Hot- 
tentot has an opportunity of inquiring when his fervitude will 
expire ; and indeed it is a chance if he thinks upon or even 
knows the exiftence of fuch a refource. Should he be fortunate 
enough to efcape at the end of the period, the befl part of his 
life has been fpent in a profitlefs fervitude, and he is turned 
adrift in the decline of life (for a Hottentot begins to grow old 
at thirty) without any earthly thing he can call his own, except 
the fheep's fkin upon his back. 
The 
