2,16 
COLUMBO. 
rents, and drove most of us away. The few who staid were again 
introduced to the double figure, but they were now in bed. The 
exhibition was represented as hidicrous, but not indecent. 
An Arab ship came in soon after me, for TelHcherry, and as it 
was probable I might not meet with a better opportunity, I sent off 
my Portugueze serv^ant with my baggage, and a letter to the Resi- 
dent there, requesting him to assist in sending it to Mangalore. 
The Governor gave a ball to introduce me to the Dutch ladies, but 
they had taken prodigious offence at a character given of them in a 
work lately published by an English officer, and would not there- 
fore visit an English Governor. The writer alluded to ought not, 
however, to have been blamed by them on this head, as every obser- 
vation respecting the Dutch females is extracted from Admiral Sta- 
vorinus's account of the women at Batavia, and that, as nearly ver- 
batim as the change of place would admit. He is in other instances 
under very large, though unacknowledged obligations to Stavorinus, 
whose work has very great merit ; and several officers, who have 
visited the Spice Islands, assure me that it may be perfectly 
depended on in every thing that relates to them. These ladies had 
before a dispute with his Excellency, because he had presumed to 
ask them to a ball, before he had asked them to dinner. This 
horrible breach of etiquette they resented, but with little success ; 
for he obliged them to yield, and then gave them a dinner. I was 
however disappointed, as hardly a lady came. The dancing-room 
was a long colonnade, which joins the magazine to the powder mill, 
and is merely built of wood, thatched, with the sides open, and the 
roof supported by pillars ; these were covered with the green 
leaves of the cocoa-nut tree in tiers one above another in such a 
