GOOK’s VOYAO 
Of live they belong. I ftiall not attempt a defcription either o: 
their perfons or habits, for the better kind of China paper,- 
which is now common in England, exhibits a perfedt reprefen- 
tation of both, though perhaps with feme flight exaggerations 
approaching towards the caricatura. 
In eating they are eafily fatisfied, - though the few that are 
rich have many favory diihes. Rice, with a fmall proportion' 
of flefh or fi(h, is the food of the poor; and they have greatly' 
the advantage of the Mahometan Indians, whole religion for- 
bids them to eat of many things which they could moll eafily 
procure. The Chinefe,- on the contrary, being under no re- 
ilraint, eat, befides pork, dogs, cats, frog6, lizards, ferpents- 
of many kinds, and a great variety of fea animals, which the 
other inhabitants of this country do not confider as food; they 
cat alfo many vegetables, which an European, except he was- 
periihing with hunger, would never touch. 
The Chinefe have a fingular fuperftition with regard to the 
burial of their dead ; for they will upon no occafion open the 
ground a fecond time, where a body has been interred. Their 
burying grounds, therefore, in the neighbourhood of Batavia, - 
oover many hundred acres, and the Dutch, grudging the wafte 
of fo much land, will not fell any for this purpofe but at the 
3io(l exorbitant price. The Chinefe, however, conirive to 
raife the purchafe money, and afford another inflance of the 
folly and weaknefs of human nature, in transferring a regard- 
for the living to the dead, and making that the objeft of fo- 
licitude and expence, which cannot receive the leail benefit 
from either. Under the influenceof this univerfal prejudice, 
they take an uncommon method to preferve the body intire, 
and prevent the- remains of it from being mixed with the earth 
that furrounds it. They inclofe it in a large thick coffin of 
wood, not made of planks joined together, but hollowed out- 
of the folid timber, like a canoe ; this being covered, and let 
down into the grave, is furrounded with a coat of their mor^ 
tar, called Chinam, about eight or ten inches thick, which 
in a fhort time becomes as hard as a ftone. The relations of 
the deceafed attend the funeral ceremony, with a confiderable 
number of women that are hired to weep ; it might reafonably 
be fuppoied that the hired appearance of forrow could no more 
flatter the living than benefit the dead ; yet the appearance of 
forrow is known to be hired among people more reflective and 
enlightened than the Chinefe, In Batavia, the law requires 
that every man Ihould be buried according to his rank, which 
is in no cafe difpenfed with ; fo that if the deceafed has not 
left fufficient to pay his debts, an officer takes an inventory of 
what was in his poffeflion when he died, and out of the pro- 
duce buries him in the manner prclcribed, leaving only the 
overplus to his creditors. Thus in many initances are the liv- 
