325 
them, trees as well as animals: the like terror is conceived by the 
crashing noise made among the woods by the wild bulls: for all 
which it is the practice of the wood-men to dig deep pits, and 
cover them with sods, laid over with boughs, to entrap them in 
their headstrong and unwary course. Monkeys, with white ruffs, 
and black shagged bodies, looking very gravely, are brought from 
hence.’' 
“ The first blackamoor pullen I ever saw was here: the out- 
ward skin of the fowl was a perfect negro, the bones also being as 
black as jet: under the skin nothing could be whiter than the 
flesh, more tender, or more grateful. On the sea-coast are water- 
snakes, which, by the goodness of Providence, warn the seamen, 
when all is obscured, of their too near approach to land: these are 
as sure presages on the Indian coast, as the Cape-birds are 
there.” 
The water-snakes, black monkeys, and black-boned fowls, like 
the native inhabitants of Malabar, remain unchanged; but the 
European settlements on the coast have been all metamorphosed 
since the French revolution, and the wars with the sovereigns of 
Mysore. The poultry, with a black skin and black bones, though 
disagreeable at first to strangers, are found to be more delicate in 
flavour, and superior in whiteness to the other kind : the hogs, fowls, 
and ducks in the southern parts of the coast, feed so much upon 
fish, that their flesh is frequently unpleasant, and offensive. 
A few miles from Calicut is a small sea-port, called Vapura, 
pleasantly situated on the banks of a river; from whence a great 
quantity of teak-wood is exported, and where vessels are built of 
that timber. These valuable trees are felled on the Gaut mourn 
