is kept until the debt is discharged. It sometimes happens, as they 
affirm, that the wife of a debtor is not redeemed for the space of one, 
two, or three years ; and then if, during her residence and connection 
with the creditor, a family should have been the consequence, half of 
it is considered as the property of the person with whom she lived, and 
half that of her real husband 1 . 
The country has a most wretched appearance, and its inhabitants 
are a miserable and puny race. The lower ranks without scruple 
dispose of their children for slaves, to any purchaser, and that too for 
a very trifling consideration; nor yet, though in a traffic so unnatural, 
is the agency of a third person ever employed. Nothing is more com¬ 
mon than to see a mother dress up her child, and bring it to market, 
with no other hope, no other view, than to enhance the price she may 
procure for it. Indeed the extreme poverty and wretchedness of these 
people will forcibly appear, when we recollect how little is necessary 
for the subsistence of a peasant in these regions. The value of this can 
seldom amount to more than one penny per day, even allowing him to 
make his meal of two pounds of boiled rice, with a due proportion of 
salt, oil, vegetables, fish, and chili m . 
1 It is not possible for a traveller, passing rapidly through a strange country, to catch 
the manners, or judge of the influence which custom, or a sense of honour, may have 
on the natural propensities of the people. We may conclude that this bias must be very 
strong in a community where such a law continues to exist; since in any other, which 
should adopt it as a novel institution, the creditor would have a very insecure hold on 
the probity of his debtor, not less, perhaps, from the reluctance of the latter to recover 
his wife, than to part with his money. The law would not subsist, if it was not known 
to be effective of its purpose. 
m A kind of red pepper, in universal use, made from the capsicum annuum of Linnams. 
