The horses are from eleven to twelve hands high, but though they are small, they are spirited and nimble, especially in pacing, which is their common step:  The inhabitants generally ride them without a saddle, and with no better bridle than a halter.  The sheep are of the kind which in England are called Bengal sheep, and differ from ours in many particulars.  They are covered with hair instead of wool; their ears are very large, and hang down under their horns, and their noses are arched; they are thought to have a general resemblance to a goat, and for that reason are frequently called cabritos:  Their flesh we thought the worst mutton we had ever eaten, being as lean as that of the buffaloes, and without flavour.  The hogs, however, were some of the fattest we had ever seen, though, as we were told, their principal food is the outside husks of rice, and a palm syrup dissolved in water.[106] The fowls are chiefly of the game breed, and large, but the eggs are remarkably small.

[Footnote 106:  The reader will please remember this evidence of the nutritious quality of the palm-syrup.  He will find it useful very shortly, when the value of sugar as an article of diet is mentioned.—­E]

Of the fish which the sea produces here, we know but little:  Turtles are sometimes found upon the coast, and are by these people, as well as all others, considered as a dainty.

The people are rather under than over the middling size; the women especially are remarkably short and squat built:  Their complexion is a dark brown, and their hair universally black and lank.  We saw no difference in the colour of rich and poor, though in the South-Sea islands those that were exposed to the weather were almost as brown as the New Hollanders, and the better sort nearly as fair as the natives of Europe.  The men are in general well-made, vigorous, and active, and have a greater variety in the make and disposition of their features than usual:  The countenances of the women, on the contrary, are all alike.

The men fasten their hair up to the top of their heads with a comb, the women tie it behind in a club, which is very far from becoming.  Both sexes eradicate the hair from under the arm, and the men do the same by their beards, for which purpose, the better sort always carry a pair of silver pincers hanging by a string round their necks; some, however, suffer a very little hair to remain upon their upper-lips, but this is always kept short.

The dress of both sexes consists of cotton cloth, which being dyed blue in the yarn, and not uniformly of the same shade, is in clouds or waves of that colour, and even in our eye had not an inelegant appearance.  This cloth they manufacture themselves, and two pieces, each about two yards long, and a yard and a half wide, make a dress:  One of them is worn round the middle, and the other covers the upper part of the body:  The lower edge of the piece that goes round the middle,