Orange Isle Is The Largest, But Barren, Rocky, And Uninhabited, And
Has No Anchorage On Its Coasts.
Monmouth and Grafton isles are both
hilly, but well inhabited.
Goat isle and Bashee isle are flat, the
former having a town. The hills in all these isles are rocky; but the
intermediate vallies are fertile in grass, plantains, bananas,
pine-apples, pompions, sugar-canes, potatoes, and some cotton, and are
well supplied with brooks of fresh water. They are also well stored
with goats and hogs, but have hardly any fowls, either wild or tame. The
natives are short and thick, with round faces and thick eye-brows, with
hazel-coloured eyes, rather small, yet larger than those of the Chinese.
Their noses are short and low; their mouths and lips middle-sized, with
white teeth; and their hair is thick, black, and lank, which they cut
short. Their complexion is of a dark copper colour, and they go all
bare-headed, having for the most part no clothes, except a clout about
the middle, though some have jackets of plantain leaves, as rough as a
bear-skin. The women have a short petticoat of coarse calico, reaching a
little below the knees, and both sexes wear ear-rings of a yellow metal
dug from their mountains, having the weight and colour of gold, but
somewhat paler. Whether it be in reality gold or not, I cannot say, but
it looked of a fine colour at first, which afterwards faded, which made
us suspect it, and we therefore bought very little. We observed that the
natives smeared it with a red earth, and then made it red-hot in a quick
fire, which restored its former colour.
The houses of the natives are small, and hardly five feet high,
collected into villages on the sides of rocky hills, and built in three
or four rows, one above the other. These rocky precipices are framed by
nature into different ledges, or deep steps of stairs as it were, on
each of which they build a row of houses, ascending from one row to
another by means of ladders in the middle of each row, and when these
are removed they are inaccessible. They live mostly by fishing, and are
very expert in building boats, much like our Deal yawls. They have also
larger vessels, rowed by twelve or fourteen oars, two men to each bank.
They never kill any goats themselves, but feed on the guts and skins,
which last they broil after singing off the hair.[199] They also make a
dish of locusts, which come at certain seasons to devour their potatoes;
on which occasions they catch these insects in nets, and broil or bake
them in earthen pans, when they are tolerable eating. Their ordinary
drink is water; but they make also a kind of liquor of the juice of
sugar-canes, boiled up with black-berries, allowed afterwards to ferment
four or five days in jars. It then settles and becomes clear, when it
affords a strong and pleasant liquor, which they call bashee,
resembling our English beer both in taste and colour.
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