Purch. Pilgr. I.228. Astl. I.344. We have here given only
so much of the narrative of Jones as supplies additional circumstances
after the end of that by Coverte. - E.]
[Footnote 294: This surely is a gross error, as they could hardly exceed
the distance of a league or two from shore, though the shore is said in
the former narrative to have been twenty leagues from where the ship was
lost. - E.]
The governor of this town of Gundavee is a Banian, and one of those
people who observe the law of Pythagoras. They hold it a great sin to
eat of any thing that hath life, but live on that which the earth
naturally produces. They likewise hold the cow in great honour and
reverence, and also observe the ancient custom of burning their dead.
It has also been an ancient custom among them, for the women to burn
themselves alive along with the bodies of their deceased husbands; but
of late years they have learnt more wisdom, and do not use this custom
so commonly; yet those women who do not, have their hair cut out, and
are ever afterwards held as dishonoured, for refusing to accompany their
husbands into the other world.
On the 7th of September, we left Gundavee to travel by land to Surat,
which might be some thirty or forty miles distant, and we arrived there
on the 9th, where we were met by William Finch, who kept the English
factory at that place.
