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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