The Inhabitants Are An Honest And Fair-Dealing People, Much Of The Same Stature And Colour With Europeans, But With Larger Foreheads, Very Large Eyes Of A Brazil Or Red Colour, With Flat Noses, And Wear Their Hair Long.

It has a great number of birds different from ours, except peacocks, turtle-doves, and crows, which are the same as we have.

In their dress, the natives wear mantles or cloaks of cotton, silk, or camblet, always having one arm bare. They have no defensive armour, as they are hardly ever at war; but when they go to sea they use bows and arrows, and likewise poisoned arrows made of reeds, which they blow from long hollow canes, and the poison with which these arrows are infected is so virulent that death certainly follows from the slightest wound. They have no kind of fire-arms. They eat all kinds of flesh, fish, or fruit, as they please or can procure.

Some of the natives of this island are so very barbarous, that when their parents become feeble from age, so as to be useless to themselves and others, they bring them into the public market and sell them to the cannibals who eat human flesh, who immediately upon buying them, kill and eat them. Likewise when any young person falls into disease of which they do not expect he shall recover, his kinsmen sell him in the same manner to the cannibals. When my companion expressed his horror at this barbarous and savage practice, a certain native merchant observed, "That no sacrifice could redeem the sins of the Persians, who gave the flesh of their dead to be eaten by the worms." Abhorring these savage manners, we returned to our ship not willing to tarry longer in that island. While we were there, the Christian merchants, who were ever desirous to shew us strange things which we might relate at our return to our own country, made us remark that the sun at noon-day was to the north of us, which as they said is always the case in the month of July. I must acknowledge however, that I hardly remember these things distinctly, as I had then almost forgot the names of our months. At this island my companion bought two fine emeralds for 1000 pieces of gold, and likewise two children who were eunuchs, for two hundred pieces, as there are in that country certain merchants who deal solely in these young eunuchs.

After remaining fifteen days in Java, being weary of the barbarous manners of the inhabitants, and of the coldness of the country at that season of the year, we determined to prosecute our voyage back to India, as there were no other regions in these eastern parts worth seeing. Wherefore, hiring a light bark, we departed from thence, and having sailed fifteen days to the north-west, we came to the city of Malacca, where we remained three days. At this place we took our leave of the Christian merchants, with sorrowful minds and many friendly embraces.

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