Hence it is in a great measure inferred that they are a quiet and harmless people. Their mode of living is, indeed, with regard to the intercourse among themselves, an uninterrupted calm. Although the male part are given to drinking, quarrels and fighting are almost unknown among them; and they are so much used to blows and all kinds of ill treatment from their superiors, that they approach with the greatest respect and submission any who bear upon themselves the least external mark of superiority. Their religious notions, grounded upon the most ridiculous superstition, are extremely singular. They firmly believe in all sorts of witchcraft, in apparitions of the dead, in ghosts, and in all kinds of miracles performed by the images of saints, and by the virtues of the holy water. In illness, they place an image near them, and when they recover, though it were through the assistance of the ablest physician, they attribute their return to health to the good offices of the image alone. Their observance of Lent days is so strict, that the threats of instant death would hardly prevail upon any one to taste of the aliments specified in the endless catalogue of forbidden food. Their other Christian duties, although similar to those of the superior classes of their countrymen, are carried to greater excess. Invoking the Holy Virgin or any saint, is always substituted to regular prayer. Divine Providence is never directly addressed. The villages throughout the country are principally composed of peasants’ huts, all built in the same style and of the same size. The walls are of clay, and the roofs thatched with straw, neither of which are calculated to protect the lodgers from the inclemency of the bad seasons. The groundfloors are, however, occupied as long as the weather will permit, and in winter they retire to cells under ground, easily kept warm by means of a little fire made of dried dung and some branches of trees; which, at the same time, serves for cooking their scanty food. Each family, however numerous, sleeps in one of these subterraneous habitations, men, women, and children, all heaped up together; and their respective beds consist of one piece of coarse woollen cloth, which serves in the double capacity of matrass and covering. Their ordinary food is composed of a kind of dough to which they give the name of _mammalinga_, made of the flour of Indian wheat, sometimes mixed with milk. The first two or three days after a long Lent, they sparingly indulge themselves in meat; but the greater part cannot afford even so great a treat, and content themselves with eggs fried in butter, and the milk to their mammalinga. They continue the whole day out of doors at work, and they bear with indifference all the extremes of the weather. Their industry, however, is not of a very active kind, and they take frequent rest.