“Of their manners and religion, nothing else can be said than that, in many respects, they are more like wild beasts than reasonable human beings. Their women are delivered in the fields, or roads, or wherever they may happen to be taken in labour. After the birth they instantly put the infant in a bag, in which they carry their provisions, made of beaten bark of a tree. The women of the better class rub their faces with bruised coals, by which they make themselves look more like devils incarnate than human creatures; though it cannot be denied that they seem to possess, by the law of nature, a knowledge of the existence of a God, which they show by pointing with folded hands towards the heavens. For when any one lands at any place frequented by these people of Ceram, they require of us to raise our hands as they do: and with a sharp bamboo they cut both their own arms and those of their visitors. The mutual sucking of the blood from these wounds constitutes their oath, and implies a promise to do each other no mischief. Amongst them are found some letters or characters, written with a sort of red chalk on a rock. On this rock, also, were still to be seen some skulls and the bust of a man, looking as if put up as an ornament, with a shield and other weapons near it, the meaning of all which may be guessed at, but not fixed with certainty. Their food consists of roots, tree fruits, herbs, etc., but chiefly fish, caught by them at low water in holes in the bed of the river, as we, when lying at anchor thereabouts, could distinctly see by the motion of the thousands of little lights which they used. They know very little of cooking or drying their food, but generally eat it raw, except pork, which they eat when it has been a little smoked, and is less than half roasted. “In about 8° or 9° south latitude, we found a tall, terrible, and disgusting race of people, whose chiefs have the inside of the upper lip slit from the nose downwards, the two parts being kept asunder by what they call a gabbe-gabbe. The two sides of the nose, also, are bored through with sasappen, or thin awls, which gives their voices a frightful and hollow sound, as if coming out of a deep cellar.