I returned to my house, or rather my ship, to take my usual nap at noon; but the right shore being close at hand, separated only from our island by a narrow canal, obliges me almost immediately to rise again. The multifarious and manifold adorned and unadorned people afford a pleasing sight as I look at them from my windows. I view, as if from a box at the opera, the stage of black life on the whole length of the shore. Two women appear among the others; their _anteriora_ and _posteriora_ covered with two semicircular leathern aprons, tanned red, according to the usual custom here. One is coloured red from head to foot; the other has only her still youthful firm breasts and her head of that hue. She looks, therefore, as if she wore a black narrow jacket under the breasts, and breeches of the same colour under the red apron. She may have been surprised in her toilette by the news of our arrival, and have run off to the shore just as she was; the whole lower part of the body from the breasts downwards was tattooed in the manner customary on the White River. Buying and bartering are going on; cheating and robbing—the latter, however, only on our side. My servants are on the shore, and making gestures and signs with their fingers, to know what they shall purchase for me of the national wares. I do not bargain in person, for I am afraid of the sun. The people, in spite of their good humour, are, as I have convinced myself here, surprisingly mistrustful. Goods and the price of their purchase, are exchanging hands simultaneously. As the people transact but little business among themselves, it is very natural and right that they should exercise precaution in their transactions with a foreign people like ourselves; and it is certain that we have given the first cause for suspicion.