Among themselves, even two brothers and two sisters have each their separate baskets, with provision and the apparatus of their meal. When they first visited us at our tents, each brought his basket with him; and when we sat down to table, they would go out, sit down upon the ground, at two or three yards’ distance from each other, and turning their faces different ways, take their repast without interchanging a single word. The women not only abstain from eating with the men, and of the same victuals, but even have their victuals separately prepared by boys kept for that purpose, who deposit it in a separate shed, and attend them with it at their meals. But though they would not eat with us or with each other, they have often asked us to eat with them, when we have visited those with whom we were particularly acquainted at their houses; and we have often upon such occasions eaten out of the same basket, and drunk out of the same cup. The elder women, however, always appeared to be offended at this liberty; and if we happened to touch their victuals, or even the basket that contained it, would throw it away. After meals, and in the heat of the day, the middle-aged people of the better sort generally sleep: they are indeed extremely indolent; and sleeping and eating is almost all that they do. Those that are older are less drowsy, and the boys and girls are kept awake by the natural activity and sprightliness of their age. Their amusements have occasionally been mentioned in my account of the incidents that happened during our residence in this island, particularly music, dancing, wrestling, and shooting with the bow; they also sometimes vie with each other in throwing a lance. As shooting is not at a mark, but for distance; throwing the lance is not for distance, but at a mark: the weapon is about nine feet long, the mark is the bole of a plantain, and the distance about twenty yards. Their only musical instruments are flutes and drums; the flutes are made of a hollow bamboo about a foot long, and, as has been observed before, have only two stops, and consequently but four notes, out of which they seem hitherto to have formed but one tune: to these stops they apply the fore-finger of the left hand and the middle finger of the right. The drum is made of a hollow block of wood, of a cylindrical form, solid at one end, and covered at the other with shark’s skin: these they beat not with sticks, but their hands; and they know how to tune two drums of different notes into concord. They have also an expedient to bring the flutes that play together into unison, which is to roll up a leaf so as to slip over the end of the shortest, like our sliding tubes for telescopes, which they move up or down till the purpose is answered, of which they seem to judge by their ear with great nicety.