The language that is spoken among all these people, from what place soever they originally came, is the Malay; at least it is a language so called, and probably it is a very corrupt dialect of that spoken at Malacca. Every little island indeed has a language of its own, and Java has two or three, but this lingua franca is the only language that is now spoken here, and, as I am told, it prevails over a great part of the East Indies. A dictionary of Malay and English was published in London by Thomas Bowrey, in the year 1701. Their women wear as much hair as can grow upon the head, and to increase the quantity, they use oils, and other preparations of various kinds. Of this ornament Nature has been very liberal; it is universally black, and is formed into a kind of circular wreath upon the top of the head, where it is fastened with a bodkin, in a taste which we thought inexpressibly elegant; the wreath of hair is surrounded by another of flowers, in which the Arabian jessamine is beautifully intermixed with the golden stars of the _Bonger Tanjong_. Both sexes constantly bathe themselves in the river at least once a day, a practice which, in this hot country, is equally necessary both to personal delicacy and health. The teeth of these people also, whatever they may suffer in their colour by chewing betel, are an object of great attention: the ends of them, both in the upper and under jaw, are rubbed with a kind of whetstone, by a very troublesome and painful operation, till they are perfectly even and flat, so that they cannot lose less than half a line in their length. A deep groove is then made across the teeth of the upper jaw, parallel with the gums, and in the middle between them and the extremity of the teeth; the depth of this groove is at least equal to one-fourth of the thickness of the teeth, so that it penetrates far beyond what is called the enamel, the least injury to which, according to the dentists of Europe, is fatal; yet among these people, where the practice of thus wounding the enamel is universal, we never saw a rotten tooth; nor is the blackness a stain, but a covering, which may be washed off at pleasure, and the teeth then appear as white as ivory, which however is not an excellence in the estimation of the belles and beaus of these nations.