Hamilton’s account of the east indies. 389

found that they gained by the water boats. This colony produces very little befidestobacco and long cloth. The natives are heathens.

Having thus run along the fea-coaft of Malabar, from Decully to Nagapatam,I mull vifit the Maldiva iflands, which lie off this coaft and that of Zeloan, about 60leagues diftant from the neared: part of them.

This duller of iflands, which reaches from feven degrees twenty minutes northlatitude into one degree l'outh, are all low, fandy and Iterile, bearing no fort of corn,and their only product is cocoa-nut. Their trees are not fo high nor grofs bodied asthofe which grow on the continent, or on Zeloan, but their fruit is pleafanter. Ofthat tree they build veffels of 20 or 30 tuns. Their hulls, malts, fails, rigging,anchors, cables, provifions and firing are all from this ufeful tree. It alfo afiords themoil for their kitchen and lamps, fugar and candid fweat-meats, and pretty Itrong cloth.Their feas produce abundance of filh, but their trade is chiefly from a fmall fhell-fifhcalled co.urie and the bonetta.

The couries are caught by putting branches of cocoa-nut trees with their leaveson, into the fea, and in five or fix months the little Ihell-filh Hicks to thofe leaves inclullers, which they take off, and digging pits in the fand, put them in, and coverthem up, and leave them two or three years in the pit, that the filh may putrify, andthen they take them out of the pit, and barter them for rice, butter and cloth, whichHupping bring from Ballafore in Orixa , near Bengal, in which countries couries pafs formoney from 2500 to 3000 for a rupee, or half a crown Englilh.

The bonnetta is caught with hook and line, or with nets. They come among thofeiflands in the months of April and May, in Ihoals, as our herrings do. They cut thefilh from the back-bone on each fide, and lay them in a lhade to dry, fprinkling themfometimes with fea-water. When they are dry enough to put in the fand, they wrapthem up in leaves of cocoa-nut trees, and put them a foot or two under the furface of thefand and, with the heat of the fun, they become baked as hard as llock-filh, and Ihipscome from Atcheen on the illand of Sumatra , and purchafe them with gold dull. I havefeen comelamalh (for that is their name after they are dried) fell at. Atcheen, for eightpounds llerling per 1000.

Their religions, are Paganifm and Mahometifm, and their language Chingulay,or the Zeloan language. The King refides on an illand in the latitude of four degreesnorth, and his illand, which bears the name of the King’s Illand, is fortified with aHone wall, without lime or mortar, and has a great many fmall cannon for his defence,and his reign is arbitrary.

The iflands are fo many, and, in moll places, fo near to one another, that theycould never yet be numbered. They are moll part inhabited; but the inhabitants verypoor. None of them dare wear any clothing above their girdle, but a turban ontheir head, without a fpecial warrant from the King, He fets governors of provincesover l’uch a number of iflands, and they lord it over the poor fubjecls as much as a -dragoon does over an Hugonot in France . They give burial to their dead, and notburning. And, at the illand of Hammandow, which lies in feven degrees, I fawcarving on fome tomb-ltones, as ingenioully cut with variety of figures as ever I faw in■Europe or Afia.

Their wells furnilh them with all the frelh-water they ufe, and they dig them nearthe depth of high water mark, which is about five or fix foot; and if they go deeper,tt becomes brackilh, becaufe there being no fubllance of folid . earth under the furface°f the fand, the fea-water percolates through the fand, and mixes with the rain water■that fupplies the fprings. So having given the belt account I can of a parcel of iflands