vulet of a ftrong fulphurated water, which was fo hot a quar ter of a mile below its fource, that I could not walk across it. The country called the Caffia country lies in latitude 1o Ñ. inland of our fettlement of Tappanooly: it is well inhabited by a people called Battas, who differ from all the other inhabitants of Sumatra in language, manners, and cuftoms. They have no religious worship, bat have fome confufed idea of three fuperior beings; two of which are of a benign nature; and the third an evil genius, whom they ftyle Murgifo, and to whom they use fome kind of incantation to prevent his doing them hurt. They feem to think their ancestors are a kind of fuperior beings, attendant always upon them. They have no king, but live in villages [compongs] abfolutely independent of each other, and perpetually at war with one another: their villages they fortify very ftrongly with double fences of camphire plank pointed, and placed with their points projecting outwards, and between these fences they put pieces of bamboo, hardened by fire, and likewife pointed, which are concealed by the grafs, but will run quite through a man's foot. Without thefe fences they plant a prickly fpecies of bamboo, which foon forms an impenetrable hedge. They never ftir out of these compongs unarmed; their arms are match-lock guns, which, as well as the powder, are made in the country, and fpears with long iron heads. They do not fight in an open manner, but way-lay and shoot or take prifoner fingle people in the woods or paddy-fields. These prifoners, if they happen to be the people who have given the offence, they put to death, and eat, and their skulls they hang up as trophies in the houses where the unmarried men and boys eat and fleep. They allow of polygamy: a man may purchase as many wives as he pleases; but their number feldom exceeds eight. They have no marriage ceremony; but, when the putchafe is agreed on by the father, the man kills a buffalo, or a horfe, invites as many people as he can; and he and the woman fit and eat together before the whole company, and are af terwards confidered as man and wife. If afterwards the man chufes to part with his wife, he fends her back to her relations with all her trinkets, but they keep the purchase-money; if the wife diflikes her husband, her relations must repay double the purchase money. The man detected in adultery is punished with death, and the body eaten by the offended party and his friends: the woman becomes the flave of her husband, and is rendered infamous by cutting off her hair. Public theft is alfo punished with death, and the body eaten. All their wives live in the fame houfe with the hufband, and the houses have no partition; but each wife has her feparate fire place. Girls and unmarried women wear fix or eight large rings. of thick brass wire about their neck, and great numbers of tin rings in their ears; but all these ornaments are laid afide when they marry. They often preferve the dead bodies of their radjas (by which name they call every freeman that has property, of which there are fometimes one, fometimes more, in one compong, and the reft are vaffals) for three months and upwards before they bury them: this they continue to do by putting the body in a coffin well caulked with dammar (a kind of rezin): they place the coffin in the upper part of the house, and having made a hole at the bottom, fit thereto a piece of bamboo, which reaches quite through the house, and three or four feet into the ground: this ferves to convey all putrid moisture from the corpfe without occafioning any fmell. They feem to have great ceremonies at these funerals; but they would not allow me to fee them. I faw feveral figures dreffed up like men, and heard a kind of finging and dancing all night before the body was interred: they alfo fired a great many guns. At thefe funerals they kill a great many buffaloes; every radja, for a confiderable distance, brings a buffalo and kills it at the grave of the deceased, fometimes even a year after his interment; we affifted at the ceremony of killing the 106th buffalo at a radja's grave. . The Battas have abundance of black cattle, buffaloes, and horfes, all which they eat. They alfo have great quantities of small black dogs, with erect pointed ears, which they fatten and eat. Rats, and all forts of wild animals, whether killed by them or found dead, they eat indifferently. Man's flesh may rather be faid to be eaten in terrorem, than to be their common food; yet they prefer it to all others, and fpeak with peculiar raptures of the foles of the feet and palms of the hands. They expreffed much furprize on being informed that white people did not kill, much less eat, their prisoners. These people, though cannibals, received me with great hofpitality and civility; and though it was thought very dangerous for any European to venture among them, as they are a warlike people, and extremely jealous of ftrangers; yet I took only fix Malays as a guard, but was escorted from place to place by thirty, forty, and fometimes one hundred of the natives, armed with match-lock guns, and matches burning.' We are told that the camphire and benjamin trees are in this country in great abundance, The former grows to the fize of our largest oaks, and is the common timber in ufe, Mr. Miller has feen thofe trees near a hundred foot high. Its leaves are acuminated, and very different from the camphire tree feen in the botanic gardens, which is the tree whence the Japanese procure their camphire by a chemical procefs; but the trees in Sumatra bear camphire in a concrete form. It appears extraordinary, that, though the Chinese purchase this fubftance at 250 or 300l. per cwt. they afterwards fell it to European traders at about a quarter of the money. Ff3 XII. A XII. A Meteorological Diary, &c. kept at Fort St. George in the East Indies. By Mr. William Roxburgh, Afliftant-furgeon to the Hofpital at the faid Fort.-A diary for the five months of October, November, December, 1776, January, and February, 1777, confifting of obfervations, three times a day, of the barometer, thermometer, winds, and rain; but without any mean refults drawn from them. Subjoined is at lift of the number of patients that were fick in the place at the end of each month, specifying the number in each disease; they are in all about 200 on an average, of which between one-fourth and one-fifth were venereal. XIII. Experiments upon Air, and, the Effects of different Kinds of Eluvia upon it; made at York. By W. White, M. D. F. S. A.-Thefe experiments Dr. White undertook with a view to difcover the effects of various substances in vitiating the air, and particularly the low marshy ground about York. The principal refults from them may be reduced to the following; 1. the atmospheric air is rendered worfe by a long continuance of dry weather; 2. it is purified by rains, and by winds, efpecially wefterly ones in this country; 3. it is confiderably worie in cities and large towns, than in the country, even at a fmall diftance; 4. it is quickly poifoned by the effluvia from animal bodies, even whilft perfe&ly fweet and free from putridity; 5. vegetable matters, when not in a growing ftate, have a fimilar effect, and in a degree equally powerful; 6. mere odour does not injure the air, nor do volatile alcalies, nor pure loamy earth, nor clay nor fandy foils; 7. the air is generally pure over waters; 8, the air is greatly injured by the effluvia from the thick mud of bogs and marshes; 9. but this is much obviated by laying them under water; 10. air is not hurt by fuch mud when perfectly dry; 11. air is alfo infected by the dirt of the streets. Art. XIV, An Account of the Earthquake which was felt at Manchester and other Places, on the 14th Day of September, 1777. By Mr. Thomas Henry.-The defcription here given by Mr. Henry of this earthquake, induces one to think it ftrongly refembles the effects of ele&ricity, and to afcribe it to a large electrical fhock. He gives a circumftantial account of it, and obferves that the motion of the earthquake, at least of a rushing wind which attended it, was from fouth-west to north-eaft. It was felt at York, Lancafter, Liverpool, Chefter, Birmingham, Derby, and Gainsborough and within this circuit, the diameter of which must be 130 or 140 miles, with greatest violence in the neighbourhood of Manchester, which appears to have been the center of it. Dialogues of Lucian. From the Greek. Vol. II. boards. Flexney. 8.00. 55. IN N our Review for Auguft, 1773, the reader will find fome account of Lucian, and of the first volume of Mr. Carr's tranflation, which contained nine or ten dialogues. In the volume before us there are about forty-five pieces, among which are Bwv Пlgaris, the Sale of Lives, a tract on Sacrifices, the Ship, or the Withes, the Fugitives, and a treatise on the Manner in which History ought to be written. In the Sale of Lives Lucian introduces Mercury, at the com mand of Jupiter, difpofing of the philofophers by auction, viz. Pythagoras, Diogenes, Ariftippus, Democritus, Heraclitus, Socrates, Epicurus, Chryfippus, Ariftotle, and Pyrrho. This gives him an opportunity to difplay fome of their peculiar doctrines, with a defign to expofe them to ridicule. In the differtation on Sacrifices the author contends, that? the creed of the poets, and the notions of the vulgar, with respect to the facrifices of the Greeks, the Egyptians, and other nations, are lamentable inftances of the ignorance, or ludicrous examples of the folly of mankind, In the dialogue, intitled the Ship, he expofes the vanity of human wishes. In the Fugitives, Philofophy makes a complaint to Jupiter of flaves and raggamuffins, affuming the character of philofophers. The treatife on Hiftory is a valuable, work, containing juft remarks on the ignorance, pedantry, and affectation of severali writers in the time of Lucian, about the year 170, with excellent rules for the direction of all future hiftorians. Let our hiftorian, fays he, be without fear, unbiaffed, perfectly free, open, and ingenuous, ready to communicate whatever he knows to be true, and calling, as it becomes him, a fpade à fpade. He is not to be the tributary of love, or hatred; not too merciful, too modeft, or too fhamefaced, to be hindered from giving any man his due. He is to be an upright judge, fo far well inclined to all the world, as never to bestow on any one perfon in it more than enough. In all his writings he is to act the part of an impartial ftranger, a citizen of the world, acknowledging no jurifdiction fuperior to his own judgment, never once confidering what his readers may fay of him, but only concerned to relate to them the real fact. This was the rule which Thucydides prescribed to himfelf, fairly to diftinguish between the right and the wrong, at a time when Herodotus was held in fuch great admiration, that his feveral books were called by the names of the nine Mufes. Ff4 > "The The thing is, fays he, rather to provide a lafting treasures than to catch at a momentary applaufe; to diveft yourself of fable, and to tranfmit to after-ages an exact tranfcript of what has truly come to pass." He adds, that it is the general good, which every fenfible writer will propofe to himself as the main end of history; that, whenever fimilar circumftances may happen again to arife, the reader may learn to make a right ufe of them, by looking back to what he will find already recorded." Let fuch be the difpofition of my hiftorian. As to language and the force of expreffion, he needs not aim at exceffive vehemence, nor difplay fuch thundering periods, as if he meant to lay violent hands on his reader. Rather let that terrible fharpness of oratory yield to fomething more benign. Let his fentiments be concife and of a piece, his diction perfpicuous and in general use, such as is best adapted to the elucidation of his fubject. As we have propofed freedom of fpeech and ingenuous truth to direct our author's conduct, fo let the first and great aim of his language be most clearly to explain and illuftrate his matter, always rejecting the ufe of terms obfcure or far remote from common life, and equally above copying the jargon of the mob. He muft ftudy to become mafter of fuch a mode of expreffion, as the learned shall approve, and the un- ̈ learned understand. Let there be no prepofterous ornaments, no turgid and far-fetched allufions, which have the fame effect an an author's ftyle that too much feafoning has on foup. The hiftorian's mind is to go along with his fubject; and, when he is engaged in drawing up armies, and fighting battles by land or fea, he may fairly call in the aid of the poetical art, the better to exalt and elevate his ftory. On fuch occafions he will have need of the poetical afflatus, the better to fill his fails, and waft his towering bark over the fummit of the waves. He may however in general vouchsafe to tread the earth, nor leave it," unless when raised aloft by the beauty and grandeur of his fubject, to which he is evermore as much as poffible to attach himfelf, but without once deviating into wildness, or fuffering his imagination to be improperly heated. Which, whenever it happens, there is then the greateft danger of flying off and being furioufly hurried away into downright poetry. The reins of the fancy are then to be held faft, and fobriety of fentiment carefully confulted; fince too fiery a fentiment is not more dangerous i the fteed you cross than in the ftyle you write. If you mount your Pegafus, it will be advifeable to go a foot pace, and hold faft for fear of a fall. In the management of your words a due moderation is always to be regarded. Terms too diftant, uncouth, and rough, are carefully to be avoided. fhould your periods approach, as thofe of many hiftorians do, to a perfect rhythmus. The one is as much the effect of a falfe tafte, as the other is unpleafant to the ear. The materials are not to be huddled together at random; great pains, and the moft laborious diligence, being requifite in making a judicious Nor fe |