Title
A Voyage to the East Indies: Page 93
Description
are ten or twelve Inches Long. Birds of Prey of several species are found here, and are very usefull for the Purposes before mention’d. Water Fowl are in Amazing Plenty. They will shoot forty Brace of wild Ducks or Teal in a Day. The black Fellows have a curious, yet simple Method of catching them. They go into the Lake where the Ducks are with an earthen Pott on their Heads, having holes in it for the convenience of sight and air. They walk along with their Heads above water till they go into the middle of a Flock and the Birds taking it really for a Pot of which there are many floating on the Lake, suffer themselves to be laid hold of by the Legs & hawl’d down one after the Other till the Man’s Hands are full. The Vegetable World abounds with a great vanity of Plants etc., unknown to other Climates, at the same Time that it produces all the known Fruits, Plants & Flowers. Inhabitants of the Country discover many powerful Medicines amongst them, and their Effect is often admirably beneficial, tho’ administer’d by People, totally unacquainted with the Laws of Physic or Nature. They are like the old women in England, who having been long possess’d of a Recipe for any Disease, administer it in all its Stages, without the least attention to the Symptoms of the Disease, and assign no other Reason for doing so, than that their Grandmothers did so too Yet they sometimes produce wonderful Cures . . . . . . . . [end page 93]
