with a gun and sword, he returned four cows, and proclaimed liberty for the people to trade with us.  He gave the English cocoa-nuts to eat, while he chewed betel and areka-nut, tempered with lime of burnt oister shells.  It has a hot biting taste, voids rheum, cools the head, and is all their physic.  It makes those giddy who are not accustomed to its use, producing red spittles, and in time colours the teeth black, which they esteem handsome, and they use this continually.  From the governor they were conducted to the carpenter’s house, who was a chief man in the town.  His house was built of stone and lime, low and little, plaistered with white lime, roofed with rafters, which were covered with leaves of the cocoa-nut tree, the outsides wattled with canes.

“Their houses are kept clean and neat, with good household stuff, having gardens inclosed with canes, in which they grow tobacco and plantains.  For dinner, a board was set upon tressels, on which was spread a fine new mat, and stone benches stood around, on which the guests sat.  First, water was brought to each in a cocoa-shell, and poured into a wooden platter, and the rinds of cocoa-nuts were used instead of towels.  There was then set before the company boiled rice, roasted plantains, quarters of hens, and pieces of goat’s flesh broiled.  After grace said, they fell to their meat, using bread made of cocoa-nut kernels, beaten up with honey, and fried.  The drink was palamito wine, and the milk of the cocoa-nuts.  Those who went to see the sultan, named Amir Adell, found all things much in the same manner, only that his behaviour was more light, and he made haste to get drunk with some wine carried to him by the English.  The people of these islands are strict Mahomedans, and very jealous of letting their women or mosques be seen.  For, on some of the English coming near a village, they shut them up, and threatened to kill them if they came nearer.  Many of them speak and write Arabic, and some few of them Portuguese, as they trade with Mosambique in junks of forty tons burden, built, caulked, and rigged all out of the cocoa-nut tree.  Here we bought oxen and cows, fat but small, Arabian sheep, hens, oranges, lemons, and limes in abundance, paying for them in calicoes, hollands, sword-blades, dollars, glasses, and other trifles.”—­T.R.

We sailed from Mohelia on the 2d August, and on the 17th got sight of cape Guardafui, where the natives seemed afraid of us.  The 20th we anchored in the road of Galencia in Socotora, where the fierceness of the wind raised the sea into a continual surf all round about us, and by the spray, blown about us like continual rain, our masts, yards, and tackle were made white all over by the salt, like so much hoar-frost; The 23d we anchored at Tamara, the town where the king resides, and on the 24th at Delisha.  They here demanded thirty dollars for the quintal of aloes, which made us buy the less.  The Faiking told us that Captain Downton had