Every Raja sets up in the principal town of his province, or nigree, a large stone, which serves as a memorial of his reign.  In the principal town of Seba, where we lay, there are thirteen such stones, besides many fragments of others, which had been set up in earlier times, and are now mouldering away:  These monuments seem to prove that some kind of civil establishment here is of considerable antiquity.  The last thirteen reigns in England make something more than 276 years.

Many of these stones are so large, that it is difficult to conceive by what means they were brought to their present station, especially as it is the summit of a hill; but the world is full of memorials of human strength, in which the mechanical powers that have been since added by mathematical science, seem to be surpassed; and of such monuments there are not a few among the remains of barbarous antiquity in our own country, besides those upon Salisbury plain.

These stones not only record the reigns of successive princes, but serve for a purpose much more extraordinary, and probably altogether peculiar to this country.  When a raja dies, a general feast is proclaimed throughout his dominions, and all his subjects assemble round these stones:  Almost every living creature that can be caught is then killed, and the feast lasts for a less or greater number of weeks or months, as the kingdom happens to be more or lets furnished with live stock at the time; the stones serve for tables.  When this madness is over, a fast must necessarily ensue, and the whole kingdom is obliged to subsist upon syrup and water, if it happens in the dry season, when no vegetables can be procured, till a new stock of animals can be raised from the few that have escaped by chance, or been preserved by policy from the general massacre, or can be procured from the neighbouring kingdoms.  Such, however, is the account that we received from Mr Lange.

We had no opportunity to examine any of their manufactures, except that of their cloth, which they spin, weave, and dye; we did not indeed see them employed, but many of the instruments which they use fell in our way.  We saw their machine for clearing cotton of its seeds, which is made upon the same principles as those in Europe, but is so small that it might be taken for a model, or a toy:  It consists of two cylinders, like our round rulers, somewhat less than an inch in diameter, one of which, being turned round by a plain winch, turns the other by means of an endless worm; and the whole machine is not more than fourteen inches long, and seven high:  That which we saw had been much used, and many pieces of cotton were hanging about it, so that there is no reason to doubt its being a fair specimen of the rest.  We also once saw their apparatus for spinning; it consisted of a bobbin, on which was wound a small quantity of thread, and a kind of distaff filled with cotton; we conjectured therefore that they spin by hand, as the women of Europe did before the introduction