heads, as full of grease as it can hold. Their legs are wound about,
from the ankle to the knees, with the guts of beasts well greased.

"These people, called _Hodmandods_ by the Dutch, are born white, but
they make themselves black by smearing their bodies all over with soot
and grease, so that by frequent repetition they become as black as
negroes. Their children, when young, are of a comely form, but their
noses are like those of the negroes. When they marry, the woman cuts off
one joint of her finger; and, if her husband die and she remarry again,
she cuts off another joint, and so on however often she may marry.

"They are a most filthy race, and will feed upon any thing, however
foul. When the Hollanders kill a beast, these people get the guts, and
having squeezed out the excrements, without washing or scraping, they
lay them upon the coals, and eat them before they are well heated
through. If even a slave of the Hollanders wish to have one of their
women, he has only to give her husband a piece of tobacco. Yet will they
beat their wives if unfaithful with one of their own nation, though they
care not how they act with the men of other nations. They are worshipers
of the moon, and thousands of them may be seen dancing and singing by
the sea-side, when they expect to see that luminary; but if it happen
to be dark weather, so that the moon does not appear, they say their god
is angry with them. While we were at the Cape, one of the _Hodmandods_
drank himself dead in the fort, on which the others came and put oil and
milk into his mouth, but finding he was dead, they began to prepare for
his burial in the following manner:--Having shaved or scraped his body,
arms, and legs, with their knives, they dug a great hole, in which they
placed him on his breech in a sitting posture, heaping stones about him
to keep him upright. Then came the women, making a most horrible noise
round the hole which was afterwards filled up with earth."