es other fruits, from which they
make good oil.

For the cultivation of rice they till the ground with oxen as we do, and
at the season for sowing they have a holiday, on which they testify
their joy by singing and dancing to the sound of all kinds of
instruments of music. To ensure, as they conceive, a favourable produce,
ten men are disguised like so many devils, who dance to the noise of
their music; and after the festivities of the day, they pray to the
devils to send them a plentiful crop.

When any merchant of these idolaters is sore afflicted with disease and
near death, then certain persons who are accounted physicians among them
ore called to visit the person in extremity. These persons accordingly
come to his house in the dead of night, dressed like devils, and
carrying burning sticks in their mouth and hands. And there, with mad
cries and boilings, and with the jangling of certain instruments, they
make such a horrible noise in the ears of the sick man, as is enough to
make a healthy man sick. This is the only remedy these pretended
physicians offer to their sick persons, being merely to present to him
when at the point of death the resemblance of him whom, worse than
devils, they honour as the vicegerent of the deity. When any one hath so
engorged himself with eating as to be sick at stomach, he takes the
powder of ginger, mixed in some liquid to the consistence of syrup,
which he drinks, and in three days he recovers his former health.

Their bankers, brokers, and money-changers use weights and scales of
such small size, that the box containing the whole does not exceed an
ounce in weight, yet are they so delicate and just that they will turn
with the weight of a hair. For trying the parity of gold, they use the
touch-stone as with us, but with this addition: having first rubbed the
gold to be tried on the touch-stone, they rub over the mark with a ball
of some sort of composition resembling wax, by which all that is not
fine gold disappears, and the marks or spots of gold remain, by which
they have an exact proof of the fineness of the gold. When the ball
becomes full of gold, they melt it in the fire, to recover the gold
which it contains; yet are these men very ignorant even of the art which
they profess. In buying or selling merchandise they employ the agency of
brokers; so that the buyer and seller each employs a separate broker.
The seller takes the buyer by the hand, under cover of a scarf or veil,