Series 03: Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 (vol. 2) - No. 0596
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[Page 596]
492
Some account of Batavia
that Java has two or three, & almost every little Island beside its own language distinct from the rest, yet none use or I beleive remember their own language, so that this Lingua Franca Malay, is the only Language you hear spoken in this neigbourhood, & I have been told over a very large part of the East Indies
[Margin note] dress
Their women, & in imitation of them the Dutch also, wear as much hair as ever they can nurse up on their heads, which by the use of oils &c. is incredibly great, it is universaly black, & they wear it in a kind of circular wreath upon the tops of their heads fastned there with a Bodkin, in a taste inexpressibly elegant, I have often wishd that one of our ladies could see a malay womans head dressd in this manner, with her wreath of flowers commonly Arabian Jasmine round that of hair, for in that method of dress there is certainly an Elegant simplicity & unafected shew of the beauties of nature, incomparably superior to any thing I have seen in the Labourd head dresses of my fair countrey women,
[Margin note] Bathe
Both sexes bathe themselves in the river constantly, at least once a day, a most necessary custom in hot climates where the profuse perspiration