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Batavia (continued)

have which are unknown to us in Europe; in this manner they spend their lives working and gaming, scarce allowing themselves time for the necessary refreshments of food and sleep; in short it is as extrordinary a sight to see a China man Idle, as it is to see a Dutchman or Indian at work.

In manners they are always civil or rather obsequious, in dress always neat and clean in a high degree, from the highest to the lowest. To atempt to describe either their dresses or persons would be only to repeat some of the many accounts of them that have been publish’d, as every one has been wrote by people who had much better opportunities of seeing them and more time to examine them than I have had. Indeed a man need go no farther to study them than the China paper, the better sort of which represents their persons and such of their Customs, dresses &c. as I have seen most strikingly like, tho a little in the Caracatura stile; indeed some of the Plants which are common to China and Java, as Bamboe, are better figurd there than in the best botanical


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© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 503, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-429.html