286 . 1775* September. aihamed to fee their black fellow-creature walking cheek by jowl with them on the road to heaven. This puts me in mind o f an event, which I had before feen mentioned fomewhere (and,, if I remember right, in the Hiftoire Pbilofopbique Politique), as having happened not a long while ago in Batavia. I enquired, therefore, concerning the truth o f it, of thofe that had lived at that place, and found feveral agreeing in the following account. <c There was a citizen in Batavia, who had often importuned the miniiters o f his church to baptize his illegitimate child, but had always found them inflexible. “ Well and good ! fays the man to them at laft, it feems as i f you alone wiihed to ihut the door o f heaven, the keys of which you imagine you have in your poifeflion : but the Mahometan priefts o f the Malays, are not fo churlifh and niggardly of falvation as you are; they having already pro- mifed me to incorporate my fon this very day into their church, and make him a true Muffulman : for fome kind of religion I am determined my child fhall be of, as I hold- that, in a well-regulated fociety, no man ought to be without a religion.” The Chriftian priefts,however,no iboner faw that' preparations were made for circumcifion, than they haften- ed, by adminiftering the facrament of baptifm, to deprive the Mahometan church of a foul, which they had juft before rejected as illegitimate. And fince that time, they are faid to be lefs backward in opening the doors of heaven to baftards.” Here follows anotherinftance of the depravity of tafte in the white people in this colony, with regard to love matters. I paid paid a vifit to a European, who had fettled in Houtniquas. >77j- He was a good lively handfome fellow, about the middle age, and, I believe, of good extraction. He had ferved under feveral different potentates in Europe, and had ihewed them all a fair pair o f heels. He gave me the hiftory of a great, many lingular adventures o f his, but the moft lingular of them all, in my opinion, I was eye-wit- nefs to myfelf. This was, that he had married two years before an ugly footy Mulatto, the daughter of a Negrefs. She had been the miftrefs o f another farmer who Was dead, and by whom ihe had a couple o f baftards. Thefe I faw at that time likewife in the houle, grown up and unbaptized. But what feemed to me the moft fingular cir- cumftance in the whole affair was, that this muft have been abfolutely a love-match; for though he had got a few cattle with his dingy fpoufe, yet the houfe, which he likewife had with her, was certainly not a palace. It was, in fait, a miferable cottage, though pleafantly enough iituated in the ikirts o f a foreft. The walls were made of reeds tied together, and fupported by a few upright chumps of wood, interfperfed with fome rough boards, fuch as are generally ufed for fences. This ftrufture was plaiffiered over with a thin and ragged covering o f clay. There were but two rooms in it, and poverty feemed to have taken full poifeflion o f them both. In the inner room, the man’s wife- lay ill o f a putrid fever. The outer apartment, which was the common bed-chamber for all the reft of the family that were in health, I can beft defcribe. It was fomewhat more than two yards in breadth, 4 and
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