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There were jewellers, and diamond merchants, and dealers in carved horn and ivory; washer-women petitioning for custom, and exhibiting certificates of honesty in a dozen different languages, not one of which they understood; canoes full of young Javan girls, these last also for sale. I at once saw that I had come into a neighbourhood where European civilisation had made considerable progress.
I am going to tell you the history of the most wonderful people who ever lived. But I have to begin with a good deal that is not true; for the people who descended from Japhet’s son Javan, and lived in the beautiful islands and peninsulas called Greece, were not trained in the knowledge of God like the Israelites, but had to guess for themselves.
Sometimes it relates the fortunes of empires; sometimes it degenerates into a mere genealogical tree. Every Javan "prince" has his "babad," in which the names of his ancestors and their deeds are recounted.
The pulp is of a reddish yellow, and the seeds, which are about the size of grains of pepper, have a hot taste like cresses. The rock or musk-melons, are not common. Tamarinds, called asam jawa, or the Javan acid, are the produce of a large and noble tree, with small pinnated leaves, and supply a grateful relief in fevers, which too frequently require it.
Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market. They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules.
The Koran was rendered into Javan verse a century and a half ago. Beside the various adaptations from the Arabic, there are a large number of Arabic treatises current in Java. Long ago Arabic schools were established in the island, and of these schools that in the district of Pranaraga at one time boasted of having as many as fifteen hundred scholars.
They are skilled in the preparation of poisons of one especially, which kills slowly, occasioning symptoms similar to those of consumption. When a Javan perceives these, she resigns herself to her fate, knowing well what is the matter with her, and rejecting antidotes as useless.
Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon so like a corkscrew now was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco.
The Dutch naturalist Zollinger, who resided a long time on the island of Bali, informs us that its productions completely assimilate with those of Java, and that he is not aware of a single animal found in it which does not inhabit the larger island. During the few days which I stayed on the north coast of Bali on my way to Lombock, I saw several birds highly characteristic of Javan ornithology.
Towards the end of his travels , Benjamin mentions that Prague in Bohemia is the beginning of Sclavonia. Interpreters disagree about the meaning of these words. Jordanis had before this called these skins Sapphilinias pelles. Forst. Harris, I. 545. Forster, 91. So named as descended from Javan: the Jewish writers affecting to employ scripture names for modern countries and nations.
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