I gave them a flask (about two bottles), which was very soon finished, and I was assured that there were many present who had not had a taste.

As I feared my box would very soon be emptied if I supplied all their demands, I told them I had given them one, but the second they must pay for, and that afterwards I must have a Paradise bird for each flask.

They immediately sent round to all the neighbouring houses, and mustered up a rupee in Dutch copper money, got their second flask, and drunk it as quickly as the first, and were then very talkative, but less noisy and importunate than I had expected.

Two or three of them got round me and begged me for the twentieth time to tell them the name of my country.

Then, as they could not pronounce it satisfactorily, they insisted that I was deceiving them, and that it was a name of my own invention.