no desire myself to try tlie flavor of such questionable
meat. A small path, leading a mile through the
forest, brought me out on to a large open field or
prairie, covered with a coarse grass as high as a man’s
shoulders. Beyond this was another forest, and
there I was informed was a settlement of two or
three houses, the farthest place inland inhabited by
any of the coast people or common Malays. Beyond
that point there is not the slightest footpath. All
the hills and high mountains, which I could see toward
the interior of the island, are covered with one
dense, unbroken forest, and only on some of the lower
hills, bordering the bay, are there open areas of
grass. What a nice thing it would be to live out
there for a week in the midst of that forest! My
mind was made up to do it. I returned and explained
my plan to the cont/rolev/r, and the next day
we set off to hire one of the distant huts. The farthest
one from Kayeli, and exactly the one I wanted,
chanced to be unoccupied, for the native who owned
it had found the place so lonely that he had deserted
it and taken up his abode in the village. The rent
for a week was agreed to without much parleying.
The owner farther agreed to send his son to bring
water and keep house while I and my hunter were
away, and to be generally useful, which he interpreted
to mean that he would only do what he could
not avoid. Another man was engaged as cook, and
my domestic arrangements were complete, for I purposed
not only to live in a native house, but to conform
entirely to the Malay cuisine. Our cooking-
apparatus consisted of a couple of shallow kettles