of it at one corner of onr Louse is now filled with
fruit of all sizes; some small and green, and some
fully grown and stowing it is already ripe Ly its
bright-pink color. In ttis condition tte Malays
gather and dry it, and always carry a good supply
wherever they go. Its Malay name is lornbdk, but
the one more generally used is the Javanese name
chabe. Besides chickens, we have paddy, that is, rice
in the husk. A large elliptical hole is made in a log
for a mortar, a small quantity of paddy is then poured
in and pounded with a stick five or six feet long, and
as large round as a man’s arm. This is raised vertically,
and, when the hole is nearly even full, a native
will usually pound off all the husks without scattering
more than a few grains on the ground; but, if a
foreigner attempts it, he will be surprised to see how
the rice will fly off in all directions at every blow.
When the husks are pounded off they are separated
from the kernels by being tossed up from a shallow
basket and carried away by the wind, as our farmers
used to winnow grain. This is the only mode of preparing
rice practised by the Malays, and the process
is the same in every part of the archipelago. From
one comer of our piazza hangs a large bunch of green
bananas to ripen in the sunshine. I find it very
agreeable to pluck off a nice ripe one myself when I
come in weary and thirsty from a long hunt. From
the other corner hangs a cluster of cocoa-nuts filled
with clear, cool, refreshing water.
Not far from us is a hut inhabited by two. natives,
who are engaged in cultivating tobacco. Their
ladangs, or gardens, are merely places of an acre or
less, where the thick forest has been partially destroyed
by fire, and the seed is sown in the regular
spaces between the stumps. As soon as the
leaves are fully grown they are plucked off, and the
petiole and a part of the midrib are cut away. Each
leaf is then cut transversely into strips about a sixteenth
of an inch wide, and these are dried in the
sun until a mass of them looks like a bunch of
oakum. It is then ready for use, and at once carried
to market. This cosmopolite, Nicoticma tabacvm,
is a native of our own country. Las Casas says
that the Spaniards on Columbus’s first voyage saw
the natives in Cuba smoking it in tubes called to-
bacos, hence its name. Mr. Crawford states that, according
to a Javanese chronicle, it was introduced
into Java in the year 1601, ninety years after the
conquest of Malacca by the Portuguese, who were
probably the first Europeans that furnished it to the
Javanese, as the Dutch had not yet formed an establishment
on the island. It is now cultivated in
every part of the archipelago. The fact that this
narcotic was originally found only in America leads
us to infer, without raising the questions whether our
continent received her aboriginal population from
some other part of the globe, or whether they were
created here, that there never has been any extensive
migration of our Indians or red-men to the islands
in the Pacific, or to any distant part of the world;
for if they had colonized any area, in that place at
least, its use would undoubtedly continue to exist
at the present day, since it is probable that
they would never have thought of going to a new