times covered with exceedingly tasteful carved work, and
this is stiil more the case in the district of Menangkabo,
further west. The floor is made of split bamboo, and is
rather shaky, and there is no sign of anything we should
call furniture. There are no benches or chairs or stools,
c h i e f ' s HOUSE AND R IC E SHED IN a SUMATRAN VILLAGE.
but merely the level floor covered with mats, on which the
inmates sit or lie. The aspect of the village itself is very
neat, the ground being often swept before the chief houses ;
but very bad odours abound, owing to there being under
every house a stinking mud-hole, formed by all waste
liquids and refuse matter, poured down through the floor
above. In most other things Malays are tolerably clean—
in some scrupulously so ; and this peculiar and nasty
custom, which is almost universal, arises, I have little
doubt, from their having been originally a maritime and
water-loving people, who built their houses on posts in the
water, and only migrated gradually inland, first up the
rivers and streams, and then into the dry interior. Habits
which were at once so convenient and so cleanly, and
which had been so long practised as to become a portion
of the domestic life of the nation, were of course continued
when the first settlers built their houses inland; and without
a regular system of drainage, the arrangement of the
villages is such, that any other system would be very
inconvenient.
In all these Sumatran villages I found considerable
difficulty in getting anything to eat. I t was not the
season for vegetables, and when, after much trouble, 1
managed to procure some yams of a curious variety, 1
found them hard and scarcely eatable. Fowls were very
scarce; and fruit was reduced to one of the poorest kinds
of banana. The natives (during the wet season at least)
live exclusively on rice, as the poorer Irish do on potatoes.
A pot of rice cooked very dry and eaten with salt and
red peppers, twice a day, forms their entire food during a
large part of the year. This is no sign of poverty, but is
simply custom; for their wives and children are loaded
with silver armlets from wrist to elbow, and carry dozens