as affecting their health, green, watery vegetables, imperfectly
cooked, and even these in varying and often insufficient
quantities. To this diet may be attributed the
prevalence of skin diseases, and ulcers on the legs and
joints. The scurfy skin disease so common among savages
has a close connexion with the poorness and irregularity of
their living. The Malays, who are never without their
daily rice, are generally free from it; the hill-Dyaks of
Borneo, who grow rice and live well, are clean skinned,
while the less industrious and less cleanly tribes, who
live for a portion of the "year on fruits and vegetables only,
are very subject to this malady. It seems clear that in
this, as in other respects, man is not able to make a beast
of himself with impunity, feeding like the cattle on the
herbs and fruits of the earth, and takinog no thouoght of
the morrow. To maintain his health and beauty he must
labour to prepare some farinaceous product capable of
being stored and accumulated, so as to give him a regular
supply of wholesome food. When this is obtained, he
may add vegetables, fruits, and meat with advantage.
The chief luxury of the Aru people, besides betel
and tobacco, is arrack (Java rum), which the traders
bring in great quantities and sell very cheap. A day’s
fishing or rattan cutting will purchase at least a halfgallon
bottle; and when the tripang or birds’ nests
collected during a season are sold, they get whole boxes,
each containing fifteen such bottles, which the inmates
of a house will sit round day and night till they have
finished. They themselves tell me that at such bouts they
often tear to pieces the house they are in, break and
destroy everything they can lay their hands on, and make
such an infernal riot as is alarming to behold.
The houses and furniture are on a par with the food.
A rude shed, supported on rough and slender sticks rather
than posts, no walls, but the floor raised to within a foot
of the eaves, is the style of architecture they usually
adopt. Inside there are partition walls of thatch, forming
little boxes or sleeping places, to accommodate the two or
three separate families that usually live together. A few
mats, baskets, and cooking vessels, with plates and basins
purchased from the Macassar traders, constitute their
whole furniture; spears and bows are their weapons; a
sarong or mat forms the clothing of the women, a waist-
cloth of the men. For hours or even for days they, sit
idle in their houses, the women bringing in the vegetables
or Sago which form their food. Sometimes they hunt or
fish a little, or work at their houses or canoes, but they
seem to enjoy pure idleness, and work as 'little as they
can. They have little to vary the monotony of life, little
that can be called pleasure, except idleness and conversation.
And they certainly do talk ! Every evening there
is a little Babel around me: but as I understand not a