There Was Much Fishing-Tackle On The Walls, Both Men And
Women Being Excessively Fond Of What I Suppose May Be Called Angling.
They Brought Us Young Cocoa-Nuts, And The Milk, Drank As It Always
Ought To Be, Through One Of The Holes In The Nut, Was Absolutely
Delicious.
Where the Malays are not sophisticated enough to have glass or china,
they use dried gourds for drinking-vessels.
The cocoa-nut is an
invaluable product to them. Besides furnishing them with an
incomparable drink, it is the basis of the curries on which they live
so much, and its meat and milk enter into the composition of their
sweet dishes. I went to see the women behind their screen, and found
one of them engaged in making a dish which looked like something which
we used to call syllabub. It was composed of remarkably unbleached
sago, which they make from the sago-palm, boiled down with sugar to
nearly a jelly. It was on an earthenware plate, and the woman who was
preparing it mixed sugar with cocoa-nut milk, and whipping it with a
bunch of twigs to a slight froth, poured it over the jelly.
When the rain ceased we got through the timber belt into a forlorn
swamp of wet padi, where the water was a foot deep, and in some places
so unintelligibly hot that it was unpleasant to put one's feet into it.
It was truly a dismal swamp, and looked as if the padi were coming up
by accident among the reeds and weeds. Indeed, I should have thought
that it was a rice fallow, but for a number of grotesque scarecrows,
some mere bundles of tatters, but others wearing the aspect of big
birds, big dolls, or cats. I could not think how it was that these
things made spasmodic jerking movement, as there was not a breath of
air, and they were all soaked by the shower, till I saw that they were
attached by long strings to a little grass hut raised on poles, in
which a girl or boy sat "bird-scaring." The sparrows rob the
rice-fields, and so do the beautiful padi-birds, of which we saw great
numbers.
The Malays are certainly not industrious; they have no need to be so,
and their cultivation is rude. They plow the rice-land with a plow
consisting of a pole eight feet long, with a fork protruding from one
end to act as a coulter, and a bar of wood inserted over this at an
oblique angle forms a guiding handle. This plow is drawn by the great
water buffalo. After plowing, the clods are broken by dragging a heavy
beam over them, and are harrowed by means of a beam set with iron
spikes The women do the sowing and planting. The harvest succeeds the
planting in four months. The rice ears are cut short off, sometimes by
a small sickle, and sometimes by an instrument which produces the
effect of shears.
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