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. It was not the season for vegetables,
and when, after much trouble, I managed to procure some yams of a
curious variety, I 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 of silver coins strung round their necks
or suspended from their ears.
As I had moved away from Palembang, I had found the Malay spoken
by the common people less and less pure, until at length it became
quite unintelligible, although the continual recurrence of many
well-known words assured me it was a form of Malay, and enabled
me to guess at the main subject of conversation.
