On Holding Out A Few
Crumbs Of Bread Or Any Fruit, They Come Running Down The Trunk,
Take The Morsel
Out of your fingers, and dart away instantly.
Their tails are carried erect, and the hair, which is ringed with
Grey, yellow, and brown, radiates uniformly around them, and
looks exceedingly pretty. They have somewhat of the motions of
mice, coming on with little starts, and gazing intently with
their large black eyes before venturing to advance further. The
manner in which Malays often obtain the confidence of wild
animals is a very pleasing trait in their character, and is due
in some degree to the quiet deliberation of their manners, and
their love of repose rather than of action. The young are
obedient to the wishes of their elders, and seem to feel none of
that propensity to mischief which European boys exhibit. How long
would tame squirrels continue to inhabit trees in the vicinity of
an English village, even if close to the church? They would soon
be pelted and driven away, or snared and confined in a whirling
cage. I have never heard of these pretty animals being tamed in
this way in England, but I should think it might be easily done
in any gentleman's park, and they would certainly be as pleasing
and attractive as they would be uncommon.
After many inquiries, I found that a day's journey by water above
Palembang there commenced a military road which extended up to
the mountains and even across to Bencoolen, and I determined to
take this route and travel on until I found some tolerable
collecting ground. By this means I should secure dry land and a
good road, and avoid the rivers, which at this season are very
tedious to ascend owing to the powerful currents, and very
unproductive to the collector owing to most of the lands in their
vicinity being underwater. Leaving early in the morning we did
not reach Lorok, the village where the road begins, until late at
night. I stayed there a few days, but found that most all the
ground in the vicinity not underwater was cultivated, and that
the only forest was in swamps which were now inaccessible. The
only bird new to me which I obtained at Lorok was the fine long-
tailed parroquet (Palaeornis longicauda). The people here assured
me that the country was just the same as this for a very long
way - more than a week's journey, and they seemed hardly to have
any conception of an elevated forest-clad country, so that I
began to think it would be useless going on, as the time at my
disposal was too short to make it worth my while to spend much
more of it in moving about. At length, however, I found a man who
knew the country, and was more intelligent; and he at once told
me that if I wanted forest I must go to the district of Rembang,
which I found on inquiry was about twenty-five or thirty miles
off.
The road is divided into regular stages of ten or twelve miles
each, and, without sending on in advance to have coolies ready,
only this distance can be travelled in a day. At each station
there are houses for the accommodation of passengers, with
cooking-house and stables, and six or eight men always on guard.
There is an established system for coolies at fixed rates, the
inhabitants of the surrounding villages all taking their turn to
be subject to coolie service, as well as that of guards at the
station for five days at a time. This arrangement makes
travelling very easy, and was a great convenience for me. I had a
pleasant walk of ten or twelve miles in the morning, and the rest
of the day could stroll about and explore the village and
neighbourhood, having a house ready to occupy without any
formalities whatever. In three days I reached Moera-dua, the
first village in Rembang, and finding the country dry and
undulating, with a good sprinkling of forest, I determined to
remain a short time and try the neighbourhood. Just opposite the
station was a small but deep river, and a good bathing-place; and
beyond the village was a fine patch of forest, through which the
road passed, overshadowed by magnificent trees, which partly
tempted me to stay; but after a fortnight I could find no good
place for insects, and very few birds different from the common
species of Malacca. I therefore moved on another stage to Lobo
Raman, where the guard-house is situated quite by itself in the
forest, nearly a mile from each of three villages. This was very
agreeable to me, as I could move about without having every
motion watched by crowds of men, women and children, and I had
also a much greater variety of walks to each of the villages and
the plantations around them.
The villages of the Sumatran Malays are somewhat peculiar and
very picturesque. A space of some acres is surrounded with a high
fence, and over this area the houses are thickly strewn without
the least attempt at regularity. Tall cocoa-nut trees grow
abundantly between them, and the ground is bare and smooth with
the trampling of many feet. The houses are raised about six feet
on posts, the best being entirely built of planks, others of
bamboo. The former are always more or less ornamented with
carving and have high-pitched roofs and overhanging eaves. The
gable ends and all the chief posts and beams are sometimes
covered with exceedingly tasteful carved work, and this is still
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, but merely the level floor covered
with mats, on which the inmates sit or lie.
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