162 NOTES ON SUMATRA. 
equal quantity for the proprietor. They are still occasionally sold in 
the streets of Singapore at the rate of eight for one cent, or about a 
halfpenny, and many tons are daily consumed during the season, chiefly 
by the Chinese. The fibre of the leaves is also prepared at Singapore, 
but in limited quantities, being employed chiefly for fishing-lines and 
nets. It is cleaned by drawing the leaf between two blunt-edged pieces 
of iron, like the Musa fibre of Manilla. The pine-apples here are very 
subject to a deformity, by which the terminal bud or crown becomes 
enormously developed in a coxcomblike manner, ** Ananas jauygar" of 
the natives. The crown is also frequently proliferous, and there is a 
very handsome variety called ** Ananas Kondeh;" of a pyramidal shape, 
in which all the buds at the base of the fruit, sometimes to the number 
of twenty or more, form each a small fruit with its own crown. In the 
fruit grown about the houses, the crown is frequently extirpated by 
scooping it out with the point of a knife when the flowers first open; 
the wound soon heals, and the bracts of the summit of the fruit close 
over it, so that without examination it would be easy to mistake the 
fruits so treated for those of a well-marked variety. The operation is 
supposed to improve the flavour of the fruit. 
About 10 a.m. I began to enter the labyrinth of islands forming the 
south side of the Straits of Singapore. It is represented in most charts 
as two large islands, named ** Battam" and “ Bulang,” but in reality 
consists of thousands of small islets, between which, and among the 
rocks and sand-banks scattered in every direction, the tidal currents run 
with great force and swiftness; fortunately however these were in our 
favour, and we were frequently carried along at the rate of five or six 
knots without sail or oar. My boatmen had forgotten to bring a suffi- 
cient supply of that indispensable necessary, the ** Sirik leaf,” and begged 
me to allow them to land at a small settlement to procure some. This 
place was called Kasoo ; it consisted of about forty houses, built close 
to the beach, of ataps or palm-leaf thatch. A large piece of ground 
had been cleared in the rear of the village, but there were no attempts 
at cultivation beyond a little sirik and a few cocoa-nuts. All was over- 
grown by that pest of all eastern cultivation, the Lalang 
rata Keenigii, and studded with gaunt, half-burnt trees, tie huge 
bunches of epiphytal. ferns, chiefly the Sarang: alang, or. hawk’s-nest, 
Asplenium Nidus. The people seem to live chiefly by fishing and 
preparing fire-wood for the Singapore market, They use for this pur- 
grass, Impe- 
