258 NOTES WRITTEN ON A VOYAGE 
ibises, looking like soldiers at drill, their heads laid back, their long 
flesh-coloured beaks resting on their white breasts; and every moment 
brilliant kingfishers glanced in and out among the trees. 
About ten A.M. we came up to a tribe of a very singular race of 
Malays, the Orang Lant, or Men of the Sea; though they might with 
greater propriety be called men of the mud. ‘There are said to be nine 
tribes of them; they Jive entirely in their boats, never quitting the 
coast, but moving up and down over a certain district at the rate of 
a mile or two each day. The Malays of Singapore and the natives of 
Singu Rhio and the interior of Sumatra come here to trade with them, 
exchanging rice, cloth, sago, and salt, for dried fish and Karang, à 
species of rca, much used for food, and the shells of which are sup- 
posed to yield the purest and best lime for eating with the sirik and 
areca nut. They speak a little Malay, but have also a peculiar dialect 
of their own, whieh few of the Malays understand; and they are ex- 
ceedingly averse to associating with other people, or marrying out of 
their own tribe. They differ a little in physiognomy from the Malays 
generally, the lower jaw being narrower, and the ale of the nose suddenly 
enlarged, as in the Papuans. A good many of the men had, for Malays, 
very strong black beards, and, though short, they are well formed; the 
calf of the leg is low down, large and decurrent ; the shoulders high and 
broad, and the fore-arm muscular and well-developed. They are profess- 
edly Mahometans, but know very little about it, and retain many pagan 
customs, such as faith in augury, offering libations to spirits, etc., like 
the Dyaks of Borneo. Their language is said to resemble that of the 
Battas of the interior of Sumatra, a people I have not yet met with. 
This tribe was divided into two Kampongs, or villages as they call them, 
one of twenty, the other of about fifty boats of various sizes, and may 
have consisted of 300 to 400 persons. The smaller boats were laden 
with their fishing apparatus, to be hereafter described, and the larger 
formed their habitations. These boats are sheathed with thin planks 
or with the bark of the mangrove, to protect them from the Kapang, or 
teredo, so destructive in these seas; the longest were perhaps forty feet 
long, and of three or four tons’ burden. A sort of house, not high enough 
to stand erect in, is constructed over the whole length of the boat, to the 
_ vidge-pole of which are usually suspended two or three infants swing- 
ing in small hammocks. ‘The sides and roofs of these houses are com- 
pletely covered with fish, split open and drying in the sun, giving out 
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