FROM SINGAPORE TO BANJERMASSING. 261 
headed old men and women seuttling away among the sludge, and 
plastered with mud all over their grave wrinkled brown faces, was really 
most ridieulous: they looked so very little like human beings, that I 
felt almost surprised to hear them speak. From this mode of life the 
women are obliged to wear most grotesquely short drapery, not reach- 
ing their knees; and the upper part of their dress being in the usual 
Malay style, this too gives them a very odd appearance. The quantity 
of fish caught was very great, judging by the success of those near 
me; they were chiefly Scombride and Pleuronectide, but there were 
many other species. Two or three small sharks were taken; their flesh 
is highly valued. I saw several specimens of a ray, covered with blue 
spots and with a formidable spine near the base of his long filiform tail : 
this fish is much dreaded by the natives, and with good reason; it is 
exceedingly venomous. I have seen a European at Labuan suffer for 
twenty-four hours intense pain from a scarcely visible puncture in the 
ankle from one of these fish; the pain was accompanied by vomiting, 
shivering, spasms, and other symptoms of poisoning; it was followed 
by extensive ecchymosis up to the thigh, swelling and suppuration of the 
glands of the groin and axillze, and great general constitutional disturb- 
ance; and the wound was five months in healing, after forming several 
deep-seated abscesses and sloughing extensively. Several flat-tailed sea 
snakes of a dingy grey colour, called Maroke, were within the weir; the 
natives say they are very poisonous, which I have reason to believe, 
but they refused to let me kill one, saying it would bring cheloka, or 
ill-luck, to their fishing; they were gently raised in the hand-net and 
put outside the enclosure. A small alligator was hotly chased, but he 
broke through the weir and escaped to sea. Great numbers of fish 
were rejected, among them two species of Syngnathus, one very large, 
and all the Chetodon tribe, some very curious and beautiful; but I had 
with me no means of preserving them. The natives believe them all to 
be poisonous; a vast number of shrimps, prawns, squille, and other PI. 
crustacea were also rejected, not, as the people said, because they ER 
not good, but because they had plenty of fish without them. An ich- — 
thyologist who did not mind roughing it a little, and who would follow 
these people for a week, would reap a rich harvest indeed. I was told 
that the weir was the common property of the tribe, but that every 
man fished in it on his own account. When the mud was quite dry, or 
as nearly so as it could be, countless multitudes of small crabs, of five or 
