no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



down. The house is reached hy stairs which are connected in some 

 cases with the gable-front, in others with a trap-door in the middle 

 of the floor. The buildings are of two distinct types. The dwelling- 

 houses proper consist of a tightly inclosed story, having a few small 

 windows, and covered with an overhanging roof, the high gables of 

 which permit the garret-space to be left open for the free circulation 

 of the outer air. Another class of houses, which are evidently pavil- 

 ions of luxury and indicate wealth, are built on larger posts than the 

 others, and have no inclosure whatever. They have a fire-place in the 

 middle of the floor, seats and lounges, and perhaps a balustrade around 

 the edge. The roof-space is separated from the rest by a flooring and 

 used as a granary. The lower open story of these sopos serves for a 

 variety of uses. Strangers and guests coming to the town are re- 

 ceived in them ; the men sit in them mornings and evenings, chatting 

 and smoking ; justice is administered and public business transacted 

 in them ; they are occupied during the day by women weaving ; and 

 at night strangers, widowers, and unmarried young men sleep in 

 them. 



The Batta does not make his morning toilet in the house, but at 

 the special bathing-places, or pantjurs, with which every village is pro- 

 vided. These places are arranged at a running stream or a canal made 

 for the purpose, by fixing a water-pipe of bamboo in such a manner 

 that a man standing or sitting under it can have the water run all 

 over his body. Such baths are taken morning and evening. Separate 

 pantjurs are provided for the women. It is one of the morning duties 

 of the women and girls, even down to children of four and five years 

 old, to bring drinking-water in the gargitis, a water-vessel made of a 

 thick stalk of bamboo. The size and strength of growing girls are 

 generally measured by the number of gargitis they can carry. 



Let us follow a woman into one of the inclosed dwelling-houses. 

 The floor is made of round bamboo beams about as large as one's arm, 

 across which are laid split bamboos far enough apart to let the water 

 and dirt through, and make sweeping unnecessary. Broad, raised seats 

 and lounges, covered with mats of various patterns and styles, are 

 arranged on either side. In the corners are fire-places of a primeval 

 simplicity, flat, square boxes filled with earth, and upon these some 

 thick stones, between which the fire burns quite briskly, while the rice 

 is cooked in home-made earthen vessels set upon them. The number 

 of families living in the house can generally be calculated from the 

 number of fire-places to be seen., No division is made in the day-time 

 between the parts of the house occupied by the different families, but 

 a separation is made between the sleeping-places at night by hanging 

 up mats. Ordinarily, only blood relations live together in the same 

 house. The children of both sexes, after they have grown up, sleep 

 outside of the house and not with their parents, the young men in the 

 sopos, the girls in parties of several with some old widow ; but the 



