Furness.i *^J-" [Dec. 18, 



creeps in and a door slams with a bang at the far end of the house, 

 where the poorer and hard-working people live, and a woman with a 

 bundle of bamboo water vessels slung on her back hurries along to the 

 stairway down to the river. She looks just the same as when she went 

 to sleep. Her dress is the same and her hair is in a disordered tangle, 

 and as she walks her feet come down heavily on the warped planks 

 and make them rattle, no doubt to Avake the lazy men, who sleep on 

 and let tlie women make the fire and get the water while they snooze. 

 Soon she comes back, her hair dripping and glossy and little drops of 

 water still clinging to her skin. By this time there is quite a procession 

 of women going down to bathe and get the cooking water from the 

 river, and there is a slamming of doors and a few wails from the children, 

 and laments from the dogs when they get a thump from a warrior who 

 wakes to find that he has been sleeping with his face close to the 

 dog's mangey back. Then the men who have been sleeping on the 

 raised platform in front of the long slatted window, unroll them- 

 selves from their shroud-like coverings of cotton cloth, once white, 

 and a little hum of conversation springs up, possibly a comparison 

 of dreams, the interpretation of which, as in all uneducated classes, 

 has great bearing on their daily life. The mother who comes out with 

 her babies in her arms, or sitting astride of her hips, knows nothing 

 of our custom of caressing with a kiss, but in her maternal bursts of affec- 

 tion she buries her face in the neck of the child and draws in a long 

 breath through her nostrils ; in fact, she smells it. In their language the 

 verbs to smell and to kiss are the same. Then down she goes to the 

 river and takes the morning bath with her child in her arms, some- 

 times holding it by the hands and letting it kick out its legs like a frog 

 — the first lessons in swimming. One by one the men straggle off to 

 bathe in the river and never miss the opportunity^ of telling us that they 

 were going to bathe, and when they returned they were also most punc- 

 tilious in telling us that they had bathed. With all this bathing, how- 

 ever, they are not a clean people. Soap is unknown to them and they 

 never use hot water, consequently their skins have not the soft velvety 

 appearance that constant bathiug usually produces. We gave some of 

 the girls cakes of Pears' soap, but they ate them. 



After bathing there is a lull in the activity of the house, while 

 the married women and young girls cook the morning meal of boiled 

 rice and dried salted fish. (By the way, their method of obtaining 

 salt is, perhaps, peculiar. They burn the stalk of the Nipa palm, which 

 grows in salt or brackish water, and, by soaking the ashes and allowing 

 them to settle, they get a very coarse and dirty quality of salt, of which 

 they are very fond.) In eating they use neither plate nor chop- 

 sticks ; but, like the Malays, they eat with their fingers, cramming 

 their mouths as full as they can at one time and then taking a pinch of 

 the finely crumbled dried salt fish. Tliey do not eat from one common 

 dish as do the Chinese, but each person lias his allotted share piled upon 



