EXPLORATION OF LEW CHEW. 17 



man, wlao immediately knelt down and knocked his forehead on the floor before me. In another 

 hilt, in a village on the plain, I found an old woman and a girl of about twelve years of age, 

 both of whom fell on their knees, and held up their hands with an expression which was at once 

 imploring and reverential. A few words of friendly greeting, though in English, encouraged 

 them, and I should no doubt have been able to inspect the interior of the hut, had not one of 

 the spies come up at that moment and driven them away. 



In the rich rice plains to which we descended we found sugar-cane for the first time, sorghum, 

 or millet, and three varieties of the grain known in the United States as "broom-corn." The 

 road struck out into the swampy rice fields, and we made for a green headland covered with 

 pines. A village, almost completely buried in bowers and arcades of bamboo, lay at its foot. 

 As we were about entering, we came upon two curious stones planted in the earth. The largest 

 was about four feet high, and from its peculiar form struck me at once as a lingam, or emblem 

 of the Phallic worship. The same idea occurred to Mr. Heine, who made a sketch of it. It was 

 a very hard, dark-colored stone, resembling porphyry, and the only thing we could learn from 

 the natives respecting it was, that they called it " ishee." There is no trace of this feature of 

 the Hindoo religion existing either in Japan, China, or Lew Chew. The discovery of this 

 stone, if it should prove to be a Phallic emblem, is therefore exceedingly curious. In the course 

 of the afternoon we found two more, one of which was prostrate and broken. In conjunction 

 with these remains, the face of the hill behind, for a distance of two miles, is almost entirely 

 covered with excavated tombs, resembling the simpler forms of the rock tombs of Egypt and 

 Syria. Our native conductors, when interrogated respecting them, called them " the houses of 

 the devil's men," and seemed amused at our taking notice of them. This fact, in a country 

 where ancestral tombs are considered sacred, as among the Chinese, seems to point to the 

 existence of another race on the island, in ancient times — a race who may have received the 

 worship of the Lingam from Java, or other islands where memorials of it exist. 



After an unavailing attempt to sh"oot a couple of herons in a rice field, we kept a course nearly 

 due north, passing through several beautiful villages. The houses were surrounded with 

 banana trees, and the alleys completely overarched with bamboo. In one of the houses I found 

 a woman weaving grass-cloth, in a loom of primitive construction. She ceased from work as I 

 approached the door, but commenced again, in obedience to my gestures. The shuttle was a 

 little longer than the breadth of the stuff, and thrown by hand. At the foot of the hill Dr. 

 Lynah found a piece of lignite, which resembles coal, but is unfortunately no indication of its 

 presence. We had a long and toilsome ascent up a barren hill which brought us again upon a 

 cultivated upland. There were three or four cattle grazing here, the first we had noticed since 

 leaving Napha. We saw a horse now and then, but this animal appeared to be scarce. The 

 dividing ridge between the bays was about three miles in advance, and though the afternoon 

 was nigh spent, and the whole party was considerably fatigued, we determined to get sight of 

 Barrow's Bay before encamping. At last we reached a large village on the western slope of the 

 ridge. It was surrounded with plantations of banana^ and a tall pine grove towered over it. 

 Through a deep road gate, cut in the crest of the hill, a fine picture of Barrow's Bay and the 

 mountains beyond presented itself to our view. The southern shore of the bay was about three 

 miles distant, and a singular range of rocks, rising in detached square masses like the walls and 

 towers of a ruined city, intervened. The landscape was more richly wooded than those on the 

 southern bay, and the outlines of the hills were rounder and more gently undulating. We 



