CH. II.] 



Tropical Night. 



27 



sound of a lizard in the tree overhead is quite bird-like, 

 you hear some frog-like croaking in the wet ditch beside 

 the road, the subdued humming of distant tomtoms 

 reaches you from the hut of a Hindoo Syce, and the 



KAYU KUTOH. 



almost mournful cadences of a Javanese prayer chanted 

 by a party of labourers in a garden-house or field-hut 

 reach you on the cool breeze. Then comes the boom of 

 the " Kayu Kutoh,"* or wooden gong on which the 

 Malay " mata mata," literally "man with eyes," or 

 watchman, beats the hour at one of the outlying police- 



* This last instrument closely resembles the "teponaztli," an instru- 

 ment still in use by the Indians in the Cordilleras of Mexico, the deep 

 thudding sound of which may be heard a distance of several miles. 



