150 The Gardens of the Sun. [ch. vn. 



products cultivated. Tobacco, cotton, sugar-cane, tapi- 

 oca, and fruit are also grown here. 



The implements used for purposes of land culture in 

 the island are of the most rude description. On the 

 plains of Menkabong, Tawaran, and Tampassuk, near the 

 coast, ploughs and harrows drawn by buffaloes are em- 

 ployed, and their produce is earned to market in light 

 bamboo sledges. Further inland, however, the imple- 

 ments are yet more primitive, nearly all the necessary 

 labour of cultivation being performed with a blunt-pointed 

 iron chopper, or a sharp-pointed bamboo. 



The hoe, another implement used, may be taken as the 

 type of that adopted b} r the Chinese emigrants in the 

 Straits Settlements and Eastern Archipelago generally ; 

 indeed, wherever a Chinaman sets his foot in a new 

 locality for cultural purposes, a chopper and a blade or 

 two of his national "chunkal" or spade-hoe are sure to- 

 form a part of his extremely small belonging. He sets 

 to work cutting the brushwood and small timber on his. 

 future clearing, and piling this at the base of the large 

 trees, he fires the whole until only a few great black 

 stumps, and here and there a gaunt leafless durian or 

 dryobalanops remains of the old forest. Now, the 

 "chunkal" is used to stir the virgin soil by chopping it 

 up, a much quicker process than digging ; indeed, a spade 

 would have no chance in a competition where, as in this, 

 case, the soil is full of roots. If desirable, the soil, can 

 be thus chopped up to a depth of 12 in. or 14 in., the 

 only drawback being that the operator stands on the 

 freshly cultivated land. Armed with a chopper and one 

 of these spade-hoes, a solitary Chinaman will not unfre- 

 quently build a miserable little palm-leaf hut on a well- 

 watered bit of forest near a river, and in a month or two 

 he will have cleared several acres, to which, when planted 



