LoBO Kaman. 135 



Moera-dua, the first village in Rembang, and finding the coun- 

 try dry and undulating, with a good sprinkling of forest, I 

 determined to remain a short time and try the neighborhood. 

 Just opposite the station was a small but deep river, and a 

 good bathing-place, and beyond the village was a fine patch 

 of forest, through which the road passed, overshadowed by 

 magnificent trees, which partly tempted me to stay ; but after 

 a fortnight I could find no good place for insects, and very 

 few birds different fi'om the common species of Malacca. I 

 therefore moved on another stage to Lobo Raman, where the 

 guard-house is situated quite by itself in the forest, nearly a 

 mile from each of three villages. This was very agreeable to 

 me, as I could move about without having every motion 

 watched by crowds of men, women, and children, and I had 

 also a much greater variety of walks to each of the villages 

 and the plantations around them. 



The villages of the Sumatran Malays are somewhat pecul- 

 iar and very picturesque. A space of some acres is surround- 

 ed with a high fence, and over this area the houses are thick- 

 ly strewn without the least attempt at regularity. Tall cocoa- 

 nut trees grow abundantly between them, and the ground is 

 bare and smooth with the trampling of many feet. The houses 

 are raised about six feet on posts, the best being entirely built 

 of planks, others of bamboo. The former are always more or 

 less ornamented with carving, and have high-jDitched roofs 

 and overhanging eaves. The gable-ends and all the chief 

 posts and beams are sometimes covered with exceedingly 

 tasteful carved work, and this is still more the case in the dis- 

 trict of Menangkabo, further west. The floor is made of split 

 bamboo, and is rather shaky, and there is no sign of any thing 

 we should call furniture. There are no benches or chairs or 

 stools, but merely the level floor covered with mats, on which 

 the inmates sit or lie. The aspect of the village itself is very 

 neat, the ground being often swept before the chief houses ; 

 but very bad odors abound, owing to there being under every 

 house a stinking mud-hole, formed by all waste liquids and 

 refuse matter, poured down through the floor above. In most 

 other things Malays are tolerably clean — in some scrupulous- 

 ly so ; and this peculiar and nasty custom, which is almost 

 universal, arises, I have little doubt, from their having been 



