In a Native Prau. 417 



■were made, he should be sure to have difficulty in getting a 

 crew !" This proves at all events that praus must be good 

 sea-boats, for the captain has been continually making voyages 

 in them for the last ten years, and says he has never known 

 water enough enter to do any harm. 



Dec. 2oth. — Christmas-day dawned upon us with gusts of 

 wind, driving rain, thunder and lightning, added to which a 

 short confused sea made our queer vessel pitch and roll very 

 uncomfortably. About nine o'clock, however, it cleared up, 

 and we then saw ahead of us the fine island of Bouru, perhaps 

 forty or fifty miles distant, its mountains wreathed with clouds, 

 while its lower lands were still invisible. The afternoon was 

 fine, and the wind got round again to the west ; but although 

 this is really the west monsoon, there is no regularity or stead- 

 iness about it, calms and breezes from every point of the com- 

 pass continually occurring. The captain, though nominally a 

 Protestant, seemed to have no idea of Christmas-day as a 

 festival. Our dinner was of rice and curry as usual, and an 

 extra glass of wine was all I could do to celebrate it. 



Dec. 26th. — Fine view of the mountains of Bouru, which 

 we have now approached considerably. Our crew seem rath- 

 er a clumsy lot. They do not walk the deck with the easy 

 swing of English sailors, but hesitate and stagger like lands- 

 men. In the night the lower boom of our mainsail broke, and 

 they were all the morning repairing it. It consisted of two 

 bamboos lashed together, thick end to thin, and was about 

 seventy feet long. The rigging and arrangement of these 

 praus contrasts strangely with that of European vessels, in 

 which the various ropes and spars, though much more numer- 

 ous, are placed so as not to interfere with each other's action. 

 Here the case is quite different ; for though there are no 

 shrouds or stays to complicate the matter, yet scarcely any 

 thing can be done without first clearing something else out 

 of the way. The large sails can not be shifted round to 

 go on the other tack without first hauling down the jibs, and 

 the booms of the fore-and-aft sails have to be lowered and 

 completely detached to perform the same operation. Then 

 there are always a lot of ropes foul of each other, and all the 

 sails can never be set (though they are so few) without a good 

 part of their surface having the wind kept out of them by oth- 



