222 TRAVELS IN TEE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



was to tlie western end of tlie opposite island, Lon- 

 tar, the Malay name of tlie Palmyra palm, Borassus 

 jiabelliformis. Its leaves were used as parchment 

 over all the archipelago before the introduction of 

 paper by the Arabs or Chinese, and in some places 

 even at the present time. Lontar, as already no- 

 ticed, has the form of a crescent. Its inner side is 

 a steep wall, bordered at the base with a narrow 

 band of low land. On the outer side from the crest 

 of the wall many radiating ridges descend to the sea, 

 so that its southwestern shore is a continued series 

 of little points separated by small bays. The whole 

 island is covered with one continuous forest of nut- 

 meg and canari trees. The nutmeg-tree, Myristica 

 moscJiata, belongs to the order MyristicdcecB. A foot 

 above the ground the trunk is from six to ten inches 

 in diameter. It branches like the laurel, and its lofti- 

 est sprays are frequently fifty feet high. It is dioecious, 

 that is, the pistils and the stamens are borne on differ- 

 ent trees, and of course some of them are unproduc- 

 tive. The fruit, before it is fully ripe, closely re- 

 sembles a peach that has not yet been tinged with 

 red ; but this is only a fleshy outer rind, epicarp, 

 which soon opens into two equal parts, and within 

 is seen a spherical, black, polished nut, surrounded 

 by a fine branching aril — the " mace " — of a bright 

 vermilion. In this condition it is probably by far 

 the most beautiful fruit in the whole vegetable king- 

 dom. It is now picked by means of a small basket 

 fastened to the end of a long bamboo. The outer 

 part being removed, the mace is carefully taken off 

 and dried on large, shallow bamboo baskets in the 



