24 THE SULU ISLANDS. [chap. 



the fact that here, at least, we are in stormless seas. On the pahu- 

 stem platforms in front of the entrance the natives squat, while 

 around are playing half a dozen naked little cupids, now plunging 

 into the water, now paddling races in miniature canoes. A little 

 farther and we enter the river, whose water is so clear and pure 

 and bright that one longs to tumble in, clothes and all, and squatter 

 about in it with the brown-skinned little urchins around us. Close 

 to the banks lies the market-place, a picturesque jumble of ponies, 

 ripe bananas, red sarongs, palm -leaf stalls, and flashing spears. 

 Beyond, the sea-going praus are hauled up on shore, their unwieldy 

 sterns a mass of quaint car\dng. Then through a tiny reach 

 bordered by the jSTipa palm, whose graceful fronds, thirty or forty 

 feet in length, spring directly from the stream, and we find 

 ourselves in a sort of upper town, where the houses are built with 

 seeming indifference either in or out of the water. The place is 

 the absolute perfection of beauty and untidiness. Overhead the 

 eye rests on a wealth of verdure — bamboo, banana, durian, jack- 

 fruit, and the arrowy betel-palm with its golden egg-like nuts. In 

 these happy climes man's needs grow at his very door. Cold and 

 hunger, misery and want, are words without a meaning. Civilisa- 

 tion is far off indeed, and, for the moment at least, we have no 

 desire for it. 



Before us lie the houses. They are rickety enough certainly, 

 and their walls of yellow attap gape sufhciently to show us a 

 slumbering Sulu within, his murderous-looking kris at his hip. 

 But there are no north -casters here, and he is doubtless quite 

 happy. That man should live by the sweat of his brow is true 

 here in its most literal sense. But it is not so metaphorically, and 

 our sleeping friend will not even have to get up and feed the pigs 

 and chickens that are routing around the piles of his hut. Bounti- 

 ful Nature supplies food for them also, and, in domestic language, 

 they have to " find themselves." 



A little bridge spans the river at this point. It is constructed 

 of a single plank of the ISTibong palm, with a light bamboo handrail. 



