142 SUMBAWA. [chap. 



Our noble sitter was shrivelled to a mummy, and his one request 

 was for " some medicine to make him fat." 



We adjourned to the house of the Datu Banda, where we 

 had Chinese tea offered us, and were informed that the Sultan had 

 gone Jca igrcja — a phrase that required no knowledge of Malay to 

 translate, so we went out to inspect the town. In a large open 

 square beneath trees, and adjoining a cemetery which was planted 

 selon regie with champacs, a crowded market was going on. The 

 vendors w^ere all women, and w^ere guarded by spearmen, who 

 permitted none of the sterner sex to enter, and would make no 

 exception in our favour, greatly to our disappointment. Eeaching 

 the neighbourhood of the Sultan's Palace we were again stopped. 

 It appears to be against etiquette, if not worse, to approach it. 

 On the outskirts of the town we came upon a veritable Aceldama, 

 — a small field where all the animals of the town appeared to be 

 slaughtered. It was covered with ox-bones and dried blood, and 

 was a gruesome sight, 



Eeturning to the Datu Banda's, we were told that the Sultan 

 would see us, and at once proceeded to the Palace. It was a 

 wooden building of considerable size, surrounded by a low stone 

 wall and double gates. A small guard of spearmen occupied an 

 open bamboo guardhouse near the entrance. Entering, we found 

 a long flight of covered wooden steps, up which we were conducted 

 to the reception-room, a large hall with its roof supported by 

 massive wooden pillars, which, like the doors, were painted a bright 

 pea green. The walls were of plaited bamboo, and had five or six 

 large kites hung against them, made, as is the custom here, in the 

 shape of birds. At the farther end of the room were evidences of 

 European civilisation in the shape of a table and some chairs, 

 behind which stood racks of flint lock, and percussion guns. 



The Sultan, who was nearly seventy-four years of age, had 

 evidently been a good-looking man in his day, and was comically 

 like a benevolent old English lady, the resemblance being heightened 

 by liis wearing his grey hair in side puffs over the ears. He 



