A SHOM PEN VILLAGE 159 



about 1 8 inches wide, with cross-pieces fastened on by rattan 

 bindings. 



"The village lay at the foot of a hill, above which the sun 

 appeared between nine and ten o'clock, and was bounded on 

 the other side by the bed of a stagnant brook. The trees 

 about the houses were festooned with bundles of rattan, and 

 the ground round them was littered deeply with the refuse 

 scrapings. A few chickens and a miserable pariah cur or two 

 wandered about, and several little pigs were caged in the huts. 



" This party seemed less well-to-do than the others we had 

 seen, for their only dress was cotton kissdts and waistcloths, 

 and while possessing several pieces of bark cloth, in which they 

 wrapped themselves at night, they had apparently no further 

 clothing. Strings of coloured beads were worn about the 

 neck, and their ear-lobes were distended by wooden plugs from 

 I to 2 inches in diameter. 



" They were of a most apathetic disposition. A few words 

 were exchanged with our guides, whom the women immedi- 

 ately supplied with lime and sireh, and then, renewing their 

 own quids, sat crouching in the doorways of the huts, or perhaps 

 attended by request to the head of a neighbour who might 

 be troubled with a parasitical itching. Although free from 

 elephantiasis, the body of each individual was covered with 

 the scaly symptoms of ringworm — ti7iea circinata tropica. 



" After we had measured the whole party, there was sufficient 

 light to photograph the village, to which, in the dark shade of 

 the jungle, I gave an exposure of ten minutes. The portraits 

 of the natives were taken under difficulties, for the only rays 

 of sunlight that filtered through the branches shifted slowly 

 with the rays of the sun, so that by the time the subject was 

 posed and focussed, he was generally outside the patch of 

 sunshine, 



" We bought all the little property visible, and then returned 

 to the schooner by path and canoe, having found that the 

 so-called ' half-day's ' journey resolved itself into a matter of 

 little more than an hour. 



