94 The Gardens of the Sun. [ch. v. 



of the river, but there was no great difficult}" in crossing, 

 the water being rarely as high as the hips. We passed 

 huts here and there, and irrigated patches of rice. Maize 

 and sweet potatoes grew around the houses, and almost 

 all had a clump of big-leaved bananas near the door. 

 The rice land was irrigated by a ditch cut from the river, 

 a little dam being made so as to direct the water into it 

 as required. We noticed several fish-traps set in the 

 river to-day. These are made of a bamboo stem six feet 

 long, split lengthwise and made into a long basket-like 

 shape with rattans, so that it is wide at top and narrow 

 at the other end. In order to set them effectively, an 

 oblique dam of stones and earth is made so as to direct a 

 large body of water through an aperture, and in this the 

 basket is placed. A fish once washed into it has no 

 chance of escape, and large quantities are caught at times, 

 especially after the river is freshened by rains. Occa- 

 sionally we saw men or women working on the rice-land, 

 and I was very much struck at the care taken in planting 

 and cultivating the crop, not a weed being anywhere 

 visible in the rice-patches. The planting was extremely 

 regular, each tuft or stool being about eight inches from 

 its neighbours, so that all obtained their due amount of 

 earth, light, and air, a lesson indeed for some of our own 

 cultivators of cereals here at home. 



We passed immense clumps of bamboo, the feathery 

 wands rising in masses to a height of fifty or sixty feet. 

 From one of these clumps our men secured some of the 

 young crowns, which are white and tender, and by no 

 means despisable as a vegetable when boiled with salt. 

 At Bawang I had noticed them eating boiled fern-tops 

 with their rice, and on asking for a little I was surprised at 

 its delicate spinach-like flavour. We met a boy at one of 

 the crossings with a basket of fine langsat fruit, some of 



