52 A Visit to Damma Island : 



picturesque gorge, shaded with fine trees, giving access for 

 nearly a mile into the interior of the island, beyond which its 

 rugged and rocky bed, encumbered with huge blocks of 

 trachyte, becomes quite impassable on foot. 



Damma is rather scantily inhabited by two races of Papuan 

 and Malay type, who live in separate villages scattered round 

 the shore of the island, and appear scarcely, if at all, to inter- 

 mix with each other. As Dr. Bassett-Smith has given else- 

 where a detailed account of the inhabitants of Damma (Trans. 

 Anthropological Institute, Nov. 1893, p. 135 et seq.), it is 

 not necessary for me to say much about them here. ISolla, 

 one of the principal Malaj villages, is situated near tlie 

 head of Koelewatte Bay and consists of about thirty very 

 neat palm-leaf huts, surrounded by a well-made " dry-stone " 

 wall some eight feet in height, access being obtained to the 

 interior by means of wooden ladders. The land close to this 

 village, and about the mouth of the stream, is fairly level, 

 and is partly cleared, and roughly planted with tobacco, 

 bananas, a poor kind of bread-fruit tree, the jack-fruit [Arto- 

 carjnis ititegrifolia) , the rose- apple {Eugenia Jambos) , and the 

 mango. The last- mentioned tree attains to a great size, and 

 produces abundance of delicious fruit, which was just begin- 

 ning to ripen at the time of our visit. The coco-nut palm 

 flourishes everywhere near the sea, and is tapped for '' sagueir" 

 or palm-wine, which is a slightly effervescent milky-looking 

 fluid, somewhat like rather " hard " cider, with a slight but 

 pleasant flavour of the coco-nut, and is very refreshing to 

 drink in the heat of the day. The sago-palm also grows 

 protusely in swampy places, and furnishes the principal 

 sustenance of the natives ; the process of preparing the sago 

 from the pith of the palm, in the curious washing-troughs 

 made from the tree itself (so admirably described by Dr. Wal- 

 lace in the ' Malay Archipelago '), was to be seen in full 

 swing on the bank of the stream. Some fine and curious 

 beetles were obtained by turning over the heaps of half- 

 fermented fibrous refuse resulting from this operation. 



The natives have a few pigs and fowls, and are expert 

 fishermen, using a cast-net in the shallows for small fish, and 

 shooting larger ones in the water with a peculiar arrow 

 having three barbed prongs of hard wood. Their canoes are 

 of exceedingly elegant shape and very creditable workman- 

 ship, and are hewn out, thwarts and all, from solid logs of a 

 large leguminous tree, which furnishes a soft white timber 

 very like the wood of the lime-tree. The tools used in the 

 work are small adzes, axes, and chisels, the finishing touches 

 being given by a " parang," or chopping-knife. Stability is 



