60 BATCH! AN. [chap. xxiv. 



All along the beach here, and in the adjacent strip of 

 sandy lowland, is a remarkable display of Pandanaceae or 

 Screw-pines. Some are like huge branching candelabra, 

 forty or fifty feet high, and bearing at the end of each 

 branch a tuft of immense sword-shaped leaves, six or eight 

 inches wide, and as many feet long. Others have a single 

 unbranched stem, six or seven feet high, the upper part 

 clothed with the spirally arranged leaves, and bearing a 

 single terminal fruit as large as a swan's egg. Others of 

 intermediate size have irregulai* clusters of roush red 

 fruits, and all have more or less^ spiny-iedged leaves and 

 ringed stems. The young plants of the larger species 

 liave smooth glossy thick leaves, sometimes ten feet 

 long and' eight inches- wide, which are used all over 

 the Moluccas- and New Guinea, to' make "cocoyas" 

 or sleeping mats, which are often' very prettily orna- 

 mented with coloured patterns. Higher up on the hill is 

 a forest of immense trees, among which those producing 

 the resin called dammar (Dammara sp.) are abxindant. 

 The inhabitants of several small villages in Batchian are 

 entirely engaged in searching for this product, and making 

 it into torches by pounding it and filling it into' tubes of 

 palm leaves about a yard long, which are the only lights 

 used by many of the natives. Sometimes the dammar 

 accumulates in large masses of ten or twenty pounds 

 weight, either attached to the trunk, or found buried in the 



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