10 Mr. de Boepstorf on the Ricolarese. [Jan. 



brackish water, the Dhunny palm, pandanus, rotangs, and, now and then 

 where higher land skirts the water, foliaceous trees, together with reed- 

 like plants, creepers, and orchids, all pass in succession before the eyes, all 

 graceful forms, which seemingly pour out of the grim muddy soil, so that it 

 is like a fairy land to those who visit it for the first time. In this creek the 

 formation was, however, past the mangrove stage, and only a few of these 

 trees appeared every now and then. At one place a ficus had thrown a root 

 right across a branch of the creek, and had formed almost like a wall. We 

 shot past it, and after a journey of about a mile and a half we landed. 

 An oar was stuck in the mud inside the enclosure made by the outrigger, and 

 the canoe was left. We then proceeded across a large piece of alluvial soil 

 covered with fine grass (not the Savanna Lalang of Camorta), with panda- 

 nus and cocoanut plantations. We passed through a village and our guides 

 left their dhaos (heavy Burmese knives some 12 to 18 inches long) in one of the 

 houses. After a while, we struck into the same stream which had carried 

 our boat. It was now no longer fit for canoes, it was rather broad, and ran 

 between boulders with turnings right and left. On the whole we could 

 see by the sun that it kept about the direction west, a little southerly. 

 Occasionally we scrambled out of the stream, and found our way near its 

 side or over some flat short cut of its windings. On one of these we came 

 across a rattan put in the ground like an arch about 5 feet 8 inches high. 

 One of our guides pointed to it, and said it was some joke (miloe) of the 

 Shom-Bengs. 



Again a little further on, one of the guides pointed out to me a dhao 

 stuck in a tree, and almost immediately after we came upon a cleared spot. 

 The trees had been felled and the undergrowth cleared away, but it was again 

 nearly covered with secondary growth. In it there were some plantain trees 

 carefully planted out, the young ones hedged in, and 4 Shorn- Beng huts. 

 The three huts were evidently intended for habitation, and the fourth either 

 for cooking purposes or for a storehouse ; the latter was only 3| feet raised 

 from the ground, and was covered with rotangleares, The three houses were 

 6 feet in length by 4 feet in breadth. They consisted of sticks, 2 or 3 inches 

 thick, in the ground tied together with rattan. About 3 feet from the ground 

 was a platform with overlaying cloven thin stems of some palm, the flat sur- 

 face uppermost. The roof consisted of 5 or 6 pieces of bark laid across the 

 ridgestick and resting on thick rotangs. These huts stood N. and S. and the 

 ends were open. I might compare them to rough six-posted bedsteads made 

 for a night's rest by travellers on a journey, they certainly could not contain 

 more than a couple each. On the ground round the huts were the 

 remains of their meals. The most notable were some navicellse and other- 

 freshwater and landshells, and the worked out scales of: the pandanus trees, 

 which show that they have learnt the secret of making larome (». e., pan- 



