CH. vn TO 8ANGIB AND TALATJT 179 



central hall or reception room, as it might be called, and a 

 number of little partitions or retiring rooms opening from 

 it. One of these was reserved for the Dominie Wielandt 

 and me, but as it was thought to be inconsistent with 

 European customs for two gentlemen to sleep in one room, 

 a large curtain was hung across it between the two beds, so 

 as to give each of us a separate compartment. 



The whole house was hung with an amazing quantity 

 of the native koffo curtains, giving it the appearance of a 

 small ethnological museum. 



These curtains are made from the fibre of the wild 

 banana,^ which is found in considerable abundance in the 

 Sangirese forests. The Malays call the cloth they make 

 from it ' koffo,' a word which has been imported from the 

 Philippines. The tuan bohki explained to me the way in 

 which the cloth was woven, and I thought at the time that 

 I fully understood it, but in trying to repeat the explanation 

 on a loom I obtained from Sangir I broke down, and the 

 process still remains a mystery to me. Some of the threads 

 are used quite plain, but others are coloured to form a 

 pattern. The colours used are blue, red, yellow, and black. 

 The blue colour is obtained from the Indigofera tinctoria, 

 the red colour is obtained from the roots of a plant called 

 by the natives seha, the black colour from the bark of trees 

 called palenti '' and from the flowers of the hibiscus, the 

 yellow colour from the Curcuma longa. 



The loom is apparently of the same construction as that 

 used in the Philippine islands. 



In front of the house there was a roomy verandah 



' Musa mindanensis, the pisang utan of tlie Malays. It has not a very 

 wide geographical distribution, but extends from the Philippines to Gilolo and 

 Celebes. The Sangirese word for Musa mindanensis is horti ; for the koffo 

 dorundung. 



* The native boy who accompanied me into the country could not show 

 me a seha tree nor a palenti, so that I am unable to identify them. 



N 2 



