IN SUMATRA. 153 



utan svafvel ocli fosfor," which arrive in these parts from 

 Sweden — if not also from the " fabriks '' of swindling China- 

 men in Singapore — by the hundred thousand. 



There is scarcely a western article but the Chinamen have 

 introduced its counterfeit here, sometimes with such wonder- 

 ful ingenuity that, even when anathematising them, one cannot 

 help feeling a sort of respect for their perseverance and assi- 

 duity even in evil doing. This broad dissemination of tiind- 

 stickors has driven into oblivion the savage's picturesque 

 friction block. He strikes his match on the box and lights 

 his cigarette at. the flame, guarding it from wind between his 

 half-closed hands, as if he were a native of the Isles of the 

 Blest. Though one is certainly pleased enough to have those 

 commodities ready to one's hand, yet it is decidedly disap- 

 pointing not to be able to outrun civilisation ; one would fain 

 see " some new thing," some strange artifice or curious custom. 

 To the ethnographical student, the latest Paris designs in 

 the furniture of a Polynesian or New Guinean hut must be 

 extremely interesting and edifying ! 



Penauggungan was quite an embryo village in the middle 

 of a fresh clearing in a piece of very ancient forest, and conse- 

 quently a rich botanical hunting-ground. In its near vicinity 

 grew one of the grandest Vrostigina trees I have ever seen ; 

 its broad buttresses and sturdy supporters, among which a 

 wanderer might almost lose himself, looking like the pillars 

 of some ancient Moorish temple. It was thick in fruit, 

 and harboured legions of skipping squirrels, great apes, and 

 troops of monkeys, which, to the eye .surveying them from 

 below, looked like pigmies flitting about amid its branches. 

 Immense flocks of the large fruit-pigeons, and of the smaller 

 members of that numerous and beautiful family, crowded to 

 this rendezvous, their wings keeping up a constant whirring 

 in the air by their coming and going ; scores of the great 

 hornbill (Buceros galeatus) with their five-feet expanse of 

 wing, and myriads of smaller birds whose varied calls and 

 notes alone indicated their presence, flocked from far and near 

 to this inexhaustible storehouse (and its produce could not 

 be less than tens of thousands of bushels of figs), and yet the 

 vast assemblage but sparsely peopled this single magnificent 

 specimen of the vegetable kingdom. 



