DRESS OF THE NATIVES. 137 



I confess I was hardly prepared for this assump- 

 tion of the honours of royalty by our excellent and 

 kind-hearted friend, but he seemed to treat it quite 

 as a matter of course, held out his hand, smiled 

 graciously, shook each courtier by the hand when 

 he had risen, and said a few civil words to him, and 

 then continued his conversation with us. Most of 

 the candidates or courtiers were grave-looking 

 middle-aged men, of a decent stoutness of body and 

 sedate manners. They were all richly dressed in 

 green or brown velvet jackets, ornamented with 

 small round gold buttons, with handsome sarongs 

 round their middles, and dark handkerchiefs round 

 their heads. Gold and diamonds were not unfre- 

 quent ornaments, either on their shirt studs or on 

 the sheaths and handles of the krisses that were 

 stuck into the shawls they wore wrapped round 

 their waists. They mostly had their legs and feet 

 bare, but one, who seemed to have been riding, had 

 Wellington boots on of a fashionable shape, and 

 white European trowsers and straps under his 

 sarong, combining rather oddly with the eastern 

 appearance of all the rest of his costume. The 

 attendants of one or two carried handsome and 

 massive-looking gold seri boxes, and gold goblets of 

 considerable size, which turned out to be their 

 masters' spitting-boxes. 



After a short halt we drove on to Sutje to see the 

 caves which I had before visited, but where I now 

 succeeded in procuring one of the edible swallows' 



