456 SUMATRA'S WEST COAST 



sweet-faced children of four with a coiled bit of springy banana 

 leaf rolled tightly and passed through the puncture to continu- 

 ally expand it to the proper diameter by the pressure of the 

 unrolling leaf, and graceful young belles with gold and silver 

 buttons tastefully elaborated as large as the top of an after-dinner 

 coffee cup. The young girls, we were told, could wear their ear- 

 rings or not as thev chose, but if they knew how ugty the} 7 looked 

 when the buttons are removed and the lobe of the ear appears 

 as a loop of gristle which dangles and flaps against the cheek) 

 they would wear them always. Upon marriage, however, the 

 bride must wear the buttons, as with us the wedding ring. After 

 the birth of the first child, or when five years have elapsed, she 

 must take them out and lay them aside. The old women are 

 general^ ugty, as they have buttonless ears, though as far as 

 their other features go they are remarkably well preserved. 

 Then, too, there is more significance in the dress of these natives 

 than there is in that of the Javanese. If a woman is poor she 

 wears a single dark skirt or sarong ; if she is well-to-do she puts 

 a second more costly over it. covering all but the bottom : if 

 she is rich she puts on a third, covering the major part of the 

 second, and if she is very rich she dons a fourth. The strange 

 carved and gilded light wooden head-dresses and still stranger 

 box-like bracelets, as well as the delicately formed bangles and 

 diamond-set pins and bracelets, one of which we priced and 

 found to be worth $150, testify to a skill as gold-workers which 

 rivals that of the natives of British India. The golden sarongs, 

 for which the women ask $50 or more apiece, are too somber 

 and in this regard are disappointing, lacking that originality of 

 pattern we are used to attribute to the Orient. The silver fili- 

 gree work of the men, were you not on the other side of the 

 world, you would swear was made in Mexico, it so nearly re- 

 sembles it in fineness of detail and originality of design. Their 

 beaten ware and heavier pieces are distinctly inferior to the 

 British Indian work. 



The surroundings of Padang Pandjang rival the famous scenes 

 from the little Javanese town of Buitenzorg. accounted one of the 

 three or four most beautiful spots in the world. The sunsets 

 over the volcanoes Singgalang and Merapi, with their low-drift- 

 ing clouds of peculiar violet, purple, and lilac hues, form sights 

 never to be forgotten. The famous sunsets in the Indian ocean 

 are no more wonderful. Pathways lead off from the well-trav- 

 eled road at every turn, and you have only to follow one of these 



