DESCRIPTION OF TOWN. 23 



form, about six feet broad, by nine feet in length, 

 and five feet in height. They consisted of a roof 

 of mats, made of the doom palm leaf, or of a long 

 dried grass, or else merely half-dried skins badly 

 preserved, stretched over the usual stick skeleton of 

 a wigwam. There was not much architectural 

 display, for being all roof, they did not well admit 

 of it. Nor does convenience appear to be con- 

 sulted in laying out streets, or even regular passages, 

 only in so much, that a small spot on one side of 

 the entrance of each hut is left vacant for purposes 

 that may be imagined, and a succession of these 

 sweet and pleasant places make a narrow lane, into 

 which all doors open, and thus a convenient but 

 dirty street is formed by which alone the visitor is 

 enabled to perambulate this justly celebrated 

 aromatic yielding fair. 



The residences of the few foreign merchants, 

 principally Banians and Arabs, are exceptions to 

 this general style in the construction of the houses, 

 and have some pretensions both to appear- 

 ance and convenience^ usually having mat walls 

 to the height of four or five feet, with a long 

 slanting roof of grass securely fastened down by 

 sticks of bamboo laid transversely. The entrance 

 is a kind of hall, opening into the centre of a 

 room at right angles, and which extends to the 

 right and left, perhaps ten or twelve feet on each 

 side; its breadth is about ten feet. Behind this 

 room is another apartment of equal dimensions, 



