BY MOTOR THROUGH THE EAST COAST OF SUMATRA 



87 



THE COMMUNAL HOUSE AT KAMPONG KINALANG, SUMATRA 



Note the means by which the thatched roof is anchored, awakening recollections of the 

 stone-weighted chalets of Switzerland. Many of the houses in Sumatran villages are com- 

 munal in character, three or four families living in the same dwelling. In places where the 

 natives have come in contact with the Dutch, the interiors of their homes are not without 

 modern conveniences, such as beds, pillows, and canopies. These houses are more comfort- 

 able than those of any other people in the Dutch East Indies- 



of a ripe fruit, and is knocked on the 

 head and promptly eaten. In this both 

 parties are mutually benefited : the con- 

 sumers in partaking of the wisdom of 

 their late progenitor; the eaten ancestor 

 by finding immortality as a dimly con- 

 scious member of the bodies of his strong, 

 young descendants. 



To an animistic form of religion which 

 regards the decay of a body in the ground 

 as the end of all existence, this method 

 of cheating death is welcomed alike by 

 the failing tribesman and his younger re- 

 lations. Not infrequently the practice is 

 extended to the unfortunate strangers 

 falling into the hands of such tribes, who 

 are devoured that their capturers may 

 receive the benefit of whatever wisdom 

 they happen to embody. To this, rather 

 than to a mere partiality for human 

 flesh, cannibalism as practiced by many 

 tribes may probably be attributed. 



Dark clouds presaging the usual rain 

 of afternoon had already appeared on 

 the horizon when we stopped for a hasty 



tiffin by the roadside. The rains of many 

 afternoons had reduced the road to a 

 bottomless morass of mud and clay, for 

 we had left behind the last traces of 

 metaling a few miles after clearing the 

 mountains. 



While the average altitude of the plains 

 is about four thousand feet, the level of 

 the rolling surface varies more than a 

 thousand, and the steep clay hills become 

 appallingly slippery when wet. Up these 

 the car barely crawled, moving crab- 

 fashion, with the rear wheels revolving 

 furiously in spite of "non-skid" tire 

 chains, and flinging unbroken streams of 

 clay-mud in all directions, which my boy 

 Joseph vainly tried to dodge while he 

 threw armfuls of cut grass under our 

 track. 



On the down grades we tobogganed 

 with hair-raising speed, wheels locked, 

 and the whole road surface sliding with 

 us, frequently finishing up in the ditch 

 if there happened to be curves on the 

 descent. Fortunately the ditches were 



