VOYAGE FEOM INDIA TO SIAM AND MALACCA. 83 



it was a French ship. They were both loading- coconuts, 

 which they bought here very cheaply in order to take them to 

 Pegu, and to sell them there with great profit. 



Their women have almost the same appearance as their men, 

 being strong and muscular, but most of them had their hair shorn 

 off. Their clothing consisted of a blue cloth wound round their 

 loins, or they wore an apron made of leaves, which was cut in 

 strips hardly one line wide and reached down to the knees; they 

 'were plated together at the top and hung round their bodies in 

 layers almost two inches thick. These strips seemed to have 

 been taken from the Borassi or Chamoerops. Some grown up girls 

 I saw here as well, their hair was cut off below the ear and hung 

 loosely round their head. 



However many people I saw here of different sex, I did not 

 come across any whom I could have termed old. The only 

 exception was a woman, apparently about fifty years old. The 

 shortness of my stay here prevented me to make further re- 

 searches and inquiries, which besides would have been very dif- 

 ficult considering the language and utter simplicity of the natives. 

 As far as I could observe they were very vague in their ideas 

 as regards years, months, weeks, days and hours. 



Near one of the large houses I saw some piles ; they were 

 about ten inches thick square and two and a half feet high. At 

 the upper end they had two holes, meeting- in the middle like a 

 cross ; through them were plaited many coloured ribbons both 

 of linen and of cloth, presenting' the appearance of streamers ; 

 at their end there was a stick about as high as a man, at the end 

 of this a piece of white linen was fastened of about two inches 

 wide, looking like a flag ; all this was surrounded by a sort of 

 conical figure of the sheaths of the Chamoerops, so that only in 

 front a little piece of the streamers was to be seen. I made in- 

 quiries as to these things, and they told me they were monu- 

 ments for the dead, and that lately three persons had died in this 

 house. I saw some more of the same kind of stakes which were 

 already old, but there was not one near every house. 



I saw some persons of both sexes wearing green fringes, and 

 I inquired why they were in this manner distinguished from the 

 others ; as much as I could learn from my interpreter these were 

 those who had held their feast of love. This is always cele- 

 brated in the woods, never anywhere eLse, and ajj a sign of this 



