VOYAGE FROM INDIA TO SIAM AND MALACCA. 123 



.red colour which they usually have. 



There was a second kind growing here as well ; it stands 

 erect and the stem is high, naked, jointed and red. The leaves 

 form an erect Fascicle. They always grow in damp parts, at 

 times even in deep water ; their fruits are single like those of 

 the common kaldeer, but they are completely parallel. Standing 

 closely together at the banks of the rivers, they make a nice 

 show with their slender red stems. Their leaves are more blue- 

 green than those of the others. The creeping kaldeer also grows 

 here frequently in the wood, but I have not found any of its fruit, 

 except in Junk Ceylon. 



6. — In the last days I arranged my things, and dried and 

 packed as many of them as I could in this weather. I found some 

 Nepenthes in blossom, but they were only male ones. They have 

 separate male and female blossoms, and are polygamists. 



7. — I saw a corpse Jin the house of a Chinese. It was that 

 of an old rich woman who two days before her death had distri- 

 buted 500 piasters and 300 rupees to be expended at her funeral. 

 She had died from old age, and had foretold the exact hour of 

 her death. The body was already in the coffin, and this stood in 

 a front room between two rows of curtains, which had been hung 

 across the room. They were looped up in the middle. The 

 coffin stood on a special bench, the feet of which were like those 

 of a carpenter's bench. The coffin was peculiar. It had a kind 

 of foot about a hand high which slanted inward, then it bulged 

 out at the sides and was half-round, but the lid projected again in 

 slanting manner over the edge and was as thick as the foot of 

 the coffin ; the same plan was followed at both ends. The end 

 for the head was somewhat thicker and was convex at the top, 

 being slightly raised at both ends. The whole coffin was three 

 feet high and covered with a thin shiny varnish on the outside. 

 At both sides stood two candle sticks with wax candles, which 

 burned continually. In the middle of each side stood two idols, 

 Josses of 1-J foot high, they were placed on a three-cornered 

 pedestal, which also had three feet. The coffin was said to have 

 been covered with many layers of paper inside, so as to let no 

 manner of smell of decomposition pass. The body itself was 

 clothed in eleven different kind of garments, so that this old 

 woman might have an ample supply of clothes if she should soil 

 some of them on her long journey. In front, outside the curtains 



