IN SUMAmj, 



153 



utan svatVel fosfor/* wkich arrive in these parts from 

 Swcden^ — if not also from the " fabrics ** of swindling China- 

 men in Singapore— by the hnndred thousand. 



There is scarcely a western article but the Chinamen have 

 introduced its counterleit here, sometimes with such wonder- 

 ful ingenuity that, even when anathematising them, one caonot 

 help feeling a sort of respect for their perseverance and assi- 

 duity oven in evil doing. This broad dissemination of tand- 

 stickors has driven into oblivion the savage*s picturesque 

 friction block. He strikes his match on the box and lights 

 his cigarette at the flame, guarding it from wind between his 

 half-closed hands, as if he were a native of the Isles of the 

 Blest, Though one is certainly pleased enough to have those 

 commodities ready to one's hand, yet it is decidedly disap- 

 pointing not to bo able to outrun civilisation ; one would fain 

 see " some new thing," some strange artiOce or curious custom. 

 To the ethnographical student, the latest Paris designs in 

 the furniture of a Polynesian or New Guinean hut must be 

 extremely interesting and edifying I 



Penanggungau was quite an embryo vOlage in the middle 

 of a fresh clearing in a piece of very ancient forest, and conse- 

 quently a rich botanical hunting-ground. In its near vicinity 

 grew one of the grandest Urodigma trees I have ever seen j 

 its broad buttresses and sturdy supporters, among which a 

 wanderer might almost lose himself, looking like the pillars 

 of some ancient Moorish temple. It was thick in fruit, 

 and harboured legions of skipping squirrels, great apes, and 

 troops of monkeys, which, to the eye surveying them from 

 below, looked like pigmies flitting about amid its branches. 

 Immense flocks of the large fni it-pigeons, and of the smaller 

 members of that numerous and beautiful family, crowded to 

 this rendezvous, their mags keeping up a constant whirring 

 in the air by their coming and going ; scores of the great 

 hornbill {Bitceros gfileaim) with their five-feet expanse of 

 wing* and myriads of smaller birds whose varied calls and 

 notes alone indicated their presence, flocked from far and near 

 to this inexhaustible storehouse (and its produce vmld not 

 be less than tens of thousands of bushels ot figs), and yet the 

 vast assemblage but sparsely peopled this single magnificent 

 specimen of the vegetable kingdom. 



