VISIT TO A COCOA PLANTATION. 



137 



Tiga, or Three Houses " The boatmen were gayly 

 dressed in white trousei^ with red trimmings, and had 

 red handkerchiefs tied round their heads. A small 

 gong and a Ufa or drum, made by tightly stretching 

 a piece of the hide of a wild deer over the end of a 

 short, hollow log, gave forth a nide, wild music, and 

 at leaat served to aid the boatmen in keeping time as 

 they rowed. Occasionally, to break the monotony of 

 their labor, they sang a low, plaintive song. In- 

 stead of steering straight for the point which we 

 wished to arrive at on the opposite side of the bay, 

 our helmsman kept the boat so near the shore that 

 we really passed round the head of the bay, twice as 

 far as it would have been in a right line. This mode 

 of Immar steering, or, as the sailors express it in our 

 language, hugging the shore," I afterward found was 

 the one universally adopted in all this part of the 

 archipelago. When we landed, I had the pleasm*e to 

 find, Just beneath low-w"ater level, hundreds of black 

 sea-m-chins, with needle-like spines nearly a foot long, 

 and so extremely sharp and brittle, that it was very 

 difficult to get the animals out of the little cavities in 

 the rocks wliere they had anchored themselves fast 

 with their many suckers. Near by, the villagers were 

 busy boiling do\vn the sap of the sagaru-palm for the 

 sugar it contains. According to my taste it is much 

 like maple-sugaiv Up to the time that Europeans 

 first came to the East, this was the only kind of sugar 

 known to the natives, and large quantities of it are 

 still consumed among the islands here in the eastern 

 part of the archipelago. 



From the beach, a narrow footpath led through 



