RAFTS OF COCOA-NUTS. 



523 



witli both hands. In this way they crossed the river 

 with a surprising rapidity, considering tBe simple ap- 

 paratus they used. The readiness with which tliey 

 paddled indicated that this is no very uncommon 

 mode of crossing rivers in this land. 



As the villages became larger and more frequent, 

 more and more cocoa-nut trees appeared, and soon we 

 passed several large bamboo rafts, bearing sheds that 

 were filled with this fruit, and in one place two na^ 

 tives were seen quietly floating down the river on a 

 great pile of these nuts in the most complacent 

 manner. At first I expected to see ■ the nuts fly 

 ofi:' in all dhections and the men disappear beneath 

 the surface of the river^ but as we came nearer I saw 

 the nuts were fastened together in small bunches by 

 strips of their own husks, and these bunches were 

 bound into a hemispherical mass large enough to 

 float the two men. The nuts on the raft were to 

 be taken down to Palembang, where the coeoa-palms 

 do not flourish. During the day we saw two or 

 three large troops of monkeys. This is a very pleas- 

 ant time to pass down these rivers, because they are 

 now high, and instead of seeing onjy walls and bluffs 

 of naked mud on either hand, the banks are covered 

 with grass down to the water's edge, and the bam- 

 boos and trees, that grow here in tropical luxuriance, 

 lean over gracefully toward the rapid river, and lave 

 the tips of their lowest branches in the passing 

 current. 



May bth. — ^The corhtroleu/r kindly took me in his 

 large barge, with twenty men to paddle and two men 

 to steer, some five miles up the Inem River to Lingga^ 



