Resting from work.
p. [123].
This is composed of a leaf or two of betel—a plant that possesses a certain narcotic virtue—smeared with lime and rolled up round a little tobacco and a piece of areca nut. Both men and women chew these quids with great relish, spitting out the juice from time to time.
The old people, whose want of teeth makes mastication next to impossible, put the ingredients into a bamboo and pound them until they are reduced to, what they consider, a delicious paste.
The young Sakai reaches the height of his vigour at about eighteen years old, after which he has a brief stationary period, followed by a rapid falling off that I think must be caused by his being continually exposed to the inclemency of the weather.
The woman begins to decline soon after her first confinement. From the age of 13 to 15 she becomes a wife and in two years from that date she is but the ghost of her former self. Thin, and with a wrinkled skin, not even a shadow remains of her youthful freshness and the attractive points she had as a girl.
But what does this matter to her? Her husband is faithful to her, with a fidelity that knows no hypocrisy; she is happy and is proud of her maternity; she can still dance and strike chords upon her krob, modulate a plaintive ditty on her ciniloi and sing whilst she beats on her bamboo sticks an accompaniment that tortures well-tuned ears. For the rest, if her beauty soon fades, her ugliness does not create the least feeling of disgust amongst the Sakais of the masculine gender, who have aesthetic ideas peculiarly their own.
It is enough to say that the ugliest of the female sex are the prettiest and the most admired.
I am speaking in earnest.