In one corner of the room was the hand-loom on which the punghulo’s old wife was weaving the universal article of dress, the sarong.
The weaving of a sarong represents the labor of twenty days, and when we gave the dried-up old worker two dollars and a half for one, her syrah-stained gums broke forth from between her bright-red lips in a ghastly grin of pleasure.
There must have been the representatives of at least four generations under the punghulo’s hospitable roof. Men and women, alike, were dressed in the skirt-like sarong which fell from the waist down; above that some of the older women wore another garment called a kabaya. The married women were easily distinguishable by their swollen gums and filed teeth.
The roof and sides of the house were of attap. This is made from the long, arrow-like leaves of the nipah palm. Unlike its brother palms—the cocoa, the sago, the gamooty, and the areca—the nipah is short, and more like a giant cactus in growth. Its leaves are stripped off by the natives, then bent over a bamboo rod and sewed together with fibres of the same palm. When dry they become glazed and waterproof.
The tall, slender areca palm, which stands about every kampong, supplies the natives with their great luxury—an acorn, known as the betel-nut, which, when crushed and mixed with lime leaves, takes the place of our chewing tobacco. In fact, the bright-red juice seen oozing from the corners of a Malay’s mouth is as much a part of himself as is his sarong or kris. Betel-nut chewing holds its own against the opium of the Chinese and the tobacco of the European.
As soon as we shook hands ceremoniously with the punghulo’s oldest wife, and tabeked to the rest of his big family, the old man scrambled down the ladder, and sent a boy up a cocoanut tree for some fresh nuts. In a moment half a dozen of the great, oval, green nuts came pounding down into the sand. Another little fellow snatched them up, and with a sharp parang, or hatchet-like knife, cut away the soft shuck until the cocoanut took the form of a pyramid, at the apex of which he bored a hole, and a stream of delicious, cool milk gurgled out. We needed no second invitation to apply our lips to the hole. The meat inside was so soft that we could eat it with a spoon. The cocoanut of commerce contains hardly a suggestion of the tender, fleshy pulp of a freshly picked nut.
We left the punghulo’s house with the old chief in the bow of our boat—he insisted upon seeing that we were properly announced to his subjects—and proceeded along the coast for half a mile, and then up a swampy lagoon to its head.
The tall tops of the palms wrapped everything in a cool, green twilight. The waters of the lagoon were filled with little bronze forms, swimming and sporting about in its tepid depths regardless of the cruel eyes that gleamed at them from great log-like forms among the mangrove roots.
Dozens of naked children fled up the rickety ladders of their homes as we approached. Ring-doves flew through the trees, and tame monkeys chattered at us from every corner. The men came out to meet us, and did the hospitalities of their village; and when we left, our boat was loaded down with presents of fish and fruit.
Almost every day after that did we visit the kampong, and were always welcomed in the same cordial manner.