They are chapters that we can read over and over again with an ever increasing interest as the years roll by.
The Sarong
The Malay’s Chief Garment
No one knows who invented the sarong. When the great Sir Francis Drake skirted the beautiful jungle-bound shores of that strange Asian peninsula which seems forever to be pointing a wondering finger into the very heart of the greatest archipelago in the world, he found its inhabitants wearing the sarong. After a lapse of three centuries they still wear it,—neither Hindu invasion, Mohammedan conversion, Chinese immigration, nor European conquest has ever taken from them their national dress. Civilization has introduced many articles of clothing; but no matter how many of these are adopted, the Malay, from his Highness the Sultan of Johore, to the poorest fisherman of a squalid kampong on the muddy banks of a mangrove-hidden stream, religiously wears the sarong.
It is only an oblong cloth, this fashion-surviving garb, from two to four feet in width and some two yards long; sewn together at the ends. It looks like a gingham bag with the bottom out. The wearer steps into it, and with two or three ingenious twists tightens it round the waist, thus forming a skirt and, at the same time, a belt in which he carries the kris, or snake-like dagger, the inevitable pouch of areca nut for chewing, and the few copper cents that he dares not trust in his unlocked hut. The man’s skirt falls to his knees, and among the poor class forms his only article of dress, while the woman’s reaches to her ankles and is worn in connection with another sarong that is thrown over her head as a veil, so that when she is abroad and meets one of the opposite sex she can, Moslem-like, draw it about her face in the form of a long, narrow slit, showing only her coal-black eyes and thinly pencilled eyebrows.
In style or design the sarong never changes. Like the tartan of the Highlanders, which it greatly resembles, it is invariably a check of gay colors. They are all woven of silk or cotton, or of silk and cotton mixed, by the native women, and no attap-thatched home is complete without its hand-loom.
One day we crawled up the narrow, rickety ladder that led into the two by four opening of old Wahpering’s palm-shaded home. The little punghulo or chief, touched his forehead with the back of his open palm as we advanced cautiously over the open bamboo floor toward his old wife, who was seated in one corner by a low, horizontal window, weaving a sarong on a hand-loom. She looked up pleasantly with a soft “Tabek” (Greeting), and went on throwing her shuttle deftly through the brilliantly colored threads. The sharp bang of the dark, kamooning-wood bar drove the thread in place and left room for another. Back and forth flew the shuttle, and thread after thread was added to the fabric, yet no perceptible addition seemed to be made.
“How long does it take to finish it?” I asked in Malay.
“Twenty days,” she answered, with a broad smile, showing her black, filed teeth and syrah-stained lips.