In the Eastern Seas

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Chapter Twenty One.

Sedgwick Island and its wonders.

Our uncle introduced us to his house with evident pride. He and his man Tanda had bestowed a great deal of pains on it. It was constructed entirely after the Malay fashion—of wood, bamboo, and matting, though raised higher off the ground than the Malays are accustomed to build theirs. The floors were of split bamboo, sufficiently strong to bear a person’s weight, and yet giving a pleasant spring as we passed over them. They were kept in their place by long strips of ratan, passed transversely between them, much in the way of a cane-bottom chair. Over these mats were spread—not so neatly made, perhaps, as those employed by the wealthy Malays, but still very well done. The walls were made of the palm-leaves which I have before described, fixed in panels, very neat and pleasing to the eye, and perfectly weather-tight. The roof was high pitched, and had broad overhanging eaves, giving it very much the appearance of a Swiss cottage. A broad verandah ran round each side of the house, the rooms opening into it. They were divided from each other by thick mats stretched from the ceiling to the floor, and could be lifted up at pleasure to allow the air to circulate in every direction. It would have been impossible to build with the materials at hand an abode better suited to the purpose.

“Here, Frau, you and your young ladies shall occupy these two apartments,” said my uncle to Frau Ursula, who stood smiling from ear to ear at the polite way in which he addressed her. “You shall have bedsteads brought in directly; and I must leave you to arrange them, while Tanda and I get supper ready. The lads here and the sailor will no doubt assist us.”

Roger Trew, who had ascended the ladder with his bundle of bedding, deposited it in the room my uncle pointed out, and forthwith commenced unlashing it; and knowing that he would prove a better assistant to the dame than Oliver and I should, we accompanied my uncle to what he called his cooking-shed, at the back of the house. Here he had brought water from a spring in the forest, and had made a drain towards the sea to carry off the refuse. He had a variety of fish, flesh, and fowl in his larder, which was in a cool place at the back of the house.

I scarcely know what I shall describe first. The fruit was the most attractive. There was the delicious mangostin—of a spherical form. The outer part is a thick rough covering, and it has a white opaque centre, an inch or more in diameter. Each of the four or five parts into which it is divided, contains a small seed. The white part is what is eaten. It has a slightly sweet taste, and a rich yet delicate and peculiar flavour, which it is impossible to describe. Then there was the rambutan—a globular fruit, an inch and a half in diameter. The rind is of a light red, adorned with coarse scattered bristles. Within, there is a semi-transparent pulp, of a slightly acid taste. Next there was the elliptical shaped mango, containing a small stone of the same form. The interior, when the tough outer skin was removed, consisted of a soft, pulpy, fibrous mass, of a bright yellow. Another fruit appeared, in the form of long clusters, about the size of a small bird’s egg. It was the duku. The outer coating was thin and leathery, and of a dull yellow. In the inside were several long seeds, surrounded by a transparent pulp, of a sweet and pleasantly acid taste. The durian, however, my uncle told us, was among the most esteemed of all the fruits in that region. It is spherical in form, six or eight inches in diameter, and generally covered with many tubercles. The interior is divided into several parts. On breaking the shell, we found in each division a seed as large as a chestnut, surrounded by a pale yellow substance, of the consistency of thick cream; but the odour was enough at first to make me have no wish to eat it. It seemed to me like putrid animal matter, and peculiarly strong.

“You do not like the odour, Walter,” observed my uncle. “Nor did I at first, but I have now become so fond of the fruit, that I prefer it to any other. But, after all, these fruits are not to be compared to those of a tree growing just outside, at the back of my house—the far-famed bread-fruit tree. Here, Tanda,” and he spoke a few words to him. “Look there, do you see it?”

It was a tree upwards of forty feet high, with enormous sharply lobed leaves, some of which were one foot wide and one and a half long. The fruit which Tanda picked was of the form and size of a melon, and attached by its stem directly to the trunk.

“We must cut some, for it is the chief vegetable I have in season,” said my uncle, cutting it in slices, and handing it to Tanda to fry. “We have some molasses to eat with it, produced from the sap of the gomuti-palm.”