The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

96 THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. [chap.having everj^ motion watched by crowds of men, women, andcliildren, and I had also a much greater variety of walks to eachof the villages and the plantations around them.The villages of the Sumati'an Malays are somewhat peculiarand very jiicturesque. A space of some acres is surroundedwith a high fence, and over this area the houses are thicklystrewn without tlie least attempt at regularity. Tall cocoa-nuttrees gi-ow abundantly between them, and the ground is bareand smooth with tlie trampling of many feet. The houses areraised about six feet on posts, the best being entirely built ofplanks, others of bamboo. The former are always more or lessornamented with carving, and have high-pitched roofs andchief's house and rice sued in a sdmatran village.overhanging eaves; The gable ends and all the chief posts andbeams are sometimes covered with exceedingly tasteful carvedwork, and this is still more the case in the district of Menangkabo,further west. The floor is made of split bamboo, and is rathershakj', and there is no sign of anything we should call furniture.There are no ])enches or cliairs or stools, but merely thelevel floor covered with mats, on which the inmates sit or lie.The aspect of the village itself is very neat, the ground beingoften swept before the chief houses ; but very bad odoursabound, owing to there being under every house a stinkingmud-hole, formed by all waste liquids and refuse matter, poureddown tln-ough the floor above. In most other tilings Malaysare tolerably clean—in some scrupulously so ; and this peculiarand nasty custom, which is almost universal, arises, I have