aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

COCHrN" CHINA TO SINGAPORE. 191
generally considered the choicest and most luscious
fruit in
the world ; and yet, like tomatoes, one must cultivate a taste
for it. The odor of the shell is truly disgusting. The eatable
substance is o& a yellowish creamy consistence, tasting
like a mixture of mashed beech-nuts, bananas, onions,
strawberries, pumpkin-seeds, and sweet apples.
The children three, five, and seven years of age, playing
about, perfectly nude, were quite shy of us. Though absolute
nakedness in this climate is comfortable, the custom is
quite too Adamic. These Mohammedan Malays circumcise
between the years of eleven and fifteen ; and old and young
strictly abstain from opium and liquors of all kinds. Mr.
Hewick, Chief of Police in the Wellsley Provinces, accompanying
us into the country to see Malay life, amused us,
when returning, by sending a baboon species of the monkey
up a smooth, limbless cocoanut-tree to pick some fruit.
The ingenious method the cunning brute devised to twist
the nuts from the tree showed a striking intelligence.
In the Malay language "wiwwiei" is the term for monkey,
" Izarra " for baboon, and " orang " for man. " Orang-laut "
implies sea-people, or seafaring men ;
" orang-gunung " is
defined mountaineer, or a rustic, uncultivated man ; while
" orang-utan " signifies literally a man of the forest, or the
aboriginal people. The famous " man-like ape," to which
Darwinian sympathizers give this name, is never so called by
the natives, but is known among all Malay-speaking races
under the name of " mias" How easily words mislead,
especially when an extreme theory is to be maintained