can tolerate its approach.  To me the odor seemed precisely that supposed to be produced by the admixture of garlic and assafoetida; and as a plate piled with the rich golden pulp was placed before me by our hostess, I came so near fainting as to be compelled to seek the open air.  The old Chinaman followed me, and when he had learned the cause of my indisposition, laughed heartily, saying, “Wait a year or two.  You have not been in the country long enough to appreciate this rare luxury.  But when you have become initiated into a knowledge of its surpassing excellences, never an orange, pineapple or other fruit will you touch when a durian can be had.”

Just as we were re-entering our palanquins, Chek Kongtwau inquired whether we had yet seen the anoo palm or sago tree, of which he said there was but a solitary specimen in the island, most of the sago manufactured at Singapore being brought in its crude state from the swamps of Sumatra.  He told us the famous tree was several miles from his house, out of our direct route, but if we had time to visit it he would undertake to guide us safely through the jungle to and from the tree.  We found it standing in solitary grandeur in a low swamp, and lifting its long pinnated leaves from the extreme top of a trunk full thirty feet high and twenty-eight inches in diameter.  Its general appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm.  Our conductor called the sago tree sibla, but the Malays give it the name of rumbiga.  They say that each tree, if kept properly pruned down, will produce at least five hundred pounds of pith per annum; but it soon degenerates if suffered to grow to any considerable height.  The pith is soaked in large troughs of running water until it dissolves and afterward settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking beneath it, and the fibres and scum floating on top.  After being separated from these impurities the sago is dried, and then granulated by passing it through perforated plates till it becomes smooth and polished like so many pearls, when it is packed in boxes and bags for sale.  We did not see the process that day, of course, but afterward at the large factory on the river a few miles above the settlement.

One more plantation, a grove of the stately areca-nut or betel trees, we determined to visit before taking the boat.  The smooth road was bordered everywhere with the beautiful melastoma or Singapore rose, of perennial foliage and always in bloom, underneath acacias and palms; and the very earth was carpeted with beauty and fragrance enough to have formed the bridal-couch of a fairy queen.  Over such a highway three miles were quickly made, and we alighted at the entrance of a narrow lane that led to the abode of Cassim Mootoo, the Malay owner and cultivator of the betel-nut plantation.  At the outer door a stone monster of huge proportions and uncouth features kept guard against the uncanny spirits that are supposed to frequent out-of-the-way lanes and dreary passages.  The planter received