OIL.

The oil in general use is that of the coconut, which is procured in the following manner.  The fleshy part being scraped out of the nut, which for this use must be old, is exposed for some time to the heat of the sun.  It is then put into a mat bag and placed in the press (kampahan) between two sloping timbers, which are fixed together in a socket in the lower part of the frame, and forced towards each other by wedges in a groove at top, compressing by this means the pulp of the nut, which yields an oil that falls into a trough made for its reception below.  In the farther parts of the country this oil also, owing to the scarcity of coconuts, is dear; and not so much used for burning as that from other vegetables, and the dammar or rosin, which is always at hand.

TORCHES.

When travelling at night they make use of torches or links, called suluh, the common sort of which are nothing more than dried bamboos of a convenient length, beaten at the joints till split in every part, without the addition of any resinous or other inflammable substance.  A superior kind is made by filling with dammar a young bamboo, about a cubit long, well dried, and having the outer skin taken off.

These torches are carried with a view, chiefly, to frighten away the tigers, which are alarmed at the appearance of fire; and for the same reason it is common to make a blaze with wood in different parts round their villages.  The tigers prove to the inhabitants, both in their journeys and even their domestic occupations, most fatal and destructive enemies.  The number of people annually slain by these rapacious tyrants of the woods is almost incredible.  I have known instances of whole villages being depopulated by them.  Yet, from a superstitious prejudice, it is with difficulty they are prevailed upon, by a large reward which the India Company offers, to use methods of destroying them till they have sustained some particular injury in their own family or kindred, and their ideas of fatalism contribute to render them insensible to the risk.

TIGER-TRAPS.

Their traps, of which they can make variety, are very ingeniously contrived.  Sometimes they are in the nature of strong cages, with falling doors, into which the beast is enticed by a goat or dog enclosed as a bait; sometimes they manage that a large timber shall fall, in a groove, across his back; he is noosed about the loins with strong rattans, or he is led to ascend a plank, nearly balanced, which, turning when he is past the centre, lets him fall upon sharp stakes prepared below.  Instances have occurred of a tiger being caught by one of the former modes, which had many marks in his body of the partial success of this last expedient.  The escapes, at times, made from them by the natives are surprising, but these accounts in general carry too romantic an air to admit of being repeated as facts.  The size and strength of the species which prevails on this