FOOD.

The ordinary food of the lower class of people is maize and sweet-potatoes, the rajas and great men alone indulging themselves with rice.  Some mix them together.  It is only on public occasions that they kill cattle for food; but not being delicate in their appetites they do not scruple to eat part of a dead buffalo, hog, rat, alligator, or any wild animal with which they happen to meet.  Their rivers are said not to abound with fish.  Horse-flesh they esteem their most exquisite meat, and for this purpose feed them upon grain and pay great attention to their keep.  They are numerous in the country, and the Europeans at Bencoolen are supplied with many good ones from thence, but not with the finest, as these are reserved for their festivals.  They have also, says Mr. Miller, great quantities of small black dogs, with erect pointed ears, which they fatten and eat.  Toddy or palm-wine they drink copiously at their feasts.

BUILDINGS.

The houses are built with frames of wood, with the sides of boards, and roof covered with iju.  They usually consist of a single large room, which is entered by a trap-door in the middle.  The number seldom exceeds twenty in one kampong; but opposite to each is a kind of open building that serves for sitting in during the day, and as a sleeping-place for the unmarried men at night.  These together form a sort of street.  To each kampong there is also a balei, where the inhabitants assemble for transacting public business, celebrating feasts, and the reception of strangers, whom they entertain with frankness and hospitality.  At the end of this building is a place divided off, from whence the women see the spectacles of fencing and dancing; and below that is a kind of orchestra for music.

DOMESTIC MANNERS.

The men are allowed to marry as many wives as they please, or can afford, and to have half a dozen is not uncommon.  Each of these sits in a different part of the large room, and sleeps exposed to the others; not being separated by any partition or distinction of apartments.  Yet the husband finds it necessary to allot to each of them their several fireplaces and cooking utensils, where they dress their own victuals separately, and prepare his in turns.  How is this domestic state and the flimsiness of such an imaginary barrier to be reconciled with our ideas of the furious, ungovernable passions of love and jealousy supposed to prevail in an eastern harem? or must custom be allowed to supersede all other influence, both moral and physical?  In other respects they differ little in their customs relating to marriage from the rest of the island.  The parents of the girl always receive a valuable consideration (in buffaloes or horses) from the person to whom she is given in marriage; which is returned when a divorce takes place against the man’s inclination.  The daughters as elsewhere are looked upon as the riches of the fathers.

CONDITION OF WOMEN.