PLATE 19a.  A PLANTATION HOUSE IN SUMATRA.  W. Bell delt.  J.G.  Stadler sculpt.)

BUILDINGS.

In their buildings neither stone, brick, nor clay, are ever made use of, which is the case in most countries where timber abounds, and where the warmth of the climate renders the free admission of air a matter rather to be desired than guarded against:  but in Sumatra the frequency of earthquakes is alone sufficient to have prevented the natives from adopting a substantial mode of building.  The frames of the houses are of wood, the underplate resting on pillars of about six or eight feet in height, which have a sort of capital but no base, and are wider at top than at bottom.  The people appear to have no idea of architecture as a science, though much ingenuity is often shown in the manner of working up their materials, and they have, the Malays at least, technical terms corresponding to all those employed by our house carpenters.  Their conception of proportions is extremely rude, often leaving those parts of a frame which have the greatest bearing with the weakest support, and lavishing strength upon inadequate pressure.  For the floorings they lay whole bamboos (a well-known species of large cane) of four or five inches diameter, close to each other, and fasten them at the ends to the timbers.  Across these are laid laths of split bamboo, about an inch wide and of the length of the room, which are tied down with filaments of the rattan; and over these are usually spread mats of different kinds.  This sort of flooring has an elasticity alarming to strangers when they first tread on it.  The sides of the houses are generally closed in with palupo, which is the bamboo opened and rendered flat by notching or splitting the circular joints on the outside, chipping away the corresponding divisions within, and laying it to dry in the sun, pressed down with weights.  This is sometimes nailed onto the upright timbers or bamboos, but in the country parts it is more commonly interwoven, or matted, in breadths of six inches, and a piece, or sheet, formed at once of the size required.  In some places they use for the same purpose the kulitkayu, or coolicoy, as it is pronounced by the Europeans, who employ it on board ship as dunnage in pepper and other cargoes.  This is a bark procured from some particular trees, of which the bunut and ibu are the most common.  When they prepare to take it the outer rind is first torn or cut away; the inner, which affords the material, is then marked out with a prang, pateel, or other tool, to the size required, which is usually three cubits by one; it is afterwards beaten for some time with a heavy stick to loosen it from the stem, and being peeled off is laid in the sun to dry, care being taken to prevent its warping.  The thicker or thinner sorts of the same species of kulitkayu owe their difference to their being taken nearer to or farther from the root.  That which is used in building has nearly the texture and hardness of wood.  The pliable and delicate bark of which clothing is made is procured from a tree called kalawi, a bastard species of the bread-fruit.