Upon observing these nuts to be part of their food, we enquired by what means they deprived them of their deleterious quality; and they told us, that they first cut them into thin slices, and dried them in the sun, then steeped them in freshwater for three months, and afterwards pressing out the water, dried them in the sun a second time; but we learnt that, after all, they are eaten only in times of scarcity, when they mix them with their rice to make it go farther.

The houses of their town are built upon piles, or pillars, four or five feet above the ground: upon these is laid a floor of bamboo canes, which are placed at some distance from each other, so as to leave a free passage for the air from below: the walls also are of bamboo, which are interwoven’ hurdlewise, with small sticks, that are fastened perpendicularly to the beams which form the frame of the building: it has a sloping roof, which is so well thatched with palm leaves, that neither the fun nor the rain can find entrance. The ground over which this building is erected, is an oblong square. In the middle of one side is the door, and in the middle between that and the end of the house, towards the left hand, is a window: a partition runs out from each end towards the middle, which, if continued, would divide the whole floor into two equal parts, longitudinally, but they do not meet in the middle, so that an opening is left over-against the door; each end of the house therefore, to the right and left of the door, is divided into two rooms, like stalls in a stable, all open towards the passage from the door to the wall on the opposite side: in that next the door, to the left hand, the children sleep; that opposite to it, on the right hand, is allotted to strangers; the master and his wife sleep in the inner room on the left hand, and that opposite to it is the kitchen. There is no difference between the houses of the poor and the rich, but in the size; except that the royal palace, and the house of a man, whose name is Gundang, the next in riches and influence to the King, is walled with boards instead of being wattled with sticks and bamboo.

Voyaging Accounts