Crusoe. I have only tried to convey some little impression
of a happy ten days that will ever be remembered as one more of
those glorious, Oriental chapters in our lives which are filled with
the gorgeous colors of crimson and gold, the delicate perfumes of
spice-laden breezes, and with imperishable visions of a strange,
old-world life.

They are chapters that we can read over and over again with an ever
increasing interest as the years roll by.

THE SARONG

The Malay's Chief Garment

No one knows who invented the sarong. When the great Sir Francis
Drake skirted the beautiful jungle-bound shores of that strange Asian
peninsula which seems forever to be pointing a wondering finger into
the very heart of the greatest archipelago in the world, he found
its inhabitants wearing the sarong. After a lapse of three centuries
they still wear it,--neither Hindu invasion, Mohammedan conversion,
Chinese immigration, nor European conquest has ever taken from them
their national dress. Civilization has introduced many articles of
clothing; but no matter how many of these are adopted, the Malay,
from his Highness the Sultan of Johore, to the poorest fisherman of
a squalid kampong on the muddy banks of a mangrove-hidden stream,
religiously wears the sarong.

It is only an oblong cloth, this fashion-surviving garb, from two
to four feet in width and some two yards long; sewn together at the
ends. It looks like a gingham bag with the bottom out. The wearer
steps into it, and with two or three ingenious twists tightens it
round the waist, thus forming a skirt and, at the same time, a belt
in which he carries the kris, or snake-like dagger, the inevitable
pouch of areca nut for chewing, and the few copper cents that he dares
not trust in his unlocked hut. The man's skirt falls to his knees,
and among the poor class forms his only article of dress, while the
woman's reaches to her ankles and is worn in connection with another
sarong that is thrown over her head as a veil, so that when she is
abroad and meets one of the opposite sex she can, Moslem-like, draw
it about her face in the form of a long, narrow slit, showing only
her coal-black eyes and thinly pencilled eyebrows.

In style or design the sarong never changes. Like the tartan of the
Highlanders, which it greatly resembles, it is invariably a check
of gay colors. They are all woven of silk or cotton, or of silk and
cotton mixed, by the native women, and no attap-th