atched home is
complete without its hand-loom.

One day we crawled up the narrow, rickety ladder that led into the
two by four opening of old Wahpering's palm-shaded home. The little
punghulo or chief, touched his forehead with the back of his open
palm as we advanced cautiously over the open bamboo floor toward his
old wife, who was seated in one corner by a low, horizontal window,
weaving a sarong on a hand-loom. She looked up pleasantly with a soft
"Tabek" (Greeting), and went on throwing her shuttle deftly through the
brilliantly colored threads. The sharp bang of the dark, kamooning-wood
bar drove the thread in place and left room for another. Back and
forth flew the shuttle, and thread after thread was added to the
fabric, yet no perceptible addition seemed to be made.

"How long does it take to finish it?" I asked in Malay.

"Twenty days," she answered, with a broad smile, showing her black,
filed teeth and syrah-stained lips.

The red and brown sarong which she wore twisted tightly up under her
armpits had cost her almost a month's work; the green and yellow one
her chief wore about his waist, a month more; the ones she used as
screens to divide the interior into rooms, and those of the bevy
of sons and daughters of all ages that crowded about us each cost
a month's more; and yet the labor and material combined in each
represented less than two dollars of our money at the Bazaar in
Singapore.

I had not the heart to take the one that she offered the mistress,
but insisted on giving in exchange a pearl-handled penknife, which
the chief took, with many a touch of his forehead, "as a remembrance
of the condescension of the Orang American Rajah."

Wahpering's wife was not dressed to receive us, for we had come swiftly
up the dim lagoon, over which her home was built, and had landed
on the sandy beach unannounced. Had she known that we were coming,
she would have been dressed as became the wife of the Punghulo of
Pulo Seneng (Island of Leisure). The long, black hair would have been
washed beautifully clean with the juice of limes, and twisted up as a
crown on the top of her head. In it would have been stuck pins of the
deep-red gold from Mt. Ophir, and sprays of jasmine and chumpaka. Under
her silken sarong would have been an inner garment of white cotton,
about her waist a zone of beaded cloth held in front by an oval plate,
and over all would have been thrown a long, loose dressing-gown, called
the kabaya,