PARING IT.

To render their skin fine, smooth, and soft they make use of a white
cosmetic called pupur. The mode of preparing it is as follows. The basis
is fine rice, which is a long time steeped in water and let to ferment,
during which process the water becomes of a deep red colour and highly
putrid, when it is drained off, and fresh added successively until the
water remains clear, and the rice subsides in the form of a fine white
paste. It is then exposed to the sun to dry, and, being reduced to a
powder, they mix with it ginger, the leaves of a plant called by them
dilam, and by Europeans patch-leaf (Melissa lotoria, R.), which gives to
it a peculiar smell, and also, as is supposed, a cooling quality. They
add likewise the flowers of the jagong (maize); kayu chendana
(sandalwood); and the seeds of a plant called there kapas antu
(fairy-cotton), which is the Hibiscus abelmoschus, or musk seed. All
these ingredients, after being moistened and well mixed together, are
made up into little balls, and when they would apply the cosmetic these
are diluted with a drop of water, rubbed between the hands, and then on
the face, neck, and shoulders. They have an apprehension, probably well
founded, that a too abundant or frequent application will, by stopping
the pores of the skin, bring on a fever. It is used with good effect to
remove that troublesome complaint, so well known to Europeans in India,
by the name of the prickly heat; but it is not always safe for strangers
thus to check the operations of nature in a warm climate. The Sumatran
girls, as well as our English maidens, entertain a favourable opinion of
the virtues of morning dew as a beautifier, and believe that by rubbing
it to the roots of the hair it will strengthen and thicken it. With this
view they take pains to catch it before sunrise in vessels as it falls.

CONSUMMATION OF MARRIAGES.

If a wedding is the occasion of the bimbang the couple are married,
perhaps, the second or third day; but it may be two or three more ere the
husband can get possession of his bride; the old matrons making it a rule
to prevent him, as long as possible, and the bride herself holding it a
point of honour to defend to extremity that jewel which she would yet be
disappointed in preserving.*

(*Footnote. It is recorded that the jealousy between the English and
Dutch at Bantam arose from a preference shown to the former by the king
at a festival which he gave upon obtaining a vic