g, or three-fifths of a penny.

FOOD.

The ordinary food of the lower class of people is maize and
sweet-potatoes, the rajas and great men alone indulging themselves with
rice. Some mix them together. It is only on public occasions that they
kill cattle for food; but not being delicate in their appetites they do
not scruple to eat part of a dead buffalo, hog, rat, alligator, or any
wild animal with which they happen to meet. Their rivers are said not to
abound with fish. Horse-flesh they esteem their most exquisite meat, and
for this purpose feed them upon grain and pay great attention to their
keep. They are numerous in the country, and the Europeans at Bencoolen
are supplied with many good ones from thence, but not with the finest, as
these are reserved for their festivals. They have also, says Mr. Miller,
great quantities of small black dogs, with erect pointed ears, which they
fatten and eat. Toddy or palm-wine they drink copiously at their feasts.

BUILDINGS.

The houses are built with frames of wood, with the sides of boards, and
roof covered with iju. They usually consist of a single large room, which
is entered by a trap-door in the middle. The number seldom exceeds twenty
in one kampong; but opposite to each is a kind of open building that
serves for sitting in during the day, and as a sleeping-place for the
unmarried men at night. These together form a sort of street. To each
kampong there is also a balei, where the inhabitants assemble for
transacting public business, celebrating feasts, and the reception of
strangers, whom they entertain with frankness and hospitality. At the end
of this building is a place divided off, from whence the women see the
spectacles of fencing and dancing; and below that is a kind of orchestra
for music.

DOMESTIC MANNERS.

The men are allowed to marry as many wives as they please, or can afford,
and to have half a dozen is not uncommon. Each of these sits in a
different part of the large room, and sleeps exposed to the others; not
being separated by any partition or distinction of apartments. Yet the
husband finds it necessary to allot to each of them their several
fireplaces and cooking utensils, where they dress their own victuals
separately, and prepare his in turns. How is this domestic state and the
flimsiness of such an imaginary barrier to be reconciled with our ideas
of the furious, ungovernable passions of love and jealousy supposed to
prevail in an eastern harem?