they smell at all, and recall quiet scenes in the
green and shady forest.

Our ship had two masts, if masts they can be called c which were great
moveable triangles. If in an ordinary ship you replace the shrouds and
backstay by strong timbers, and take away the mast altogether, you have
the arrangement adopted on board a prau. Above my cabin, and resting on
cross-beams attached to the masts, was a wilderness of yards and spars,
mostly formed of bamboo. The mainyard, an immense affair nearly a
hundred feet long, was formed of many pieces of wood and bamboo bound
together with rattans in an ingenious manner. The sail carried by this
was of an oblong shape, and was hung out of the centre, so that when the
short end was hauled down on deck the long end mounted high in the air,
making up for the lowness of the mast itself. The foresail was of the
same shape, but smaller. Both these were of matting, and, with two jibs
and a fore and aft sail astern of cotton canvas, completed our rig.

The crew consisted of about thirty men, natives of Macassar and the
adjacent coasts and islands. They were mostly young, and were short,
broad-faced, good-humoured looking fellows. Their dress consisted
generally of a pair of trousers only, when at work, and a handkerchief
twisted round the head, to which in the evening they would add a thin
cotton jacket. Four of the elder men were "jurumudis," or steersmen, who
had to squat (two at a time) in the little steerage before described,
changing every six hours. Then there was an old man, the "juragan,"
or captain, but who was really what we should call the first mate; he
occupied the other half of the little house on deck. There were about
ten respectable men, Chinese or Bugis, whom our owner used to call "his
own people." He treated them very well, shared his meals with them, and
spoke to them always with perfect politeness; yet they were most of them
a kind of slave debtors, bound over by the police magistrate to work
for him at mere nominal wages for a term of years till their debts were
liquidated. This is a Dutch institution in this part of the world, and
seems to work well. It is a great boon to traders, who can do nothing
in these thinly-populated regions without trusting goods to agents
and petty dealers, who frequently squander them away in gambling and
debauchery. The lower classes are almost all in a chronic state of debt.
The merchant trusts them again and again, till the amount is som