ft Macassar. At noon calm, with heavy showers, in which our
crew wash their clothes, anti in the afternoon the prau is covered with
shirts, trousers, and sarongs of various gay colours. I made a discovery
to-day which at first rather alarmed me. The two ports, or openings,
through which the tillers enter from the lateral rudders are not more
than three or four feet above the surface of the water, which thus has
a free entrance into the vessel. I of course had imagined that this
open space from one side to the other was separated from the hold by
a water-tight bulkhead, so that a sea entering might wash out at the
further side, and do no more harm than give the steersmen a drenching.
To my surprise end dismay, however, I find that it is completely open to
the hold, so that half-a-dozen seas rolling in on a stormy night would
nearly, or quite, swamp us. Think of a vessel going to sea for a month
with two holes, each a yard square, into the hold, at three feet above
the water-line,-holes, too, which cannot possibly be closed! But our
captain says all praus are so; and though he acknowledges the danger,
"he does not know how to alter it--the people are used to it; he does
not understand praus so well as they do, and if such a great alteration
were made, he should be sure to have difficulty in getting a crew!" This
proves at all events that praus must be good sea-boats, for the captain
has been continually making voyages in them for the last ten years, and
says he has never known water enough enter to do any harm.

Dec.25th.-Christmas-day dawned upon us with gusts of wind, driving rain,
thunder and lightning, added to which a short confused sea made our
queer vessel pitch and roll very uncomfortably. About nine o'clock,
however, it cleared up, and we then saw ahead of us the fine island of
Bouru, perhaps forty or fifty miles distant, its mountains wreathed with
clouds, while its lower lands were still invisible. The afternoon was
fine, and the wind got round again to the west; but although this is
really the west monsoon, there is no regularity or steadiness about it,
calms and breezes from every point of the compass continually occurring.
The captain, though nominally a Protestant, seemed to have no idea of
Christmas-day as a festival. Our dinner was of rice and curry as usual,
and an extra glass of wine was all I could do to celebrate it.

Dec. 26th.--Fine view of the mountains of Bouru, which we have now
approached consid