In most other things Malays are tolerably clean--in some scrupulously so; and this peculiar and nasty custom, which is almost universal, arises, I have little doubt, from their having been originally a maritime and water-loving people, who built their houses on posts in the water, and only migrated gradually inland, first up the rivers and streams, and then into the dry interior.

Habits which were at once so convenient and so cleanly, and which had been so long practised as to become a portion of the domestic life of the nation, were of course continued when the first settlers built their houses inland; and without a regular system of drainage, the arrangement of the villages is such that any other system would be very inconvenient.
In all these Sumatran villages I found considerable difficulty in getting anything to eat.

It was not the season for vegetables, and when, after much trouble, I managed to procure some yams of a curious variety, I found them hard and scarcely eatable.

Fowls were very scarce; and fruit was reduced to one of the poorest kinds of banana.

The natives (during the wet season at least) live exclusively on rice, as the poorer Irish do on potatoes.