Part 18 (1/2)

According to this they begin to dispose on the plate the larger compartments of the foliage, for which they use plain flat wire of a larger size, and fill them up with the leaves before mentioned. To fix their work they employ a glutinous substance made of the small red pea with a black spot before mentioned, ground to a pulp on a rough stone.

This pulp they place on a young coconut about the size of a walnut, the top and bottom being cut off. I at first imagined that caprice alone might have directed them to the use of the coconut for this purpose; but I have since reflected on the probability of the juice of the young fruit being necessary to keep the pulp moist, which would otherwise speedily become dry and unfit for the work. After the leaves have been all placed in order and stuck on, bit by bit, a solder is prepared of gold filings and borax, moistened with water, which they strew or daub over the plate with a feather, and then putting it in the fire for a short time the whole becomes united. This kind of work on a gold plate they call karrang papan: when the work is open, they call it karrang trus. In executing the latter the foliage is laid out on a card, or soft kind of wood covered with paper, and stuck on, as before described, with the paste of the red seed; and the work, when finished, being strewed over with their solder, is put into the fire, when, the card or soft wood burning away, the gold remains connected. The greatest skill and attention is required in this operation as the work is often made to run by remaining too long or in too hot a fire. If the piece be large they solder it at several times.

When the work is finished they give it that fine high colour they so much admire by an operation which they term sapoh. This consists in mixing nitre, common salt, and alum, reduced to powder and moistened, laying the composition on the filigree and keeping it over a moderate fire until it dissolves and becomes yellow. In this situation the piece is kept for a longer or shorter time according to the intensity of colour they wish the gold to receive. It is then thrown into water and cleansed. In the manufacture of baju b.u.t.tons they first make the lower part flat, and, having a mould formed of a piece of buffalo's horn, indented to several sizes, each like one half of a bullet mould, they lay their work over one of these holes, and with a horn punch they press it into the form of the b.u.t.ton. After this they complete the upper part. The manner of making the little b.a.l.l.s with which their works are sometimes ornamented is as follows. They take a piece of charcoal, and, having cut it flat and smooth, they make in it a small hole, which they fill with gold dust, and this melted in the fire becomes a little ball. They are very inexpert at finis.h.i.+ng and polis.h.i.+ng the plain parts, hinges, screws, and the like, being in this as much excelled by the European artists as these fall short of them in the fineness and minuteness of the foliage. The Chinese also make filigree, mostly of silver, which looks elegant, but wants likewise the extraordinary delicacy of the Malayan work. The price of the workmans.h.i.+p depends upon the difficulty or novelty of the pattern. In some articles of usual demand it does not exceed one-third of the value of the gold; but, in matters of fancy, it is generally equal to it. The manufacture is not now (1780) held in very high estimation in England, where costliness is not so much the object of luxury as variety; but, in the revolution of taste, it may probably be again sought after and admired as fas.h.i.+onable.

IRON MANUFACTURES.

But little skill is shown amongst the country people in forging iron.

They make nails however, though not much used by them in building, wooden pins being generally subst.i.tuted; also various kinds of tools, as the prang or bill, the banchi, rembe, billiong, and papatil, which are different species of adzes, the kapak or axe, and the pungkur or hoe.

Their fire is made with charcoal; the fossil coal which the country produces being rarely, if ever, employed, except by the Europeans; and not by them of late years, on the complaint of its burning away too quickly: yet the report made of it in 1719 was that it gave a surer heat than the coal from England. The bed of it (described rather as a large rock above ground) lies four days' journey up Bencoolen River, from whence quant.i.ties are washed down by the floods. The quality of coal is rarely good near the surface. Their bellows are thus constructed: two bamboos, of about four inches diameter and five feet in length, stand perpendicularly near the fire, open at the upper end and stopped below.

About an inch or two from the bottom a small joint of bamboo is inserted into each, which serve as nozzles, pointing to, and meeting at, the fire.

To produce a stream of air bunches of feathers or other soft substance, being fastened to long handles, are worked up and down in the upright tubes, like the piston of a pump. These, when pushed downwards, force the air through the small horizontal tubes, and, by raising and sinking each alternately, a continual current or blast is kept up; for which purpose a boy is usually placed on a high seat or stand. I cannot retrain from remarking that the description of the bellows used in Madagascar, as given by Sonnerat, Volume 2 page 60, so entirely corresponds with this that the one might almost pa.s.s for a copy of the other.

CARPENTER'S WORK.

The progress they have made in carpenter's work has been already pointed out, where there buildings were described.

TOOLS.

They are ignorant of the use of the saw, excepting where we have introduced it among them. Trees are felled by chopping at the stems, and in procuring boards they are confined to those the direction of whose grain or other qualities admit of their being easily split asunder. In this respect the species called maranti and marakuli have the preference.

The tree, being stripped of its branches and its bark, is cut to the length required, and by the help of wedges split into boards. These being of irregular thickness are usually dubbed upon the spot. The tool used for this purpose is the rembe, a kind of adze. Most of their smaller work, and particularly on the bamboo, is performed with the papatil, which resembles in shape as much as in name the patupatu of the New Zealanders, but has the vast superiority of being made of iron. The blade, which is fastened to the handle with a nice and curious kind of rattan-work, is so contrived as to turn in it, and by that means can be employed either as an adze or small hatchet. Their houses are generally built with the a.s.sistance of this simple instrument alone. The billiong is no other than a large papatil, with a handle of two or three feet in length, turning, like that, in its socket.

CEMENTS.

The chief cement they employ for small work is the curd of buffalomilk, called prakat. It is to be observed that b.u.t.ter is made (for the use of Europeans only; the words used by the Malays, for b.u.t.ter and cheese, monteiga and queijo, being pure Portuguese) not as with us, by churning, but by letting the milk stand till the b.u.t.ter forms of itself on the top.

It is then taken off with a spoon, stirred about with the same in a flat vessel, and well washed in two or three waters. The thick sour milk left at the bottom, when the b.u.t.ter or cream is removed, is the curd here meant. This must be well squeezed, formed into cakes, and left to dry, when it will grow nearly as hard as flint. For use you must sc.r.a.pe some of it off, mix it with quick lime, and moisten it with milk. I think there is no stronger cement in the world, and it is found to hold, particularly in a hot and damp climate, much better than glue; proving also effectual in mending chinaware. The viscous juice of the saga-pea (abrus) is likewise used in the country as a cement.

INK.

Ink is made by mixing lamp-black with the white of egg. To procure the former they suspend over a burning lamp an earthen pot, the bottom of which is moistened, in order to make the soot adhere to it.

DESIGNING.

Painting and drawing they are quite strangers to. In carving, both in wood and ivory, they are curious and fanciful, but their designs are always grotesque and out of nature. The handles of the krises are the most common subjects of their ingenuity in this art, which usually exhibit the head and beak of a bird, with the folded arms of a human creature, not unlike the representation of one of the Egyptian deities.

In cane and basketwork they are particularly neat and expert; as well as in mats, of which some kinds are much prized for their extreme fineness and ornamental borders.

LOOMS.

Silk and cotton cloths, of varied colours, manufactured by themselves, are worn by the natives in all parts of the country; especially by the women. Some of their work is very fine, and the patterns prettily fancied. Their loom or apparatus for weaving (tunun) is extremely defective, and renders their progress tedious. One end of the warp being made fast to a frame, the whole is kept tight, and the web stretched out by means of a species of yoke, which is fastened behind the body, when the person weaving sits down. Every second of the longitudinal threads, or warp, pa.s.ses separately through a set of reeds, like the teeth of a comb, and the alternate ones through another set. These cross each other, up and down, to admit the woof, not from the extremities, as in our looms, nor effected by the feet, but by turning edgeways two flat sticks which pa.s.s between them. The shuttle (turak) is a hollow reed about sixteen inches long, generally ornamented on the outside, and closed at one end, having in it a small bit of stick, on which is rolled the woof or shoot. The silk cloths have usually a gold head. They use sometimes another kind of loom, still more simple than this, being no more than a frame in which the warp is fixed, and the woof darned with a long small-pointed shuttle. For spinning the cotton they make use of a machine very like ours. The women are expert at embroidery, the gold and silver thread for which is procured from China, as well as their needles. For common work their thread is the pulas before mentioned, or else filaments of the pisang (musa).

EARTHENWARE.

Different kinds of earthenware, I have elsewhere observed, are manufactured in the island.

PERFUMES.

They have a practice of perfuming their hair with oil of benzoin, which they distil themselves from the gum by a process doubtless of their own invention. In procuring it a priuk, or earthen rice-pot, covered close, is used for a retort. A small bamboo is inserted in the side of the vessel, and well luted with clay and ashes, from which the oil drops as it comes over. Along with the benzoin they put into the retort a mixture of sugar-cane and other articles that contribute little or nothing to the quant.i.ty or quality of the distillation; but no liquid is added. This oil is valued among them at a high price, and can only be used by the superior rank of people.

OIL.

The oil in general use is that of the coconut, which is procured in the following manner. The fleshy part being sc.r.a.ped out of the nut, which for this use must be old, is exposed for some time to the heat of the sun. It is then put into a mat bag and placed in the press (kampahan) between two sloping timbers, which are fixed together in a socket in the lower part of the frame, and forced towards each other by wedges in a groove at top, compressing by this means the pulp of the nut, which yields an oil that falls into a trough made for its reception below. In the farther parts of the country this oil also, owing to the scarcity of coconuts, is dear; and not so much used for burning as that from other vegetables, and the dammar or rosin, which is always at hand.