Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/299

Rh great bare legs—was a perfect sight! She did not trouble about her hotel guests in the least.

Then I went for a most charming drive into the country in a small pony-cart with two Malay boys in attendance. It was a beautiful, well-kept road, bordered with trees and countless native houses, most pretty and quaint, all built of bamboo and matting on bamboo poles, and varying in shape and style, gay with flowers and plants, and with groups of their occupants sitting in front. Some of the houses are mere toys. The road was crowded with cyclists, most of whom were Malays or Chinese—the latter are most prosperous here. After the savage cannibals and the wildness of New Guinea it all seems startlingly civilised here, and the life so interesting. Strange-looking bullocks are feeding about, and one hears bulls roaring and can hardly believe they are only bullfrogs!

I did some bargaining for any rubbish that took my fancy. Gems of sorts are sold in the streets. I was to have gone to visit the Sultan of Goa with Captain Niedermayer; but now he cannot go, and there is, it seems, some trouble in Goa at this moment. The Sultan’s palace is about ten miles from Macassar, and is a large ramshackly building with many galleries and annexes.

[In 1909 the Sultan fell into disgrace through intriguing against the Dutch.]

In the evening a number of Germans came on board. We shipped a large cargo of bundles of cane for Singapore for cane furniture making. I visited a funny dilapidated old Japanese teahouse, with two bridges and a houseboat—a reckless, dissipated, willow-pattern-plate look about it. Every house seems crowded with cockatoos and parrots. I had vague ideas of