Page:The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (IA journalindianar00loga).pdf/39

 In lonely creeks and straits we see him in a small boat, which is his cradle, his house, and his bed of death; which gives him all the shelter he ever needs, and enables him to seize the food which always surrounds him. On plains, and on the banks of rivers, we see the civilized planter converting the moist flats into rice fields, overshadowing his neat cottage of bambú, níbong, and palm leaves with the graceful and bounteous cocoanut, and surrounding it with fruits, the variety and flavour of which European luxury might envy, and often with fragrant flowering trees and shrubs which the greenhouses of the West do not possess. Where the land is not adapted for wet rice, he pursues a system of husbandry which the farmer of Europe would view with astonishment. Too indolent to collect fertilizing appliances, and well aware that the soil will not yield two successive crops of rice, he takes but one, after having felled and burned the forest; and he then sceks a new locality, leaving nature, during a ten years fallow, to accumulate manure for his second crop on the old one, in the vegetable matter elaborated by the new forest that springs up. Relieved from the care of his crop he searches the forests for rattans, canes, timber, fragrant’ woods, oils, wax, gums, caoutchouc, gutta-percha, dyes, camphor, wild nutmegs, the tusks of the elephant, the horn and bide of the rhinoceros, the skin of the tiger, parrots, birds of paradise, argus pheasants, and materials for mats, roof, baskets, and receptacles of various kinds. If he lives near the coast, he collects fish, fish maws, fish roes, slugs (trepang), seaweed (agaragar), tortoiseshell, rare corals and mother of pearl, To the eastward, great fishing voyages are annually made to the shores of Australia for trepang. In many parts, pepper, coffee, or betelnut, to a large, and tobacco, ginger, and other articles, to a considerable, extent, are cultivated. Where the hirundo esculenta is found, the rocks are clomb and the caves explored for its costly edible nest. In different parts of the Archipelago the soil is dug for tin, antimony, iron, gold or diamonds, The more civilized nations make cloths and weapons, not only for their own use but for exportation. The traders, including the Rajahs, purchase the commodities which we have mentioned, dispose of them to. the European, Chinese, Arab, or Kling navigator, who visits their shores, or send them in their own vessels to the markets of Sin-