Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/397

] earthen vessel, some shell fish, which he had collected at low water, among the mangrove trees near his habitation. The respectable old man, without being surprized at my visit, immediately invited me to partake of his repast. A long splinter of a sago-tree limb was put into my hand, and I imitated my host in using it to dig out of the shell the fish, which were set before me on a banana-leaf.

The old man's wife soon after joined us, and I should have been extremely surprized at the prodigious inequality of their ages, if I had not learned that those islanders place their happiness in marrying very young girls. Their physiognomy becomes singularly animated whenever they speak of a young woman (in Malay, paranpouang mouda), and, on the other hand, it is truly diverting to observe the frightful grimace which discomposes their whole countenance, when they speak of an old woman, (paranpouang tona).

I endeavoured to make the old man sensible of the extreme insalubrity of his situation so near to mangrove-trees; where the stagnant waters might affect him with violent disorders. But I could not prevail on him to consent to remove his cottage to a more elevated spot. All the answer which he made was, That the sea afforded him his livelihood. The