Children Have Various Games
Peculiar To Themselves, Which Are Abandoned As Childish Things At A
Given Age.
Riddles and enigmas occupy a good deal of time among the
higher classes.
Chess also occupies much time, but it is much to be
feared that the vice of gambling stimulated by the Chinese, who have
introduced both cards and dice, is taking the place of more innocent
pastimes.
The Malays, like other Mohammedans, practice polygamy. They are very
jealous, and their women are veiled and to a certain extent secluded;
but they are affectionate, and among the lower classes there is a good
deal of domesticity. Their houses are described in the following
letters. The food of the poorer classes consists mainly of rice and
salt-fish, curries of both, maize, sugar-cane, bananas, and jungle
fruits, cocoa-nut milk being used in the preparation of food as well as
for a beverage. As luxuries they chew betelnut and smoke tobacco, and
although intoxicants are forbidden, they tap the toddy palm and drink
of its easily fermented juice. Where metal finds its way into domestic
utensils it is usually in the form of tin water-bottles and ewers.
Every native possesses a sweeping broom, sleeping mats, coarse or fine,
and bamboo or grass baskets. Most families use an iron pan for cooking,
with a half cocoa-nut shell for a ladle. A large nut shell filled with
palm-oil, and containing a pith wick, is the ordinary Malay lamp. Among
the poor, fresh leaves serve as plates and dishes, but the chiefs
possess china.
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