Every Fine Day Mats Are Spread Before The
Doors And The Tripang Is Put Out To Dry, As Well As Sugar, Salt,
Biscuit, Tea, Cloths, And Other Things That Get Injured By An
Excessively Moist Atmosphere.
In the morning and evening, spruce
Chinamen stroll about or chat at each other's doors, in blue
trousers, white jacket, and a queue into which red silk is
plaited till it reaches almost to their heels.
An old Bugis hadji
regularly takes an evening stroll in all the dignity of flowing
green silk robe and gay turban, followed by two small boys
carrying his sirih and betel boxes.
In every vacant space new houses are being built, and all sorts
of odd little cooking-sheds are erected against the old ones,
while in some out-of-the-way corners, massive log pigsties are
tenanted by growing porkers; for how can the Chinamen exist six
months without one feast of pig?
Here and there are stalls where bananas are sold, and every
morning two little boys go about with trays of sweet rice and
crated cocoa-nut, fried fish, or fried plantains; and whichever
it may be, they have but one cry, and that is
"Chocolat-t - t!" This must be a Spanish or Portuguese cry, handed
down for centuries, while its meaning has been lost. The Bugis
sailors, while hoisting the main sail, cry out, "Vela a vela, -
vela, vela, vela!" repeated in an everlasting chorus. As "vela"
is Portuguese a sail, I supposed I had discovered the origin of
this, but I found afterwards they used the same cry when heaving
anchor, and often chanted it to "hela," which is so much an
universal expression of exertion and hard breathing that it is
most probably a mere interjectional cry.
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