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Malays in red fezzes and silken sarongs that hung about their legs like skirts conducted us along a marble hall to our rooms in a wing of the palace. Crowds were already gathering outside on the palace grounds, and we could look down from our windows and watch them as we bathed, dressed, and drank tea.
He has been a trader to Aru for many years, and is well known to both Europeans and natives in this part of the world. Dec. 24th.-Fine, and little wind. No land in sight for the first time since we left Macassar. At noon calm, with heavy showers, in which our crew wash their clothes, anti in the afternoon the prau is covered with shirts, trousers, and sarongs of various gay colours.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were packed tightly together, line after line, under little sheds, selling sarongs and cloths of every conceivable colour, with hats, mats, and native ornaments of all descriptions. It was an animated scene, and one not easily forgotten, and this was the first time, if the Wodena was to be believed, that any white man had seen it.
The Illanums, naked, with the exception of party-colored sarongs around their waists, with their bucklers on their left arms and their gleaming knives strapped to their right wrists, were mounting on each other's shoulders, forcing a way up the precipitous defile, unmindful of the madly descending rocks that had crushed and maimed more than one of their number.
From Japanese Obies, which clasp the waists of Japanese girls, to Javanese Sarongs, the flame and flash of crimson predominates in the gowns of both men and women. Where an American man would blush to be caught in any sort of a gown with crimson predominating save a necktie, the Japanese gentlemen, the Filipino, the Malay, and the Javanese all wear high colors most of the time.
In a Malay village all are astir very shortly after daybreak. As soon as it is light enough to see to walk the doors of the houses open one by one, and the people of the village come forth singly huddled to the chin in their sârongs or bed coverlets.
Sarongs of crimson, orange, purple, or boldly-contrasting plaids, enhance the deep bronze of native complexion, the ample folds of the wide skirts drawn up above the knees.
There were jabuls or sarongs of gaily striped cotton stuff woven by the Moros; there were European silks and satins embroidered by natives of Zamboanga; there were brocaded stuffs from Paris, and roughly woven fabrics of home manufacture, comprising in one garment all the colours of the spectrum.
Dark skins, yellow skins, eyes straight, eyes slanting, black hair cut short, or worn in pigtails, or in top knots, or in chignons; bare bodies, bare legs, or legs clothed in brilliant sarongs or in flapping pyjamas all the costumes of all the countries bordering the Seven Seas streamed outward from the town, very silent.
The sultan was there in English dress; and his chiefs made a gaudy muster, wearing showy silken sarongs and bajus, as if it were to be a review day instead of a hunting trip, while the following, to the extent of several hundreds, were all armed with spear and kris.
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