United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The houses are built of bamboo and roofed with palm-leaves; and sometimes they have floors of split bamboo, but often the hard clay soil serves as a floor. There are usually two or more sleeping-places, called 'bale-bales, also made of bamboo, split and plaited, and over these another floor, which forms a sort of loft or store-room. There is no fireplace, all the cooking being done outside.
A low bamboo fence is built directly across a steep valley or series of valleys, about half way from the summit to the lower end, and about every fifteen feet a narrow opening is left, over which a heavy log is suspended. Any creature attempting to make its way through, treads upon several small sticks and by so doing springs the trap and the dead-fall claims a victim.
Bows and yokes for the porters, sheaths of weapons and umbrella frames, and a host of small articles of domestic furniture, are of the same material, and a section cut from the giant bamboo forms an excellent bucket, which is used all over the forests. And now I want to tell you something about the forest, which, as we have seen from the river, practically covers the country.
They crossed the sweetly murmuring brook where sharp thorns of bamboo that had fallen on the sand at its margin pierced his bare feet, but he did not stop to pull them out. To his great surprise he saw that his mother had plunged into the thick undergrowth and was going through the wooden gateway that opened into the tomb of the old Spaniard at the foot of the balete.
Many of them had the backs of their heads in the centre shaved in a curious manner, like a very broad parting. I did not see them wearing many ornaments, but the men had tight-fitting fibre bracelets on their arms and legs, and the women sometimes wore necklaces of seeds, berries and beads; they would also sometimes wear curiously carved bamboo combs in their hair.
The Council agreed with her that it was most advisable to develop industries which the people had not yet undertaken, such as basket-making, the weaving of cocoanut fibre, and cane and bamboo work. When asked if she would agree to remain at Use for one year to establish the Settlement and put it in working order with the assistance of one or two agents, she would not commit herself.
If a person wounds another with a stick, bamboo, etc., he shall simply pay the tepong of fourteen dollars. If in any dispute between two people krises are drawn the person who first drew his kris shall be fined fourteen dollars. If any person having a dispute assembles together his friends with arms, he shall be fined twenty-eight dollars.
After they have drunk, each takes a handful of rice, and squeezes it into a ball. The girl drops hers through the slits in the bamboo floor as an offering to the spirits, but the boy tosses his into the air. If it breaks or rolls, it is a bad sign, and the couple is apt to part, or their children die.
During my many journeys in Borneo, and especially during my various residences among the Dyaks, I first came to appreciate the admirable qualities of the Bamboo.
Sometimes the occasion is even invested with a certain sanctity, a tasselled cord of straw, such as is hung before the shrines of the Kami, or native gods of Japan, being suspended between two bamboo poles in the forge, which for the nonce is converted into a holy altar.
Word Of The Day