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"But how could we make the sides watertight, uncle?" I said; "there seem to be no pine-trees here to get pitch or turpentine." "No, Nat, but there is a gum to be found in large quantities in the earth, if we can discover any. The Malays called it dammar, and use it largely for torches. It strikes me that we could turn it into a splendid varnish, seeing what a hard resinous substance it is.
The pigment is a mixture of soot, water, and sugar-cane juice, and it is kept in a double shallow cup of wood, UIT ULANG; it is supposed that the best soot is obtained from the bottom of a metal cooking-pot, but that derived from burning resin or dammar is also used.
We were therefore ready to proceed, provided we could find torches. Ali made us a sign to follow him, and soon afterwards, on the side of a hill which we were passing, he pointed out some tall trees. On approaching them we found that from the trunks masses of a sort of gum had exuded. "Those are dammar trees," observed Mr Hooker.
One had its beautiful head all defiled by pitch from a dammar torch; another had been so long dead that its stomach was turning green. Luckily, however, the skin and plumage of these birds is so firm and strong, that they bear washing and cleaning better than almost any other sort; and I was generally able to clean them so well that they did not perceptibly differ from those I had shot myself.
She was holding a dammar torch at arm's-length aloft, and in a persistent, urgent monotone she was repeating, "Get up! Get up! Get up!" 'Suddenly he leaped to his feet; at once she put into his hand a revolver, his own revolver, which had been hanging on a nail, but loaded this time. He gripped it in silence, bewildered, blinking in the light. He wondered what he could do for her.
Here also grew the fan-leafed palm, whose small, nearly entire leaves are used to make the dammar torches, and to form the water-buckets in universal use. During this walk I saw near a dozen species of palms, as well as two or three Pandani different from those of Langundi. The people assured me they had tried the experiment of sowing and cultivating this species, but could not improve it.
The bees descended as before, but we received them with the smoke from our dammar torches, which helped considerably to keep them off. Now and then, however, one bold fellow would rush in between the wreaths of smoke and inflict a disagreeable sting; and we had difficult work to defend Merlin's nose and tail at the same time.
It hangs from the bough of the tree which produces it in large pieces, and hardening in the air it becomes brittle and is blown off by the first high wind. When a quantity of it has fallen in the same place it appears like a rock, and thence, they say, or more probably from its hardness, it is called dammar batu; by which name it is distinguished from the dammar kruyen.
Their writing for common purposes is, like that already described in speaking of the Rejangs, upon pieces of bamboo. The bark for this purpose is shaved smooth and thin, and afterwards rubbed over with rice-water. The pen they use is a twig or the fibre of a leaf, and their ink is made of the soot of dammar mixed with the juice of the sugar-cane. The contents of their books are little known to us.
The coffin being thus prepared and brought into the house the body is placed in it, with a mat beneath, and a cloth laid over it. Where the family can afford the expense it is strewed over with camphor. Having now placed the two parts in close contact they bind them together with rattans, and cover the whole with a thick coating of dammar or resin.
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