Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 6, 2025
The river winds continually, and every new reach had its interest: a village of palm-leaf houses built close to the water, women and children standing on the steps with their long bamboo jars, or peeping out of the slits of windows at the schooner; boats of all sizes near the houses, fishing-nets hanging up to dry, wicked alligators lying basking on the mud; trees of many varieties the nibong palm which furnishes the posts of the houses, the nipa which makes their mat walls, and close by the water the light and graceful mangroves, which at night are all alive and glittering with fire-flies.
Previously to our reaching these entrenchments some of the detachment got wounded in the feet with ranjaus, set very thickly in the ground in every direction, and which obliged us to be very cautious in our steps until we arrived at the banks of a small rivulet, called the Nibong, two or three miles beyond them.
But the nibong is put by the Borneans and other natives of the Indian Archipelago to a great variety of uses. Its round stem is employed as uprights and rafters for their houses. Split into lathes, it serves for the flooring. Sugar can be obtained from the saccharine juice of its spadix, which also ferments into an intoxicating beverage; and sago exists in abundance within the trunk.
One of the first signs of the fresh river water, is the occurrence on the bank of the graceful nibong palm, with its straight, slender, round stem, twenty to thirty feet in height, surmounted with a plume of green leaves.
The place where they had halted was in the midst of a magnificent grove, or rather a forest, of palms; of that kind called nibong by the natives, which is a species of the genus arenga. It is one of the "cabbage" palms; that is, its young leaves before expanding are eaten by the natives as a vegetable after the manner in which Europeans use cabbage.
This seems absurd enough, but the Malay houses were certainly very slight; they seemed to sway in the mud of the creek, and the floors of the rooms were made of very open strips of nibong palm, so that you had to walk turning your feet well out in order not to slip through the lantiles.
The planking was a cedar-coloured wood, and all the arches and mouldings were finished like cabinet-work, so that it was both handsome and durable. The ornamental pillars were first made of polished nibong palms; but in a few years these had to be cut away, as they were full of white ants, and hard wood substituted. The building of this little church was most interesting to us.
The sumpitan itself eight feet in length he fashioned from a straight sapling of the beautiful casuarina tree, which grows throughout the islands of the Malayan Archipelago; while the little arrows, only eight inches long, he obtained from the medium of the leaflets of the nibong palms, many of which were found near the spot where they had encamped.
The wood is then heated with torches, and on cooling retains the curvature thus impressed on it. The shaft of the poisoned dart is made from the wood of the NIBONG and wild sago palms. On to one end of this is fitted a small tapering cylinder of tough pith, about one inch in length, its greatest diameter at its butt end being exactly equal to the bore of the pipe.
The day following we rejoined the schooner, and, as usual, found everything at a stand-still on shore. "I may here mention our house, or, as I fondly styled it, our palace. It is an edifice fifty-four feet square, mounted upon numerous posts of the Nibong palm, with nine windows in each front.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking