lateral rudders are not more than three or four feet above the surface of the
water, which thus has a free entrance into the vessel. I of course had imagined
that this open space from one side to the other was separated from the hold by a
water-tight bulkhead, so that a sea entering might wash out at the further side,
and do no more harm than give the steersmen a drenching. To my surprise end
dismay, however, I find that it is completely open to the hold, so that half-a-
dozen seas rolling in on a stormy night would nearly, or quite, swamp us. Think
of a vessel going to sea for a month with two holes, each a yard square, into the
hold, at three feet above the water-line,-holes, too, which cannot possibly be
closed! But our captain says all praus are so; and though he acknowledges the
danger, "he does not know how to alter it—the people are used to it; he does not
understand praus so well as they do, and if such a great alteration were made, he
should be sure to have difficulty in getting a crew!" This proves at all events that
praus must be good sea-boats, for the captain has been continually making
voyages in them for the last ten years, and says he has never known water
enough enter to do any harm.
Dec.25th.-Christmas-day dawned upon us with gusts of wind, driving rain,
thunder and lightning, added to which a short confused sea made our queer
vessel pitch and roll very uncomfortably. About nine o'clock, however, it cleared
up, and we then saw ahead of us the fine island of Bouru, perhaps forty or fifty
miles distant, its mountains wreathed with clouds, while its lower lands were still
invisible. The afternoon was fine, and the wind got round again to the west; but
although this is really the west monsoon, there is no regularity or steadiness
about it, calms and breezes from every point of the compass continually
occurring. The captain, though nominally a Protestant, seemed to have no idea of
Christmas-day as a festival. Our dinner was of rice and curry as usual, and an
extra glass of wine was all I could do to celebrate it.
Dec. 26th.—Fine view of the mountains of Bouru, which we have now
approached considerably. Our crew seem rather a clumsy lot. They do not walk
the deck with the easy swing of English sailors, but hesitate and stagger like
landsmen. In the night the lower boom of our mainsail broke, and they were all
the morning repairing it. It consisted of two bamboos lashed together, thick end
to thin, and was about seventy feet long. The rigging and arrangement of these
praus contrasts strangely with that of European vessels, in which the various
ropes and spars, though much more numerous, are placed so as not to interfere
with each other's action. Here the case is quite different; for though there are no
shrouds or stays to complicate the matter, yet scarcely anything can be done
without first clearing something else out of the way. The large sails cannot be