falling to her knees and fastened down the front to the silver girdle with golden
brooches. Her toes would have been covered with sandals cunningly
embroidered in colored beads and gold tinsel.
Wahpering, too, might have added to his sarong a thin vest, buttoned close up to
the neck, a light dimity baju, or jacket, and a pair of loose silk drawers. They
made no apology for their appearance, but did the honors of the house with a
native grace, regaling us with the cool, fresh milk of the cocoanut, and the
delicious globes of the mangosteens.
The glare of the noonday sun, here on the equator, is inconceivable. It beats
down in bald, irregular waves of heat that seem to stifle every living being and to
burn the foliage to a cinder. Even the sharp, insistent whir of the cicada ceases
when the thermometer on the sunny side of our palm-thatched bungalow reaches
155°. If I am forced to go outside, I don my cork helmet, and hold a paper
umbrella above it. Even then, after I have gone a half-hour, I feel dizzy and sick.
I pass native after native, whose only head covering, if they have any at all save
their short-cut black hair, is a handkerchief, stiffened, and tied with a peculiar
twist on the head, or a rimless cap with possibly a text of the Koran embroidered
on its front. It is only when they are on the sea from early morning to sunset, that
they think it worth while to protect their heads with an umbrella-shaped, cane-
worked head frame like those worn by the natives of Siam and China. The
women I meet simply draw their sarongs more closely about their heads as the
sun ascends higher and higher into the heavens, and go clattering off down the
road in their wooden pattens, unconscious of my envy or wonderment.
The sarong is more to the Malay than is the kilt to the Scotchman. It is his dress
by day and his covering at night. He uses it as a sail when far out from land in
his cockle-shell boat, or as a bag in which to carry his provisions when following
an elephant path through the dense jungle.
The checks, in its design, although indistinguishable to the European, differ
according to his tribe or clan, and serve him as a means of identification
wherever he may be on the peninsula.
The sarong and kris are distinctly and solely Malayan; they are shared with no
other country; they are to be placed side by side with the green turban of the
Moslem pilgrim and the cimeter of the Prophet.