ch ingenuity is often shown in the manner of working up
their materials, and they have, the Malays at least, technical terms
corresponding to all those employed by our house carpenters. Their
conception of proportions is extremely rude, often leaving those parts of
a frame which have the greatest bearing with the weakest support, and
lavishing strength upon inadequate pressure. For the floorings they lay
whole bamboos (a well-known species of large cane) of four or five inches
diameter, close to each other, and fasten them at the ends to the
timbers. Across these are laid laths of split bamboo, about an inch wide
and of the length of the room, which are tied down with filaments of the
rattan; and over these are usually spread mats of different kinds. This
sort of flooring has an elasticity alarming to strangers when they first
tread on it. The sides of the houses are generally closed in with palupo,
which is the bamboo opened and rendered flat by notching or splitting the
circular joints on the outside, chipping away the corresponding divisions
within, and laying it to dry in the sun, pressed down with weights. This
is sometimes nailed onto the upright timbers or bamboos, but in the
country parts it is more commonly interwoven, or matted, in breadths of
six inches, and a piece, or sheet, formed at once of the size required.
In some places they use for the same purpose the kulitkayu, or coolicoy,
as it is pronounced by the Europeans, who employ it on board ship as
dunnage in pepper and other cargoes. This is a bark procured from some
particular trees, of which the bunut and ibu are the most common. When
they prepare to take it the outer rind is first torn or cut away; the
inner, which affords the material, is then marked out with a prang,
pateel, or other tool, to the size required, which is usually three
cubits by one; it is afterwards beaten for some time with a heavy stick
to loosen it from the stem, and being peeled off is laid in the sun to
dry, care being taken to prevent its warping. The thicker or thinner
sorts of the same species of kulitkayu owe their difference to their
being taken nearer to or farther from the root. That which is used in
building has nearly the texture and hardness of wood. The pliable and
delicate bark of which clothing is made is procured from a tree called
kalawi, a bastard species of the bread-fruit.

The most general mode of covering houses is with the atap, which is the
leaf of a species