f by a display of fireworks.

I was rapidly gaining a knowledge of the language of my captors, which I
diligently studied for the purpose of aiding my escape, and I thus was
able to gain a great deal more about the people than I could otherwise
have done. I have already slightly described their dress. It varied
very much, each man seeming to follow his own taste. Some wore
enormously large helmets of skins stretched out on canes, and ornamented
with a variety of feathers; and when they wore skin cloaks, the head of
the animal usually hung down behind, and had a very grotesque
appearance. They wear corselets of leather, stuffed, and some large
pearl-oyster shells, to serve as armour. Their sumpitans are most
exactly bored, and look like Turkish tobacco-pipes. The inner end of
the sumpit, or arrow, is run through a piece of pith fitting exactly to
the tube, so that there is little friction as they are blown out of the
tube by the mouth. The barb is dipped in a mixture, of which the chief
ingredient is the sap of the upas tree; and, to increase its virulence,
lime-juice is sometimes added. The poison, by its exposure to the air,
loses its noxious qualities.

By-the-bye, I discovered that the deadly qualities of the upas tree are
very much exaggerated. I climbed into the branches of one, and drank
water from a stream passing near its roots, without suffering the
slightest inconvenience; at the same time, perhaps, under some
circumstances, it may be more hurtful.

The chief articles exported by my captors were bees' wax and camphor,
honey, vegetable tallow, areca-nuts, _trepang dawma_, sharks' fins,
tortoise-shell, edible birds' nests, and pearls. These are only a very
small portion of the articles they might export under other
circumstances.

The edible bird's nests are formed by a species of swallow, which builds
them in the caves on the coast. They adhere in numbers to the rocks,
very like watch-pockets to the head of a bed. They are either white, or
red, or black, and are formed chiefly of _agal-agal_ a marine cellular
plant. The Chinese lanterns are made of netted thread, smeared over
with the gum produced by boiling down this same plant, which, when dry,
forms a firm pellucid and elastic substitute for horn.

The collecting of these nests, from the positions they occupy, is as
dangerous as the samphire-gathering described by Shakespeare. I must
return to my description of the people. The members of