MODE OF USING THE BETEL.

He showed me the mode of using the betel, which, as practised by these people has this peculiarity, that the leaf of the siri or betel pepper is not employed, as is universally the case among the Malays.  A small portion of the green betelnut (the fruit of the Areca catechu) which here curiously enough is named ereka—­is broken off with the teeth and placed in the mouth; then the spatula, formerly described, moistened with saliva, is dipped into a small calabash of lime in fine powder, with which the tongue and lips are smeared over by repeated applications.  The bolus is then kept in the mouth, and rolled over and over until it is thought requisite to renew it.  The practice of betel chewing is not confined to the men, for the few women whom we had seen alongside the ship in Coral Haven, had their teeth blackened by it.

One of the natives seen today exhibited a remarkable case of malformation of the teeth.  The lower incisors were wanting, and the upper ones had coalesced and grown downwards and outwards, forming an irregular dark protruding mass which I at first took to be a quid of betel.  Another man with a diseased leg had lost one hand at the wrist, and the long shrivelled arm presented a curious appearance.

Several dogs were also seen close to, for the first time—­they were wretched half-starved objects of various colours, but agreed in being long-bodied, short-legged, and prick-eared, with sharp snout and long tail, slightly bushy, but tapering to a point.  They do not bark, but have the long melancholy howl of the dingo or wild dog of Australia.

THEIR VILLAGE.  DESCRIPTION OF THEIR HUTS.

At length some of us found our way to the huts of the natives which were close at hand, and had thus an opportunity of examining one of them minutely, besides verifying what we had before seen only from a distance, and with the aid of the telescope.  The distinctive characters of these huts consist in their being long and tunnel-like, drooping and overhanging at each end, raised from the ground upon posts, and thatched over.  The four huts composing the village were placed in two adjacent clearings, fifty or sixty yards in length, screened from the beach by a belt of small trees and brushwood, behind is the usual jungle of the wooded islands of the Archipelago, with a path leading through it towards the centre of the island.  A solitary hut stood perched upon the ridge near the summit shaded by cocoa-palms, and partially hid among the bushes and tall grass.  It differed from those of the village in having the posts projecting through the roof, but whether used as a dwelling or not, is a matter of conjecture.  It may possibly have been used for the reception of the dead.  In the village an approximate measurement gave thirty feet as the length, nine the breadth, and thirteen the height in centre of one of these huts—­the one figured in the accompanying plate; the annexed