lingering. Our men made the boat fast, rinsed their mouths, washed
their hands, and ate, using their fingers instead of chopsticks. Poor
fellows! they had done twelve hours of splendid work.

Then one of them prepared the betel-nut for the rest. I think I have
not yet alluded to this abominable practice of betel-nut chewing, which
is universal among the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula; the
betel-nut being as essential to a Malay as tobacco is to a Japanese, or
opium to the confirmed Chinese opium-smoker. It is a revolting habit,
and if a person speaks to you while he is chewing his "quid" of betel,
his mouth looks as if it were full of blood. People say that the
craving for stimulants is created by our raw, damp climate; but it is
as strong here, at the equator, in this sunny, balmy air. I have not
yet come across a region in which men, weary in body or spirit, are not
seeking to stimulate or stupefy themselves. The Malay men and women
being prohibited by the Koran from using alcohol, find the needed
fillip in this nut, but it needs preparation before it suits their
palates.

The betel-nut is the fruit of the lovely, graceful, slender-shafted
areca palm. This tree at six years old begins to bear about one hundred
nuts a year, which grow in clusters, each nut being about the size of a
nutmeg, and covered with a yellow, fibrous husk. The requisites for
chewing are: a small piece of areca nut, a leaf of the Sirih or betel
pepper, a little moistened lime, and, if you wish to be very luxurious,
a paste made of spices. The Sirih leaf was smeared with a little fine
lime taken from a brass box; on this was laid a little, brownish paste;
on this, a bit of the nut; the leaf was then folded neatly round its
contents, and the men began to chew, and to spit--the inevitable
consequence. The practice stains the teeth black. I tasted the nut, and