Down the River
plentiful and cheap, and which is not attacked by the so-called "white ant." The canoes are paddled in the ordinary way, but they are very upsettable. Many of these will not even sit upright in the water unless someone gets inside. Yet great fat man, whose weight sinks the boat to the very edge of the water, and tiny children, whose weight looks little more than nothing, can be seen at all hours of the day darting here and there, like so many flies, on the surface of the water.
The rua-changs are larger, and are used for carrying people about from one part of the river to another. They serve the same purpose as our omnibuses. The boatman, who is naked except for a cloth round the loins, stands to his work like a Venetian gondolier. He has only one oar, which works in a groove cut in the side of a short pole that is fixed on the edge of the boat. With long graceful sweeps of the heavy oar the boatman both steers and propels his craft at the same time. The passengers are squatting under paper umbrellas, which keep off a little of the heat of the sun, and blinking behind the blue spectacles that guard their eyes from the powerful reflection of the sun upon the shining waters.
As the capital is left behind the houses get fewer and fewer along the banks, and the trees come right down to the edge of the river. On either side of us, as the mouth is neared, there are dreary salt marshes, which are often flooded by the sea when the tides are high. On the banks, the fern-like attap-palm, that lover of the mud, bends over in graceful curves to dip the ends of its long fronds in the dirty water. Just behind, on
