Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A game at foot-ball, which generally took place at sunset, was, however, much more in-
teresting to me. The ball used is a rather small one, and is made of rattan, hollow, light, and
elastic. The player keeps it dancing a little while on his foot, then occasionally on his arm or
thigh, till suddenly he gives it a good blow with the hollow of the foot, and sends it flying
high in the air. Another player runs to meet it, and at its first bound catches it on his foot and
plays in his turn. The ball must never be touched with the hand; but the arm, shoulder, knee,
or thigh are used at pleasure to rest the foot. Two or three played very skilfully, keeping the
ball continually flying about, but the place was too confined to show off the game to advant-
age. One evening a quarrel arose from some dispute in the game, and there was a great row,
and it was feared there would be a fight about it—not two men only, but a party of a dozen
or twenty on each side, a regular battle with knives and krisses; but after a large amount of
talk it passed off quietly, and we heard nothing about it afterwards.
Most Europeans being gifted by nature with a luxuriant growth of hair upon their faces,
think it disfigures them, and keep up a continual struggle against her by mowing down
every morning the crop which has sprouted up during the preceding twenty-four hours. Now
the men of Mongolian race are, naturally, just as many of us want to be. They mostly pass
their lives with faces as smooth and beardless as an infant's. But shaving seems an instinct
of the human race; for many of these people, having no hair to take off their faces, shave
their heads. Others, however, set resolutely to work to force nature to give them a beard.
One of the chief cock-fighters at Dobbo was a Javanese, a sort of master of the ceremonies
of the ring, who tied on the spurs and acted as backer-up to one of the combatants. This man
had succeeded, by assiduous cultivation, in raising a pair of moustaches which were a tri-
umph of art, for they each contained about a dozen hairs more than three inches long, and
which, being well greased and twisted, were distinctly visible (when not too far off) as a
black thread hanging down on each side of his mouth. But the beard to match was the diffi-
culty, for nature had cruelly refused to give him a rudiment of hair on his chin, and the most
talented gardener could not do much if he had nothing to cultivate. But true genius triumphs
over difficulties. Although there was no hair proper on the chin, there happened to be, rather
on one side of it, a small mole or freckle which contained (as such things frequently do) a
few stray hairs. These had been made the most of. They had reached four or five inches in
length, and formed another black thread dangling from the left angle of the chin. The owner
carried this as if it were something remarkable (as it certainly was); he often felt it affection-
ately, passed it between his fingers, and was evidently extremely proud of his moustaches
and beard!
