"The shore was rather steep in the beginning, and there were many little bays, covered with a whitish-yellow sand. The above-mentioned stone cliffs consisted of grey coarse chalkstone. Here and there big pieces of different kinds of corals had been thrown up by the sea, among them one kind which had the appearance of many knife-blades grown together. I do not remember having seen any of this kind before. Higher up on the shore there were innumerable varieties of blue, black, red, brown, and white corals, among them also the so-called 'red organ.' I also found a peculiar kind of very coarse sponge, and many kinds of shells were thrown up very high; many of them had been thrown into the woods for some little distance. The whole shore was not of a man's height, and it almost immediately sloped down again towards the wood....
"... As it grew dark I went to one of the hamlets where about twenty houses, most of them with pointed thatched roofs, stood on piles. The principal houses, three in number, were placed in the middle, but each separate from the other. They were built on piles about 10 to 12 inches thick, and more than a man's height. Some of them had 24 to 30 of these piles; they were bamboo, and one side was open, where a bench hung by ropes, large enough to allow two people to sit upon, and so low, that their feet when sitting would touch the ground. The roof of the real dwelling-house was in some cases angularly pointed, in others rounder; very few showed a long ridge. The access was gained by means of a narrow well-made bamboo ladder, through a square hole, which was wide enough to afford admission for a full-grown man; the floor consisted of broad sawn planks of unequal length supported by the cross beams; these beams in their turn resting on the above-mentioned piles. The big houses were divided into storeys, the lower one being as high as two men, the upper one was lower and more like a barn.
"Round about on the principal rafters, there were some bamboo sticks hardly as thick as the thumb fastened across. This looked very nice; but there were no windows at all, nor any to replace them, but the light came only through the holes serving them for door, therefore it was very dark. All their household implements were standing round about, mostly tied to the bamboo; that which could not be kept in this manner had been put into small boxes, which were one foot long, half a foot wide, and hardly half a foot high, and were provided with lids, which were made, as I have already said before, from the partitions sheaths of the young chamoerops leaves. These little boxes had been tied to a bamboo, which was fastened right across the room, and was therefore at some distance from the roof.