I put up a rude table on legs buried in the earthen floor, and had my comfortable rattan-chair for a seat.

A line across one corner carried my daily-washed cotton clothing, and on a bamboo shelf was arranged my small stock of crockery and hardware: Boxes were ranged against the thatch walls, and hanging shelves, to preserve my collections from ants while drying, were suspended both without and within the house.

On my table lay books, penknives, scissors, pliers, and pins, with insect and bird labels, all of which were unsolved mysteries to the native mind.
Most of the people here had never seen a pin, and the better informed took a pride in teaching their more ignorant companions the peculiarities and uses of that strange European production--a needle with a head, but no eye! Even paper, which we throw away hourly as rubbish, was to them a curiosity; and I often saw them picking up little scraps which had been swept out of the house, and carefully putting them away in their betel-pouch.

Then when I took my morning coffee and evening tea, how many were the strange things displayed to them! Teapot, teacups, teaspoons, were all more or less curious in their eyes; tea, sugar, biscuit, and butter, were articles of human consumption seen by many of them for the first time.

One asks if that whitish powder is "gula passir" (sand-sugar), so called to distinguish it from the coarse lump palm-sugar or molasses of native manufacture; and the biscuit is considered a sort of European sago-cake, which the inhabitants of those remote regions are obliged to use in the absence of the genuine article.
My pursuit, were of course utterly beyond their comprehension.