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It was not a particularly good show. But it seemed to be very popular with the natives. All the booths and games of chance were so crowded we could not get close enough to see what was going on. Two small theatres were producing Malay plays, and a man and a woman, on a platform, were doing very slow and rather uninteresting Malay dance. We did get into the "Chinese-Malay Circus", and watched the one troupe of acrobats, that constituted the entire staff of artists, go slowly through some not very difficult gymnastics. The audience in the little tent was more interesting than the performance, with the flaring lights on their upturned faces, that showed the features of nearly every Oriental race. Two nice old Chinese, a man and his wife, neatly dressed, sat in the front row, and near them were some Chinese tradesmen, of the town, plump and prosperous. Behind them were two bearded sikhs, there swarthy faces grinning with pleasure under their snowy turbans. Small boys, Javanese, Malay, and Batak, and mixed, howled with merriment at the heavy antics of the clowns. We were the only Europeans there.

July 1 - 

Bill's birthday, and a nice one. The Coenraads and Williams and Goud all came to call. We had reistafel, brought over nobly by Horas and his bicycle. I was able to find two presents for Bill in the local shop - a pair of Macassar filigree cuff links, and a Balinese carving of a dancing girl's head. In the evening we lit the Japanese lanterns, put on papaer caps, snapped crackers, and toasted the Tuan Besar in champagne. The T.B. got into a funk over a letter from the Zoo, which was not very clear about financial matters, but we calmed him finally with assurances that everything must be all right, and anyway he could cable tomorrow.

July 4 -

We had expected the Brownes to come up from Medan for a patriotic celebration, but at the last [[strikethrough]] word they se [[/strikethrough]] minute they snet word they could not get away. We had the camp decorated with flags - Dutch, American, and Geographic - and had as close an imitation of an American dinner as we could get - fried chicken, baked beans and ice cream. After lunch the boys put off a few firecrackers, and as we sat on the verandah we decided that it was almost as hot as Fourth of July at home. The dry season is upon us, and even Siantar, which has been very comfortable, gets pretty warm about three in the afternoon. Nights are still chilly however, and that is a blessing.

We took Barbara Lawrence over to Mathew's jungle for a morning's entomological collecting. She is of course still waiting for gun and collecting permits.

Another morning Mr. Lynkamp took us over the Martoba tea estate, which was interesting. Ten thousand acres of tea is quite a lot, and we saw the various processes, from picking the young tea leaves to tasting the finished product in a cup. The factory is a big modern one, air conditioned in order to dry the tea in a specified number of hours, and all so cleanswept and spicy-smelling that a tour makes one a regular tea addict. The Javanese girls who work in the factory are small and amazingly strong. They carried baskets on their back that I could scarecely lift off the ground. Lynkamp told us they