IN SUMATRA. 219 



after which they returned, preceded by an old female relative 

 of the bridegroom, who spread cloths before them all the waj 

 to a spot in the centre of the village. Here a couple of mats 

 a little distance apart, had been placed, on the one of which 

 the bridegroom and his relatives, and on the other the bride 

 and hers, seated themselves, each with their umbrella and 

 siri-box before them. During the intervals of music that 

 attended the ceremony, the youths of the bridegroom's party 

 pelted, as if slily and clandestinely, with handfuls of yellowed 

 rice the bride and her attendant maidens, who returned 

 the compliment, while the fowls were enticed to pick up the 

 grains that fell on the ground. This was supposed to be an 

 invocation to the Dewa to bless the union and grant sufficient 

 food, with at least a superabundance for the fowls to pick 

 up. The old relative made various inquiries at both parties : 

 "Will he have this woman?" "Will she have this man?" 

 When the " I will ! " had been publicly said and returned in 

 the face of the village, she presented a lumj) of rice to the 

 bride who took a bite, and the rest she placed in the mouth 

 of the bridegroom — in token that the wife was to liave the 

 same board as her husband. After sitting for an hour or 

 so in the face of the village, to make hrothers with all the 

 inhabitants, and as an advertisement of their new relations, 



the procession continued its w^ay to the house of the bride- 

 groom, where a feast was provided. The closing act of the 



ceremony was the removal by the husband of all his wife's 

 ornaments and jewels, which she could never again resume 

 unless she wished to commit that supreme crime in the eyes 

 of her husband, of appearing to wish that she were a maiden 

 again. 



All day long the boys used to amuse themselves under my 

 window with a game called Lepar, that interested me much 

 partly from the rarity of games among the children, as Avell as 

 from the enthusiastic manner in which they played it. Each 

 player, furnished with a quoit-shaped disk cut out of a cocoanut 

 shell, played forward from a stance, so as to strike either one or 

 (according to the number of players) more disks arranged on 

 the ground some forty or fifty feet distant. Each played in 

 succession; his turn continuing after his first three shots, till 

 he failed to drive his own against any of the goal disks. The 



