56 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



sidin, and moves back a pace or two from the tree. 

 He calls on the deer 



" Hail ! all hail ! 

 Ye that trample the earth ! 

 Ye that pass like lightning-flash ! 

 If ye pass the nooses' farthest end, 

 Ye fall into the deepest seas ; 

 And if ye pass the nearer end 

 Ye reach the great volcano's fire. 

 Take ye the broad road by the high land ! 

 Here is the way for ye to follow 

 To return to the fold of Nabi Sleman" 



This last line is illustrative of the Malays' belief in 

 an animal's sanctuary, the fold of their master Nabi 

 Sleman (King Solomon, who is one of the prophets 

 of the Muhammadan religion). Within this sanc- 

 tuary only animals that have obeyed the laws of 

 their kind are admitted. It is imagined that the 

 deer which live close to the habitations of human 

 beings, and which feed on the crops of man, are 

 trespassers, and have done wrong by wandering too 

 far from their proper home. By so doing wrong 

 they have forfeited in part, but only in part, the 

 protection of forest spirits. It follows, therefore, 

 that the deer which frequent the haunts of men 

 are an easier quarry than the purely forest- dwelling 

 deer ; and it is the former, for obvious reasons con- 

 nected with the accessibility and nature of the 

 ground, that are more often caught. A further de- 

 velopment of this idea of wrong - doing is seen in 

 the case of man-eating tigers and crocodiles, which 

 are imagined, by their unnatural appetites, to have 

 put themselves outside the pale of God's creatures, 



