202 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



as for additional security against hostile incursions, they have 

 no roads nor bridges, and as the villages are generally many 

 miles apart and separated from each other by jungles or woods, 

 this total want of the means of communication presents an 

 almost insuperable obstacle to the traveller. Their distrust of 

 strangers extends even to the members of their own nation, so 

 that Battas of one province cannot enter another without 

 running the risk of being seized as spies and eaten alive. 



While two of the great events of human life — birth and 

 marriage — pass almost unnoticed among the Battas, the third 

 and last act of this ' strange eventful history ' gives rise to 

 ceremonies which one would hardly expect to meet with among 

 a nation of cannibals. When the rajah of a large village dies, 

 his body is kept so long in the house, until the rice which is 

 sown on the day of his death by his son or his brother comes to 

 maturity. When the rice is about to ripen, a buffalo is killed, 

 and its bones sent round to all friends and relations among 

 the rajahs of the neighbourhood as an invitation to the burial, 

 which is to take place on the tenth day after the reception of 

 these strange missives. Every rajah who accepts the invita- 

 tion is obliged to bring with him a buffalo. The coffin is placed 

 on a bier before the house, and on the arrival of the guests their 

 buffaloes are tied to strong poles close by. The wives, sons, and 

 other near relations of the deceased, now walk seven times with 

 loud lamentations round the buffaloes, after which the oldest or 

 first wife breaks a pot of boiled rice grown from the seed sown 

 on the dying day on the forehead of one of the buffaloes. This is 

 the signal for a frantic explosion of grief among the mourning 

 women, whose piercing cries are accompanied by the incessant 

 beating of drums and brass kettles in the house. After this 

 lugubrious scene, which soon terminates with the real or feigned 

 exhaustion of the actors, each of the rajahs now in his turn walks 

 seven times round the buffalo which he brought with him, and 

 kills it with a stroke of his lance. The coffin is then removed 

 to the burial-place, and placed on the side of the open grave, 

 amid the profound silence of the assembly. Its lid is opened, 

 and the eldest son of the deceased, stepping forward, looks at the 

 corpse, the face of which is turned towards the sun, and, raising 

 his hand to the sky, says, ' Now, father, thou seest for the last 

 time the sun, which thou wilt never see again.' After this short 



