ARDEA GARZETTA. 37 



choose tlie Kanawy, for he stands bj the river-side and watches 

 the canoes, and so we shall always know when and where 

 our friends are going ' " (it must be remembered that rivers are 

 the only roads in these countries). " So when the angel saw 

 how they loved mankind, he gave them the Kanawy, and 

 granted them still farther, that if ever a man benighted in the 

 jungle should lie down to sleep within the fence of their invi- 

 sible village, they should have for four days the privilege of 

 making themselves visible to him, and of entertaining him in 

 their houses, but he bid them beware of giving their visitors 

 the eggs of the Kanawy ; and so the angel departed. Now, 

 after this, men wondered much what had become of the 

 friendly spirits of the woods, but as no one happened to fall 

 asleep in the charmed ground, it was many, many hundred 

 years before it became known, and thus it happened : there 

 was a certain Rajah who studied magic, and to do so more 

 conveniently he used to wander with his books in the jungles, 

 and one night as he crossed the village of the Ka-benar-an he 

 sat down under a teak-tree, and fell asleep. Instantly he 

 found himself among the friendly spiiits, who caressed him in 

 every way, and beat gongs, and sang pantuns* (Malay poetry), 

 and did everything to testify their delight at being again visi- 

 ble to a mortal. They dressed him in silk sarungs and salen- 

 dangs (different kinds of waistcloths), gave him akris covered 

 with gold and jewels, and the most beautiful maidens brought 

 him luscious fruits and choice sweetmeats, and offered him 

 betel and cigars ; and so three days passed away, but at the 

 end of the third day the ungrateful Rajah grew tired of his 

 fair companions, and their delicate dainties, and asked for rice 

 and salt-fish : rice they gave him in abundance, but salt fish 

 they had none, so he asked for a fowFs- egg, but they had no 

 fowls : then he turned his eyes upon the beautiful white birds 

 walking about the house, and said, ' Give me the eggs of the 



* Pantuns. — Mr. Crawfurd in his "Grammar of the Malay Language" gives the 

 following account of this kind of poetry : "The pantun is, even among the islanders 

 of the Archipelago, peculiar to the Malays. It is a quatrain stanza, in which the 

 alternate lines rhyme, or in which all the lines rhyme together. The two first lines 

 contain an assertion or proposition, while the two last purport to be an application 

 of it." 



