216 



A NATUBALIST IN CELEBES 



CH. IX 



copious draughts of sagoweer and silently chewed the betel. 

 Thanksgiving for the recovery of the priest concluded the 

 ceremony, and the evening passed in 

 feasting, dancing, and debauchery. 



The fossos vpere often the occa- 

 -sions of the most revolting barbarity. 

 A human head, or the body of a child, 

 specially obtained for the purpose, had 

 to be placed beneath the principal 

 pile of every new house, and when the 

 house was finished a fresh head had 

 to be obtained to hang up in the roof 

 (102) . Victory was celebrated by the 

 drinking of the blood of the captured 

 enemy, or cutting his body iato fine 

 pieces (tumuktok) (22). 



Before every expedition the locks 

 of hair {boto) of an enemy previously 

 slain were stirred up in boiling water 

 to extract the courage, and this infu- 

 sion of human courage was drunk by 

 the warriors. 



Those, however, were the days of 

 song and romance, and specimens of 

 a rude art, characterised by what ap- 

 pears to us as gross obscenity, have 

 been found. 



We can picture to ourselves those 

 terrible raids. The half-naked savages 

 starting out by night armed with iron 

 swords and bamboo-tipped spears, and 

 narrow shields rather broader at the 

 ends than in the middle, creeping 



7^ 



w 



J 



Fia. 31.— Boto, a tuft of 

 the hair of an enemy, 

 usually fastened to the i n j j. i 



sago-sago, or sword of silently through the forests, and re- 



the priests, atthe fossos. 



