198 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



as well as the Dewa, are supposed on his paying a small fine 

 to be satisfied. 



The people of the Passumah are pagans ; but their pagan- 

 ism is throughout ting-ed in form and utterance with Maho- 

 medanism, which in former times may have spread to a 

 slight extent among them. They have no priests. They 

 believe in Dewas, who inhabit the volcanoes and the deep 

 forests, and also in the avenging power of the spirits of their 

 forefathers if they transgress the old customs set by them. 

 In times of difficulty and perplexity they ascend to the margin 

 of the crater, and in the cold of that elevated spot they pass 

 one or more nights ; and once in every three years a company 

 from the villages repairs to burn incense, and sacrifice to the 

 Dewa some animal on the Sawah (as they name a spot just 

 below the present cone), which must have been the floor of 

 an old crater before the upheaval of the present one. They 

 believe in the power of forms of words, and in the posses- 

 sion of spells. When a youth goes away on a journey he 

 leaves with the object of his affections an inscribed bamboo, 

 which she daily reads (if she is able to do so), to secure his 

 fidelity to her and success in his undertaking ; she then drinks 

 a draught of water from it, so that the spell may amalgamate 

 with her own self. In the roofs of their houses they secrete 

 bamboos with various inscriptions to ward off sickness, and to 

 cure it when it enters the dwelling. The surat hantal, a 

 prayer inscribed on blades of bamboo, placed below the pillow, 

 will insure for a mother safe delivery ; and, when her infant will 

 not cease crying, the repeating of its contents will still it. 

 When an aged person is very sick, and cannot possibly recover, 

 but yet lingers long at the threshold of death, they possess 

 another formula, whose reading will release the dying spirit 

 in peace. 



The place they hold in most reverence is the grave of the 

 Nene Poyang, or stem father of the Passumah, over which their 

 most binding oaths are taken ; to perjure themselves on it 

 would be equal to sealing their doom. If there be a dispute 

 between two people of the same or of different villages, both 

 retire, accompanied by their respective chiefs, to this sacred spot, 

 where a fowl or a sheep or a buffalo, according to the gravity 

 of the affair, is killed, which after being cut up into small pieces, 



