322 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



distant, so as to dislodge a quoit from the row. If the player 

 failed to hit he had to return to the crease to play again in his 

 turn, but if he succeeded he played a second time from where 

 his quoit rested. Passing his right hand holding the disc round 

 to his left side as far as he could stretch, and steadying it with 

 his left hand, he would take in this position steady aim, calcu- 

 lating with a glancing eye the spot he intended to hit, then with 

 a run forward a few steps to the crease, he would deliver with 

 all his might. Not only did the young lads and boys engage 

 in this game, but even the grown-up men joined with much bois- 

 terous laughter. At a very early age the children begin to 

 wade about the shallow margins of the sea, practising with spear 

 and arrow the capture of fish, training arm and eye till when 

 they have come of age, they have attained an almost unerring 

 accuracy of aim. A fine exhibition was to be witnessed of 

 the beauty of the human figure when the youths — fine fellows 

 in the perfection of their manhood — came out at sundown 

 to practise the drawing of the bow or throwing of the lance. 

 How awkward were the attempts of myself and my Amboinese 

 boys ! How well-merited their good-natured jeering ! The 

 marvellous grace, however, of the human form was unsur- 

 passingly exhibited when — the setting sun behind their lissom 

 untrammelled figures — the women were returning from the 

 fields, standing erect at the stern, and with long strokes poling 

 in their buoyant praus. One view might shame half of the 

 spine-deformed, waist-distorted slaves of fashion out of cus- 

 toms, which arc as barbarous as any which are recorded as 

 strange or hurtful among savage peoples. 



When a man dies, his children and relatives assemble to 

 lament his departure, but I have never seen any outward 

 expression or sign of mourning. A pig is killed, but I am in 

 doubt whether it is given to the assembled people to eat or 

 laid with the dead body, Avhich is then placed in a portion of 

 a prau fitted to the length of the individual, or within strips 

 of gaba-gaba, or stems of the sago palm pinned together. If it 

 is a person of some consequence, such as an Orang Kaya, an 

 ornate and decorated prau- shaped coffin is specially made. This 

 is then enveloped in calico, and placed either on the top of a 

 rock by the margin of the sea at a short distance from the 

 village, or on a high pile-platform erected on the shore about 



