326 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



CHAPTER V. 



SOJOURN IN TiMOR-LALT — continued. 



Ituli^ioii and supei-stitions — Visit to Waitidal — Barter for a skull — Send my 

 hunters to the northern islands of the group — Climate of Timor-laut — ■ 

 A mauvais quart d'heure — Desi;^nation of the group — Geographical and 

 geological features. 



The Tenimber islanders recognise some supreme existence 

 whom they call Duadilah, of whom there is an image in their 

 houses, over the principal seat, or dodohan, facing the entrance, 

 with at its side a platter, or hilaan, on which a little food and 

 drink is placed whenever they themselves eat. Prom their luvus, 

 among the other heterogeneous odds and ends which it con- 

 tains, they can generally produce one small image, sometimes 

 inore. Their little gods vary in form according to the occupa- 

 tion they are engaged in ; but in what light they regard them 

 I could not discover. Singularly enough, one of these images 

 (on the left hand, p. 327) lias a most wonderful resemblance to 

 one brought by Mr. Wallace from New Guinea, and figured 

 in his ' Malay Archipelago.' That they have a firm belief in 

 a powerful, chiefly an avenging, spirit I feel certain. One 

 day a stranger to the village had his loin-cloth stolen. After 

 several days had passed without his recovering it, we were 

 surprised to see a boat urgently propelled across the bay, 

 from which the owner of the stolen cloth impulsively sprang, 

 bringing with him a small red flag on the end of a slender 

 pole. This he erected on the spot whence his cloth had dis- 

 appeared, and after looking up with a steady and penetrating 

 eye and repeating in a most tragic and excited manner a long 

 imprecation against the thief and the village, he removed the 

 pole, jumped into his boat, and, without accosting any one, 

 withdrew in the same urgent manner from the now doomed 

 villaire. 



