IN TIMOR. 



435 



into the hollow of his hand, " Maman ? " (may I eat ? said 

 my goide^ with an obeisance, following the proper etiquette, 

 to which the Dato replied, " 3Iajnan " (eat). This little 

 ceremony had an instant effect in loosening the tongues of our 

 hosts, who kept up an unbroken dialogue till long after dark. 



Just at sunset we were surprised by the intnision of a man, 

 who heat a lon«: and vigorous tatoo on a drum 8uspende<l in the 

 centre of the building, to give, as wm explained to us, informa- 

 tion to the neighbourhood that the remains of the father and 

 of some other relatives of the Bato — an old white-haired man 

 — whieh had been dangling some thirty years in the tree-top 

 which we had just passed, were at last to be buried, and that 

 every night till the feast was ready the drum would be beat at 

 sunset. 1 had observed an unwonted activity of rice and 

 Indian-corn stamping, and remarked the wealth of pigs and 

 goats that we had to make our way through as we entered, all 

 now explained as preparations against tht^ day of burial. 



When a member of a family dies, at least three duties are 

 imperative on the survivi ug relatives before the body can be 

 buried. First, every blood relative without exception is bound 

 to give, either in person or by proxy, a gift of greater or less 

 magnittide to the decetised. On arriving where the dead body 

 is, each donor places his gifts on or near the corpse, and 

 within its hearing fires off as many shots of his gun as he can 

 afford, the greiiter the number the greater is his respect, it is 

 supposed, for the departed. The other essentials are a death 

 and-burial feast. If the defunct have been a lowly person 

 with few relatives, a small feast will suflSce to satisfy the 

 demands of custom. If, however, he have been of some rank, 

 with many relatives and a wide acquaintance, these must be on 

 a scale commensurate with his position ; and so serious are the 

 demands that custom requires, that the death feast alone often 

 reduces the family to abject poverty, necessitating the delay 

 of the funeral for months, years, or even a whole century, till 

 such time, in fact, as the relatives and descendants are able to 

 provide the necessary costly fea^t. The corpse, which has 

 been lying where it died during these first tedious cere- 

 monies, is then folded at the hips, bundled up in a mat and 

 suspended by a cord below the floor of the curious dovecot- 

 like huts in the trees wliich I have spoken of, to wait inter- 



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