43S 



A NATUBALIST'S WANDERINGS 



died, it has become by then a mass of putrefaction emitting a 

 pestilential odour, which to the Timorese gives no apparent 

 discomfort. As dnring this period whoever arrives must be 

 feasted, every bufialo, horse and pig that the family possess 

 hare often to be slaughtered, reducing them to absolute 

 poverty. On the conclusion of these death ceremonies the 

 family leave the house, but the body remains there either on a 

 bier or deposited in a large coffin and guarded by the officiala 

 of the kingdom, till the relatives can afford to provide the 

 burial feast. Till such time the king is supposed to be asleep 

 and no successor with reigning powers can 1>e appointed. 



Like the Australians, the Timorese cannot understand why 

 any one should ever die unless he Ije killed ; so they attribute 

 both sickness and natural death to the influence of some 

 malevolent existence, which they Udieve eats up the spirit of 

 the blighted person after death. As soon, therefore, as the sick 

 man has died, the Sn'migi (or jierson in whom the evil spirit 

 had taken up its residence and who is considered to be in 

 collusion with it), whom their fanaticism easily discovers, used 

 with his whole family to be seized (till it was made a capital 

 crime by the Portuguese so to do), bound hand and foot, and 

 either impaled or buried alive, and their goods confiscated 

 for the benefit of the accusers and the lord of the soil. 



Their food seems to consist chiefly of indian-corn roasted 

 oTcr the fire by each individual when he feels hungry, and 

 eaten grain by grain as it becomes ready. On high occasions, 

 when a pig or a goat is killed, the indian-com mixed w^th 

 rice and Katjang {Fhaseolm) begins, is stewed along with the 

 flesh, and the whole mess flavoured with the most pungent 

 capsicums. Sweet potatoes (and in some elevated districts 

 European potatoes), Cucnrhitaceous fruits and various herbs 

 form also a large part of their diet. In times of scarcity a species 

 of legume, called by them kutu {Bolichos lAthlah), common 

 over the whole island, is also used as f«x>d, but unless it is 

 well cooked it is, if not poisonous, very deleterious. They 

 cultivate few fruits except the banana; but the jack-fruit 

 seems in some places abundant and is highly prized, espe- 

 cially its seeds, which when boiled, taste not unlike potatoes 

 and much resemble those of the sectling variety of the bread- 

 fruit tree (Ariocar^ms {n4:isa). The true bread -fni it I did not 



