xpectation, born of a memory of the good red meat, and the
lashings of sound ale and sour cider, awaiting them at the farmhouse two
miles across the meadows.

But in the distant Sakai country the Harvest Home has little in common
with such scenes as these. The _padi_ planted in the clearing, hard by
the spot in which the camp is pitched, has been reaped painfully and
laboriously in the native fashion, each ripe ear being severed from its
stalk separately and by hand. Then, after many days, the grain has at
last been stored in the big bark boxes, under cover of the palm leaf
thatch, and the Sakai women, who have already performed the lion's share
of the work, are set to husk some portions of it for the evening meal.
This they do with clumsy wooden pestles, held as they stand erect round
a sort of trough, the ding-dong-ding of the pounders carrying far and
wide through the forest, and, at the sound, all wanderers from the camp
turn their faces homeward with the eagerness born of empty stomachs and
the prospect of a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the
tribe possess any, or, if they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo,
for that marvellous jungle growth is used for almost every conceivable
purpose by natives of the far interior. The fat new rice is sweet to
eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff you know in
Europe, as does the creamy butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from the
liquid yellow train oil which we dignify by that name in the sweltering
tropics, and the cooked grain is eaten ravenously, and in incredible
quantities by the hungry, squalid creatures in a Sakai camp. These poor
wretches know that, in a day or two, the Malays will come up stream to
'barter' with them, and that the priceless rice will be taken from them,
almost by force, in exchange for a few axe-heads and native wood knives.
Therefore, the Sakai eat while there is yet time, and while distended
stomachs will still bear the strain of a few additional mouthfuls.

Thus is the harvest home supper devoured in a Sakai camp, with gluttony
and beast noises of satisfaction, while the darkness is falling over the
land; but, when the meal has been completed, the sleep of repletion may
not fall upon the people. The Spirits of the Woods and of the Streams,
and the Demons of the grain must be thanked for their gifts, and
propitiated for such evil as has been done them. The forests have been
felled to make the clearing, the crop