he
continuance of fair weather in the ordinary course of nature: but should
he fail there is an effectual salvo. He always promises to fulfil his
agreement with a Deo volente clause, and so attributes his occasional
disappointments to the particular interposition of the deity. The cunning
men who, in this and many other instances of conjuration, impose on the
simple country people, are always Malayan adventurers, and not
unfrequently priests. The planter whose labour has been lost by such
interruptions generally finds it too late in the season to begin on
another ladang, and the ordinary resource for subsisting himself and
family is to seek a spot of sawah ground, whose cultivation is less
dependent upon accidental variations of weather. In some districts much
confusion in regard to the period of sowing is said to have arisen from a
very extraordinary cause. Anciently, say the natives, it was regulated by
the stars, and particularly by the appearance (heliacal rising) of the
bintang baniak or Pleiades; but after the introduction of the Mahometan
religion they were induced to follow the returns of the puisa or great
annual fast, and forgot their old rules. The consequence of this was
obvious, for the lunar year of the hejrah being eleven days short of the
sidereal or solar year the order of the seasons was soon inverted; and it
is only astonishing that its inaptness to the purposes of agriculture
should not have been immediately discovered.

SOWING.

When the periodical rains begin to fall, which takes place gradually
about October, the planter assembles his neighbours (whom he assists in
turn), and with the aid of his whole family proceeds to sow his ground,
endeavouring to complete the task in the course of one day. In order to
ensure success he fixes, by the priest's assistance, on a lucky day, and
vows the sacrifice of a kid if his crop should prove favourable; the
performance of which is sacredly observed, and is the occasion of a feast
in every family after harvest. The manner of sowing (tugal-menugal) is
this. Two or three men enter the plantation, as it is usual to call the
padi-field, holding in each hand sticks about five feet long and two
inches diameter, bluntly pointed, with which, striking them into the
ground as they advance, they make small, shallow holes, at the distance
of about five inches from each other. These are followed by the women and
elder children with small baskets containing the seed-grain