nce of this
unaccountable melancholy, a welcome change tool place, for the Rajah
sent to call together all the chiefs, priests, and princes who were
then in Mataram, his capital city; and when they were all assembled in
anxious expectation, he thus addressed them:

"For many days my heart has been very sick and I knew not why, but now
the trouble is cleared away, for I have had a dream. Last night the
spirit of the 'Gunong Agong'--the great fire mountain--appeared to me,
and told me that I must go up to the top of the mountain. All of you may
come with me to near the top, but then I must go up alone, and the
great spirit will again appear to me and will tell me what is of great
importance to me and to you and to all the people of the island. Now go
all of you and make this known through the island, and let every village
furnish men to make clear a road for us to go through the forest and up
the great mountain."

So the news was spread over the whole island that the Rajah must go to
meet the great spirit on the top of the mountain; and every village sent
forth its men, and they cleared away the jungle and made bridges over
the mountain streams and smoothed the rough places for the Rajah's
passage. And when they came to the steep and craggy rocks of the
mountain, they sought out the best paths, sometimes along the bed of a
torrent, sometimes along narrow ledges of the black rocks; in one place
cutting down a tall tree so as to bridge across a chasm, in another
constructing ladders to mount the smooth face of a precipice. The chiefs
who superintended the work fixed upon the length of each day's journey
beforehand according to the nature of the road, and chose pleasant
places by the banks of clear streams and in the neighbourhood of shady
trees, where they built sheds and huts of bamboo well thatched with the
leaves of palm-trees, in which the Rajah and his attendants might eat
and sleep at the close of each day.

And when all was ready, the princes and priests and chief men came again
to the Rajah, to tell him what had been done and to ask him when he
would go up the mountain. And he fixed a day, and ordered every man of
rank and authority to accompany him, to do honour to the great spirit
who had bid him undertake the journey, and to show how willingly they
obeyed his commands. And then there was much preparation throughout
the whole island. The best cattle were killed and the meat salted
and sun-dried; and abundance o