age two miles from here and
she saw her own sister drown a baby while she was there.'

"I asked an English missionary if she knew that this fearful custom was
still prevalent over most of China with its more than four hundred
million souls.

"She told me that it was the custom in Ning-daik for the women just to
throw the girl babies under their beds, and they would 'be gone in a day
or two.'

"And it is all because of their awful fear that the gods will be
displeased if they give birth to a girl baby!"

The second outstanding flash-light of fear comes from Java.

In the chapter on Physical Flash-lights I have described the old volcano
of Bromo. It is a terrible thing to look into. Great fissures in the
earth, belch thunder, sulphur, fire, and lava. Great rocks as large as
wagons shoot into the air to the rim of the two hundred-foot crater, and
then drop back with a crash.

For centuries, and even in these days, clandestinely; I am told by men
whom I trust; the most beautiful maiden of a certain tribe among the
Javanese; and some of the most beautiful women I saw in the Orient were
those soft-skinned, soft-voiced, easy-moving, graceful-limbed,
swaying-bodied; brown skinned women of Java; she, the fairest of the
tribe is taken; and with her the strongest limbed youth; he of the
fibered muscles; he of the iron biceps; he of the clean skin; and the
two of them are tossed into the belching fiery crater of old Bromo.

"Why?" I asked.

"They think that in that way, they may propitiate the gods of the
volcano. Their hearts are constantly filled with fear lest the gods of
the volcano become angry and destroy them," said the missionary.

Then he told me of a trip that they made a year before to the top of one
of the most inaccessible volcanoes which was then in constant eruption.

"We had a hard time getting native guides. Finally we succeeded. We had
to travel fifty miles before we reached the mountain. Then we climbed
five miles up its steep side, cutting our own trail as we made our way
through the tropical jungle. At last we reached the timber. But before
we entered the forest one of the guides came to me and, with the most
pitiable and trembling fear in his voice and face, begged us white
people not to say anything disrespectful of the mountain; not to joke
and laugh, and not to sing; for that would make the mountain angry, and
we would all be killed.

"I saw that he was in deadly earnest, and, while I wanted to