y thing to be done was to tell her his true name that
she might drive out the pain from his bones. This he finally did, and
with disastrous results. I instance this to show the antiquity of the
superstition that the saliva is potent as an ingredient of charms; the
Kayans illustrate this, in the manner whereby they elude an evil spirit
which may have been following them on a journey on the river. They build
a small archway of boughs on the bank just before they arrive at their
destination. Underneath this arch, they build a fire and, in single
file, all pass under, stepping over the fire and spitting into it as
they pass; by this act they thoroughly exorcise the evil spirits and
emerge on the other side free from all baleful influence. Another
instance, is where they are throwing aside the signs of mourning for the
dead; during the period of mourning they may not cut their hair nor
shave their temples, but as soon as the mourning is ended by the
ceremony of bringing home a newly-taken head, the barber's knife is kept
busy enough. As every man leaves the barber's hands, he gathers up the
hair, and, spitting on it, murmurs a prayer to the evil spirits not to
harm him. He then blows the hair out of the verandah of the house.

All these parallelisms, in the modes of thinking, among men in far
removed quarters of the earth, do not, I think, necessarily imply that
there has been a transmission of thought from one race to the other, but
that there is a certain round of thought through which the brain leads
us, and in development we must all have followed along the same path.
Some races have made more rapid strides than others, possibly owing to
natural surroundings, and in their strides have left the others
centuries behind. Almost within the memory of our grandfathers, in this
country, witches were burned, and from this there is only a step back to
the Dayong of Borneo. Indeed, whosoever sees these people and lives with
them their everyday life, must regard them, after a not very long time,
merely as backward pupils in the school of life. Let me say in
conclusion, that he would have an unresponsive heart that could not feel
linked in a bond of fellowship with these people, and that God has made
of only one blood all nations of the earth, when he hears a Bornean
mother crooning her child to sleep with words identical in sentiment
with "Rock-a-bye Baby,"--what though the mother's earlobes are elongated
many an inch by heavy coppe