still shades of
the forest. But their favourite dwelling is the Warinzie tree (_ficus
Indica_,) which droops its long branches to the earth to form then a
palace. The Javans mingle their superstitions with the commonest events
of every-day life. Thieves, for instance, will throw a little earth,
taken from a new-made grave, into the house they intend to rob,
persuaded that the inmates will thereby be plunged into a deep sleep.
When they have done this, and especially if they have managed to place
the earth under the bed, they set to work with full conviction of
impunity. Bamboo boxes of soil are frequently found in the possession of
captured thieves, who usually confess the purpose to which they were to
be applied. During the English occupation, it was casually discovered
that a buffalo's skull was constantly carried backwards and forwards
from one end of the island to the other. The Javans had got a notion
that a frightful curse had been pronounced upon the man who should allow
it to remain stationary. After the skull had travelled many hundred
miles, it was brought to Samarang, and there the English resident had it
thrown into the sea. The Javans looked on quietly, and held the curse to
be neutralised by the white men's intervention. Dr. Selberg gives
various other examples, observed by himself, of the ridiculous
superstitions of these simple islanders. A very remarkable one is given
in the works of Raffles and Crawford. In 1814, it was found out that a
road had been made up to the lofty summit of the mountain of Sumbing.
The road was twenty feet broad, and about sixty English miles in length,
and a condition of its construction being that it should cross no
water-course, it straggled in countless zig-zags up the mountain side.
This gigantic work, the result of the labours of a whole province, and
of a people habitually and constitutionally averse to violent exertion,
was finished before the government became aware of its commencement. Its
origin was most absurd and trifling. An old woman gave out that she had
dreamed a dream, and that a deity was about to alight upon the mountain
top. A curse was to fall upon all who did not work at a road for his
descent into the plain. Such boundless credulity as this, is of course
easily turned to account by mischievous persons, and has often been
worked upon to incite the Javans to revolt. The history of the island,
even in modern times, abounds in insurrections, got up, for the mos