He Was Very Fond Of Discoursing On The "Special
Providences" Of Which He Believed He Was Daily The Subject.
"Allah
Has been merciful today," he would say - for although a
Christian he adopted the Mahometan mode of speech- "and has
Given
us some very fine birds; we can do nothing without him." Then one
of the Malays would reply, "To be sure, birds are like mankind;
they have their appointed time to die; when that time comes
nothing can save them, and if it has not come you cannot kill
them." A murmur of assent follow, until sentiments and cries of
"Butul! Butul!" (Right, right.) Then Manuel would tell a long
story of one of his unsuccessful hunts - how he saw some fine
bird and followed it a long way, and then missed it, and again
found it, and shot two or three times at it, but could never hit
it, "Ah!" says an old Malay, "its time was not come, and so it
was impossible for you to kill it." A doctrine is this which is
very consoling to the bad marksman, and which quite accounts for
the facts, but which is yet somehow not altogether satisfactory.
It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have the
power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the
sake of devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told
of such transformations. I was therefore rather surprised one
evening to hear the following curious fact stated, and as it was
not contradicted by any of the persons present, I am inclined to
accept it provisionally as a contribution to the Natural History
of the island. A Bornean Malay who had been for many years
resident here said to Manuel, "One thing is strange in this
country - the scarcity of ghosts." "How so? "asked Manuel. "Why,
you know," said the Malay, "that in our countries to the
westward, if a man dies or is killed, we dare not pass near the
place at night, for all sorts of noises are heard which show that
ghosts are about. But here there are numbers of men killed, and
their bodies lie unburied in the fields and by the roadside, and
yet you can walk by them at night and never hear or see anything
at all, which is not the case in our country, as you know very
well." "Certainly I do," said Manuel; and so it was settled that
ghosts were very scarce, if not altogether unknown in Lombock. I
would observe, however, that as the evidence is purely negative
we should be wanting in scientific caution if we accepted this
fact as sufficiently well established.
One evening I heard Manuel, Ali, and a Malay man whispering
earnestly together outside the door, and could distinguish
various allusions to "krisses," throat-cutting, heads, etc. etc.
At length Manuel came in, looking very solemn and frightened, and
said to me in English, "Sir - must take care, - no safe here; - want
cut throat." On further inquiry, I found that the Malay had been
telling them that the Rajah had just sent down an order to the
village, that they were to get a certain number of heads for an
offering in the temples to secure a good crop of rice.
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