scatters a volume of black mud in every direction.
The exploded mud is warm, and the explosions
are most frequent and forcible during
the rainy season. Round about this central
pond of mud are the brine springs, which yield
an immense quantity of common salt, and
which force themselves through apertures in
the earth "with some violence and ebullition."
The salt-makers' village and the central pond of
volcanic mud are both known to the Javanese
as Kuwu—"the place of abode"—and an old
legend makes the spot to be the place of abode
of a monster snake, whose writhings create the
eruption.

The Javanese are famous for their pictorial
vocabulary. One district is "Prosperity,"
another "The Country of Ghosts," a third is
"The Unlucky," a fourth "Heroic Difficulty;"
their great volcano—the formidable Ringgit—
is "The Puppet;" an island is "The Land of
Sorrows," another "Palm-wine Island," another
"Sea Island," another "The Fallen," another
"The Magic Island;" one river is "The
Golden," and a second is "The Bachelor's
River;" one river-mouth is "Coco-palm Mouth,"
another "The Mouth of Sobs;" an eclipse is
the "sickness" of the sun or moon, as may be;
the nobles and the people are "the whole and
the broken grains of rice," or "the head and
the foot;" and history, or rather romance, is
"clearing land of forest;" for indeed their
history is nothing but romance—a mere collection
of legends, of no more value than the North
American Indian's or the Fiji Islander's.

In the practical arts metal-working is their
chief excellence, and they give the first place
to the blacksmith, or rather to the cutler, in
their hierarchy of labour. He is the
"cunning," or the "skilful," and the respect in
which he is held takes us back to the days of
Wayland Smith; or, further still, to the times
when the best metal forger was a god, and
was given for wife the exquisite Goddess of
Beauty. The Javanese cutler's finest production
is the kris, or dagger, which has four different
names and a hundred different forms. Every
man and every boy of fourteen wears at least
one kris as part of his ordinary dress; and men
of rank wear two and sometimes four. The
ladies, too, of high rank wear one; and some
of the older weapons, are assumed to be
charmed, and, when sold, as they sometimes
are by chance, fetch immense prices. In brass
work they succeed best in gongs and musical
instruments; their carpentry, or what we
should call cabinet-work, is very beautiful, but
they do not come up to the Sumatran standard
in gold work.

The Javanese and the Sumatrans are of the
same race, the Malayan, so that they ought
to be alike; but there are wonderful natural
dissimilarities between the two islands, though
divided by a narrow channel only. Thus, the
elephant and the tapir of Sumatra have no
existence in Java; the orang-outang is
Sumatran and not Javanese; the Sunda ox is
Javanese and not Sumatran; the Argus pheasant
of Sumatra does not exist in Java, nor the
pea-fowl, the rhinoceros, or the sloth of Java
in Sumatra; the teak-tree, which is abundant
in Java, is not found in Sumatra; and the
dragon's-blood,* ratan, is peculiar to Sumatra.
It is strange to see these differences within so
short a distance and under the same physical
conditions; but there are analogous instances
nearer home, and human faculties and natural
productions are both capricious and partial all
the world over. Another instance of this
partiality in human characteristics is the rarity in
Java of the amuk, or running a-muck, as we
call it, so general throughout all the Indian
Archipelago, and specially characteristic of the
Malay race. It seems to be a kind of
madness, always connected, more or less intimately,
with the liver and the digestive organs, but
though common everywhere else throughout
the Archipelago, it is exceedingly rare in Java;
which fact alone shows some great diversity of
nature and some national differences hard to
be accounted for.

* "This colouring substance (dragon's blood) is
a granular matter adhering to the ripe fruit of a
species of ratan, Calamus draco, and obtained by
beating or threshing the fruit in little baskets.
Within the archipelago the principal place of
production is Jambi, on the north-eastern side of
Sumatra. The plant is the wild produce of the forest,
and not cultivated, although some care is taken to
preserve it from destruction. The collectors of
dragon's blood are the wild people called Kubu, who
dispose of it to the Malays at a price not much
exceeding a shilling a pound. The whole quantity
produced in Jambi is said to be about one thousand
hundredweights. This article is often adulterated by
a mixture of damar (resin). The best kind imported
into Europe in seeds is manipulated by the Chinese.
The canes of the male plant used in former times to
be exported to Batavia, and very probably formed
the 'true Jambees' commemorated in the Spectator
as the most fashionable walking-sticks in the reign
of Queen Anne."—Crawfurd's Dictionary of the
Indian Islands.

Most of the people of the Archipelago are
Mohammedans, having been converted twice
over, once to Hindùism, and again to
Mohammedanism. But a few tribes still cling to the
older faith, and among these are the people of
Bali, the next island east of Java, and divided
from it by a strait not exceeding a mile and a half
in breadth. And, being Hindùs, these people
of Bali make away with their dead in a different
manner from the rest of the Archipelagians.
The Mohammedan Malays bury theirs, coffinless,
unshrouded, within twenty-four hours
after death; "and the word which expresses
this simple ceremony," says Crawfurd,
"literally signifies to place in the earth, and is the
same which means to plant or put seed in the
ground." The grave is without stone or tomb,
save in the cases of kings and saints; the
tombs of which last are holy; and the cemeteries
are usually on the uplands or small hills near
the villages.

The Kayan Dyaks of Borneo, being neither