that they are descended from a cloven rock on the Gunung Salak, known as Beulah Batu, others are descended from Rangga Gading famous in native song for his exploits in thieving; none was ever readier than he to walk off with a lot of buffaloes or cheat at a fight of game-cocks. At Jasinga we have the descendants of Pangawinan or the Spear-bearers, the original inhabitants of the land, who were expelled by the ancestors of the present mass of the population, who immigrated from the river Chimandiri, that falls into Palabuan Ratu on the south coast. Others come of the Heulang Rawing, the jagged falcon or of the Panggang Kalong, the roasted bat.

Though, with the exception of the small tribe of Badui in South Bantam, all the inhabitants of Sunda have been long converted to Mahometanism, they are still pagans in their hearts, at least the mountaineers. Whenever the native gets into any extraordinary difficulty, it is not to "no God but God and Mahomet the apostle of God" that he addresses himself, but provided with a bit of gum benjamin, on the night preceding the 15th day of the moon, he repairs to some mountain Patapaan and there, after offering incense and praying for assistance, spends the night. He fancies that he is tempted by all sorts of horrible beasts and ghosts, all of which disregarding and withstanding, his sincerity of mind having been thus put to the test, at last the aged and hoary spirit of the place appears, asks the suppliant what may be his wish, pronounces an answer and instantly vanishes; the devotee must instantly descend from the mountain and act upon the oracle he has received. The fancy of a native always outstrips his cooler reason, and hence his narration must always be received with scepticism, though it may be clear that he can have no intention of exactly telling a lie; how easily they are deceived or rather deceive themselves may be learnt from the following anecdote which is likely enough to be true-A petty chief of Dramaga near Buitenzorg, of the rank of Ngabihi, having gone to the top of the Gunung Salak to consult the Gods, found that he was about to be intruded upon by some other devotee, and by way of securing a monopoly of the divinities, fell upon the following device to get rid of his brother suppliant. Retiring behind some trees, he watched the devotee burning his incense and whilst in the midst of his prayer, availing of a propitious dimness of the moon, walked up to him and in a measured voice said "my grand child, what troubles have brought thee here!" The poor fellow explained that he was sadly in debt, that he had no means of extricating himself and had therefore approached the awful presence of the God for advice.” "Return

"The tradition most generally received in the Windward Islands, ascribed the origin of the world and all that adorn or inhabit it, to the procreative power of Taaroa, who is said to have embraced a rock, the imagined foundation of all things, which afterwards brought forth the earth and sea."---Ellis' Polynesian Researches Vol. I p. 324.

1

immediately"—said the Ngabihi-" to the low lands, cultivate there with care a large garden, for it is mother earth that is destined to help thee, and thy debts will be paid; leave this and dare not to cast a glance behind." Grateful for the speedy answer, the devotee muttered a few words of thanks and sneaked away from the spot, leaving the Ngabihi, the oracle to himself. The poor man, however, followed out the injunction he had received, set about his garden in earnest and soon cleared his debts. Thus out of deceit and evil, good occasionally flows, though under a perverted impression.

The mountain top appears, in all ages and in all countries to have commanded the reverence of mankind; here the first ray of the morning sun is arrested, and here the lingering gleam of departing day is enshrined; it is here that, elevated in majestic silence above the turmoils of a struggling world, an uninstructed mind would first be struck with the immensity of nature, and question itself for a cause.

But it is time to come to the more immediate object of this paper, to which the foregoing has been inserted as a necessary explanatory preface. In the course of the month of January last, whilst in familiar chat with some of the remotest inhabitants of Jasinga of the villages of Chisusu and Gunnng Kembang, I was astonished to hear that at a place called Gunung Dangka, on the confines of our south-western boundary, and on the banks of the Chibérang, was a sacred place, considered by the people of the adjoining Bantam district of Sajira, as the paradise they were destined to occupy after death. That I should have lived ten long years at Jasinga without ever hearing a syllable about so strange an idea of a people with whom I was well acquainted, and who live so hard by, appeared as improbable as the story itself was egregious. The village of Buluhen is the last on the Chibérang towards its source, and I knew that the people almost venerated certain parts of the stream, but that the rust of former superstition was wearing away in consequence of more frequent communication with other people, and their becoming thus shamed out of their infidel persuasions. Above Buluhen is a part of the river named Panglahsaän where yearly offerings of laksa or rice vermicelli are made, and where till within a few years past no horse had been allowed to enter; great woes to the country having been predicted in case this spell should be broken. The Demang Jaga Sura, then chief of the district at Sajira, little addicted to these follies, forced his way through the line of entreating inhabitants, and rode his horse up to the spot. Above the Panglaksaän no fish might be taken, many words in daily use might not be pronounced, and at one part, neither boat nor raft was allowed to pass along the river, but with great trouble being hauled high bank was then dragged past the consecrated pool, to be again launched further down.

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up on

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Having once got scent of the earthly paradise of Gunung Dangka I was not easily to be diverted from examining as much as possible into the mystery of the affair. I learnt that the Sajira people, though firm in their belief, were still ashamed to have it generally known, and that, if questioned, would plead utter ignorance. They endeavour to conceal the matter as much as possible, and a great many of the Jasinga people were actually unaware of such an idea being entertained by their neighbours. The Demang Jaga Sura, who now lives at Jasinga, but was formerly chief of the district of Sajira during 12 years, and who on one occasion had been encamped for a fortnight at Muhara Chiladaheun, on the look out for Banditti, and thus with only the river Chibérang between him and the mount, was in darkness on the subject, with such care had it been kept from him. I myself had been at the place in 1830 accompanied by a number of natives, but heard not a word of the sacred precints into which we had then intruded.

year,

I now learnt that though the Dangka was holy and forbidden
ground for the Sajira people, our Jasinga mountaineers were in the
habit of going there to collect fruit, at certain seasons of the
with impunity. On a certain occasion, however, one person had
offered some indignities to an upright stone on the Balai, and on
his return home had been seized with a violent illness, which had
kept him for three months to his bed. The native faculty, baffled
by the disease, accounted for its obstinacy by attributing it to the
indignant spirits of the Dangka. I examined this man in the hope
of getting some additional information; he at first pretended that
he had never heard of the place, but when he saw that I was ac-
quainted with his case, with evident trepidation referred me to
others, who, he said, knew more of the place than himself; he was
clearly beginning to fear lest his communications should provoke
the unknown gods to send him another fit of disease. Though
the Sajira people profess to be Mahometans and externally comply
with all the observances of that faith, they believe that the Gunung
Dangka authorities take precedence of God and his apostle, and
that immediately after death, their souls first visit Dangka, and
there find an abundance of everything that can make existence
desirable; that if the angel of death, Gabriel is ever allowed to
have anything to do with them, it will be after their having revelled
in the delights of the earthly paradise. At the moment a person is
about to expire or whilst carrying him to his grave, the following
form of words is employed, which is considered as reminding the
deceased of the way his soul must follow to reach the Dangka:
Nyukcheruk chai, megat bojong

Ka na kaung nu ngalumpuk, ka na pinang nu ngajujar
Kadinio na ngajugjug, "Laillah" palendeng.

Step up the bed of the river, and cross the neck of land,

Where the aren trees stand in a clump, and the pinangs in a row,
Thither direct thy steps, "God the only God" being set aside.

Seeing that no certain information could be gained from the wild and half-frightened fancy of others, I resolved to visit the place myself, and accompanied by my own mountaineers to go direct to the Dangka, without the fore-knowledge of the Sajira people, lest they should throw difficulties in the way. On the 31st March 1839 we left the village of Gunung Kembang, in all a party of 22 persons, and after struggling up and down the ravine of the Chikeasal, took breath at a humah or paddy plantation on the way. While resting ourselves here, we were able to examine and wonder at the extraordinary feats of climbing performed by those whose livelihood depends on chopping the forest, in order to dibble the ground for a transitory crop of paddy. To avoid having the land too much emcumbered with logs, a great many of the trees are left standing, but in order to admit the sun, it is necessary to deprive them of their leaves and smaller branches. Many of the larger trees, being more than a man's embrace, cannot be notched and ascended in the usual manner; a neighbouring and smaller stem is therefore selected, whose branches join above, and from the top of the smaller tree, the boughs of the larger one are thus reached; but it often happens that the branches do not touch, and it is then necessary to draw them together with a hooked stick and lash them fast; at other times a bit of rattan of 12 or 15 feet is the only means of connecting two tops, and along this slight bridge, at a height of 50 or 60 feet from the ground, the mountaineer fearlessly forces his way. Then again only the very extremity of the branches are cut off, and it makes one shudder merely to look at the spots to which the man must have risked his life. Along branches not thicker than the wrist, do they pursue the operation, and at such a distance from the main-stem as to convey an idea of fool-hardiness; accidents, however, are rare; the truth is, that with all their daring and security of footing, they know what trees are brittle in branch and will not venture into all alike.

As we continued our walk through the sombre forest, our ears were greeted with the frequent cry of the bird Haruhuh so cha racteristic of the scenery; its Kong-Kong-Kong-Kong was, as often as repeated, returned by the Pra-Pra-Pra-Praha of the Pohpor; these are too blackish birds, the former being a little bigger than the other, but whether male and female, as the responding cry of the latter suggests, I do not know. Further on, the fierce grunt of the black monkey, Lutung, announced that we were about to disturb him at his morning repast on some forest fruit, that grew by our path. The bright sun was peering merrily through the tangled forest, the fresh cool breeze from the mountains was mur muring among the lofty branches, whilst the loud screech of the Jumené insect resounded from every thicket. After walking pretty smartly till about noon, we found ourselves on the banks of the Chibérang, after having come down a very precipitous bank of nearly 1,000 feet; the Gunung Dangka was on the opposite side

of the river, and we were about half a mile above where the Chiladaheun falls into the Chibérang. Our morning's exertions had prepared every man's appetite for the breakfast we brought along with us. So spreading a lot of clean dry leaves on the bank of the river, under a wide spreading Leungsir (Irena Glabra) to shade us from the midday sun, we opened out our store of provisions. As soon as this important service had been gone through, Bapa Aysah of Gunung Kembang, who was acting as our guide, produced a lump of the gum that exudes from the Ténjo and whilst it was burning in honor of Raden Bujangga Manik,* the mighty Lord of the Guriangs or mountain spirits, a prayer was offered up and his favouring offices invoked in behalf of our undertaking. The Ténjo is a tall forest tree, which on being hacked gives out a gum which is aromatic when fresh, somewhat resembling benzoin, only inferior. Some varieties of the Ténjo produce the copal of commerce. Benzoin though more fragrant is in no repute with the mountain divinities, as it is here a foreign product, and the Ténjo, which is indigenons, alone titillates their highly national sensoria.

Here we separated from the greater part of our people, as they were directed to follow the course of the river to the Muhara Chiladaheun and prepare a night's encampment, ready against our arrival there in the evening. Now crossing the Chibérang, which here took us up to the middle, we had to scramble up the opposite bank, with some difficulty from its ascent. We, however, soon got to more level land, and found ourselves surrounded by immense durian trees, with fine clear balls from 60 to 80 feet high before the division of the branches, and after a short walk among a variety of fruit trees we arrived at an eminence on which we found the Balai, being nothing more than a lot of common river stones, disposed over an area of about four feet square. The most remarkable stone (called the Batu Sirit) is about a foot high, with a groove, of four inches broad, running round its middle; this groove, however, is not artificial, for many other similar trachyte rocks often wear and weather in a like manner. This stone is depressed a little towards the south-east, it is said in the direction of another Balai on Gunung Julang, a neighbouring height. Bapa Aysah assured me that he had sometimes tried to shake the stone and found it firmly fixed in the ground; I, however, now turned it over without any difficulty, Another stone, a slab 2 feet 3 inches long by 1 foot in its broadest part, stands close by, also slightly set in the earth, As I observed before, the Balai crowns the top of a small hill, which slopes rapidly away on all sides, particularly on the north, which is an abrupt escarpment terminating in that.part of the Chibérang called Panggesengan, Around are observed a

* Bhujangga manik, the jewel serpent, from Bhuja crooked, Anga body, that is a snake or serpent. Manik a jewel, a gem.---Clough's Dictionary Vol. II

P. 495,