One evening when old Fatumak appeared to be in a philosophical mood and Friedlander was at hand as a kind interpreter, a favourable opportunity seemed present to ask the reader of the future to turn back the pages of his memory and tell what he knew of the dim and misty past,—when and how and by whom this fair little tropical world was created. After the question was put to him, he sat silent for a while, with his eyes cast down fixedly on a fresh bolus of betel nut, for the various condiments whereof he was rummaging in his betel basket on the floor beside him. When the mixture was duly spread out upon the green leaf of wild pepper, to add the last supreme touch, he took up his bamboo box of powdered lime, holding it between his thumb and middle finger and, tapping it meditatively with his forefinger, shook out a sprinkling of lime through the small hole in the bottom; then he lovingly folded the leaf over its contents, and throwing his head back and rolling up his eyes, crammed the bolus far back in his cheek, then in a somewhat muffled voice at length replied, “There are many strange stories about those times, but I think they are all untrue, yet what I am now about to tell you I know is just what really happened.” He leaned back against the door post and ruminated quietly, while Friedlander explained to me what had just been said, and then Fatumak resumed, with the following story, which I give without the frequent interruptions: “Long, long ago when there was nothing but sea and sky, and no land, there was a large piece of driftwood like the trunk of a coconut palm floating on the waves; on the under side of it was a great barnacle, and out of this came the first woman, and she lived in the water and never went up on top of the huge log. Very soon she had a daughter, whom she warned that on no account was she to go up on top of the log. The daughter’s curiosity was, however, too much for her and when it was low tide and the bottom of the sea came up to meet the log, she crept up on top, and a gal tree [hibiscus] grew down from the sky and stuck fast to the log and held it in one place. When she got up into the air and daylight, she found that the driftwood was inhabited by all sorts of devils (kan) that hover about on the surface of the sea, and they were all clothed, but she was not. As soon as the clothed devils of the sea caught sight of her and saw that she was not like themselves and was naked, they killed her and preserved her body in salt.

“Very soon the mother missed her daughter and came up to look for her and found only her dead body preserved in salt. Then Yalafath, the ruler of Falraman (Heaven), was sorry for her and commanded the kan who had killed her to work a charm that would bring her to life again. When this was accomplished, Yalafath gave to the mother and daughter packages of sand and yams and told them to go over the sea and scatter the sand and plant the yams, but to return to the driftwood and the gal tree in seven days without fail. So they set out and did as they were told, but enjoyed it so much that they completely forgot when the seven days were up. Yalafath was very, very angry and sent a rat after them, telling him to eat up all the yam plants. When the mother and daughter saw their plants destroyed, they came to their senses and remembered the promise, so they hurried back to ask pardon of Yalafath. He forgave them and sent them a cat to kill the rat. Then he commanded the daughter to marry the kan who had first killed her and brought her to life again, and he gave them a large canoe with a sail, and they travelled everywhere and found that where the sand had been scattered in piles there were the high lands and mountains, where white people lived and they had everything they wanted. Where the sand had been scattered broadcast were the low coral islands. The dark people are the children of that kan and the daughter of the barnacle woman, but white people are children of kans for they go everywhere in the big ships that Yalafath has given them, and they take everything, even coconuts and sand, from the dark people.”

This narrative does not seem to me to bear the stamp of antiquity. In the first place, cats are of comparatively recent introduction on the island, probably from some of the whaling vessels which frequently traded there fifteen or twenty years ago. In the second place, the reference to the white man taking away the coconuts and even the sand from the dark people is an allusion to a copra-trader who,—so Friedlander told me,—a few years ago cast anchor in the Tomil harbour, and, after discharging his cargo, found that there was not enough dried copra to give him proper ballast, so he had to fill one of his holds with sand-ballast; this the natives could not understand and thought that even the very soil of their island was valuable to the strange white people. I have, nevertheless, given the story as it was told, although it may be merely the offspring of Fatumak’s imagination and tinged with his belief in the ruling of man’s actions by a superior being and a company of subordinate demons.

There are no set forms of religious observance in Uap, but they believe that there is in the sky overhead an abode of departed spirits; it is supposed to be a large house, known as Falraman, and over it presides Yalafath, the creator of the world, who is a kind but rather unsympathetic god; nevertheless, if, in distress, prayers are offered to him, he intervenes and overrules the horde of evil demons. Falraman is precisely like any large house in Uap, and the spirits of men and women who go there assume the same bodily shape that they had in this life, but it is only the “thinking-part,” or tafenai, that really goes. The tafenai of children also go to Falraman, but whether or not they grow old is not known to mortals. The tafenai of stillborn children, however, never get into Falraman; all they know is how to cry; therefore they stay in the ground where they have been buried and cry incessantly for their mothers. After a tafenai has been long enough in Falraman to have the mortal “heaviness” and earthly odour wear off, it goes back to its former dwelling place in Uap and it is then known as an athegith, but is invisible to mortal eyes. If a tafenai find that it had not been befittingly honoured at burial, it brings sickness to the household and will not desist until its dead body has been laid away with due lamentations and funeral songs, and the mach-mach man has pronounced a charm exhorting it to desist. It is the tafenai trying to escape out of the body that makes a person ill, and all the charms said over sick people are exhortations to the tafenai to remain; when a man is delirious, his tafenai has left his body and it may or may not be enticed to return.

One day, an unfortunate, feeble-minded epileptic, of decidedly negroid type, with thick lips and wild-staring, restless eyes, came with others of the people to Friedlander’s house to hear a phonograph recital; the excitement evidently brought on an attack, and he suddenly gave the symptomatic wild shriek of epileptics and fell to the ground with violent contortions. The bystanders made not the least attempt to help him, but stood about shouting with laughter at his writhings. The fit soon passed off, and he was again on his feet, walking about with a dazed air, and a following of heartless, jeering little boys. I asked Fatumak if he knew what was the matter with the poor fellow, and, in a tone implying that it was a childish question, he answered, “Oh, yes, he is just a foolish sort of a fellow who has a wandering tafenai which floats around with the wind, and when it strikes him he falls to the ground and struggles with it.”

When a man sleeps, his tafenai escapes and wanders about playing all manner of queer pranks; in the morning when he awakes, it is the tafenai creeping back into his body through the nostrils that rouses him, wherefore a man so often wakes up sneezing or coughing. “A wise man has his tafenai in his head; a fool has it in his belly,” said Fatumak.

Yalafath, who is the supreme deity and has the general supervision of mankind, has attributes benignant indeed, but of a lukewarm character, negative rather than positive; herein, however, in this benignity, feeble though it be, he is unparalleled in the theology of the Borneans or of the Naga Hill tribes of Upper India, where all deities are malevolent. Of the numerous lesser deities, there is Luk, the god of the tsuru, or dance; Nagadamang is bold and aids the athegiths in their vengeance; Marapou, who sends the wind and rain and causes storms at sea; Begbalel, who looks after the taro fields and makes or mars the crops; Kanepai is always present at dances to make men so giddy that they must have water poured on their heads before they recover and can go on with the dance, but Bak is the real god of the Tsuru; Nagadamang is the god of war, and when he is heard growling, war is sure to follow; if he knocks at a house-post, sickness results. Muibab is also a god of war; the frigate-bird, sacred to him, bears his name. Boradaileng punishes the tafenai of bad men by thrusting them into a pit of fire. To be bad enough to deserve this punishment, a man must have been guilty of cutting down trees or coconut palms on another man’s land. Of course, the sea, sky, and earth teem with invisible demons who are accountable for every natural phenomenon or misfortune.

Fire came to the people of Uap through the god Derra (lightning), who came down and struck a large hibiscus tree at Ugutam, a slave village at the northern end of the island. A woman, whose name is unrecorded, begged the god for the fire; he gave her some and showed her how to bake an earthen pot. When the fire died out, he taught her how to obtain more by means of the fire-drill, and told her that fire in a new house must always be started in this manner, and for it only the wood of the hibiscus tree should be used, moreover this wood must be cut with shell knives or shell axes, neither iron nor steel must touch it.

Lusarer taught them, in days gone by, how to make the sacred mats or umbul, of which I have already spoken; they are never used, nor even unwrapped, but pass from father to son as sacred heirlooms hanging from the rafters to attest the wealth and respectability of the family.

I could not discover that sacrifices or offerings were ever made to the gods, but in the enclosures about the houses I frequently noticed a palm-leaf basket hanging to one of the trees or bushes in front of the house; in these baskets there were invariably pieces of coconut that appeared to have been scorched or partly roasted, also some broken egg-shells and some dried leaves, probably of the wild pepper. Repeated questioning failed to bring out an explanation of these baskets, further than that they were hung out merely in sport; often the house-owners professed absolute ignorance of their existence, and said it was no doubt some childish game. They were, however, so universal that I am convinced they bore a meaning that the people did not wish to disclose.

While uttering incantations to cure sickness or to drive away the athegiths, the wizard waves a wand of palm-leaves, with which from time to time he touches the sick person. When wind and waves are to be lulled at sea, he uses as a talisman the sharp, barbed spine from the tail of the stingray; standing in the bow of the canoe he flourishes this dagger-like talisman above his head as he shouts out the mystic words, stabbing at the invisible god who has brought on the bad weather, “shooing” him off, as if he were a chicken or a trespassing dog. This incantation is known as momok nu flaifang.

Another occasion on which the services of the mach-mach are invoked, is the naming of a child, which takes place ten days after its birth, when for the first time it is brought to its father’s house from the tapal, or small secluded house in the “bush,” whereto prospective mothers retire on the first symptoms of labour. On the ninth day after birth, a carrying basket is made for it, and the mother carries it to a small house adjoining the family house; here the mother and child must remain over night. On the following day the mach-mach receives it in its father’s house, and, touching it on the head with leaves from the heart of a coconut palm, he exhorts Yalafath to protect the child and see that it is never hungry and never sick, and, by waving the leaves of the life-giving coconut over it, chases away evil demons of misfortune. The chosen name, usually that of some near relative, either living or dead, is then given to the child, which up to this time has been called sugau, if a boy, or ligau, if a girl. The ceremony of naming a child is known as momok nu sumpau.

For all these services the mach-mach, who is apparently in no way regarded as a priest, but merely as a wise man and an exorcist, is paid either in shell money, or coconuts, and baskets of yams or taro.

It is in this fashion that good old Fatumak makes his comfortable living and is enabled to trade so lavishly with Friedlander for products from the white man’s country where the barnacle woman and her daughter deposited the sand in heaps.