The Trough Had At One End A Small Compartment, Open Like The Rest, But The Sides Had Been Smoothed With An Axe And When Beaten Served The Purpose Of A Gong.

The bark was pounded into small pieces and then thrown to one side upon large palm leaves which covered the bridge.

Boarding a prahu, I next visited Amban Klesau's bridge, a little lower down, which was larger and more pretentious, with tall poles erected on it, and from the top hung ornamental wood shavings. The end of the trough here had actually been carved into a semblance of the head of "an animal which lives in the ground," probably representing a supernatural being usually called nagah. The owner himself was beating it with a stick on both sides of the head, and this made more noise than the pounding of the fifty men and women who stood working at the trough. At times they walked in single file around it.

The pounding was finished in the forenoon, and all went a little farther down the river to take the fire omen at a place where the river widened out into a pool. A man with many tail-feathers from the rhinoceros hornbill (buceros rhinoceros) stuck into his rattan cap seated himself on a crude platform which had been built on upright poles over the water. Some long pieces of tuba-root were lying there, and he squatted on his heels facing the principal men who were sitting on the bank south of him.

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