Was very nearly being krissed, but being first
brought to the royal presence was graciously ordered to go on
board and remain there while his ship stayed in the port.
One morning however, after about a week's continuance of this
unaccountable melancholy, a welcome change tool place, for the
Rajah sent to call together all the chiefs, priests, and
princes who were then in Mataram, his capital city; and when they
were all assembled in anxious expectation, he thus addressed
them:
"For many days my heart has been very sick and I knew not why,
but now the trouble is cleared away, for I have had a dream. Last
night the spirit of the 'Gunong Agong' - the great fire mountain -
appeared to me, and told me that I must go up to the top of the
mountain. All of you may come with me to near the top, but then I
must go up alone, and the great spirit will again appear to me
and will tell me what is of great importance to me and to you and
to all the people of the island. Now go all of you and make this
known through the island, and let every village furnish men to
make clear a road for us to go through the forest and up the
great mountain."
So the news was spread over the whole island that the Rajah must
go to meet the great spirit on the top of the mountain; and
every village sent forth its men, and they cleared away the
jungle and made bridges over the mountain streams and smoothed
the rough places for the Rajah's passage. And when they came to
the steep and craggy rocks of the mountain, they sought out the
best paths, sometimes along the bed of a torrent, sometimes along
narrow ledges of the black rocks; in one place cutting down a
tall tree so as to bridge across a chasm, in another constructing
ladders to mount the smooth face of a precipice. The chiefs who
superintended the work fixed upon the length of each day's
journey beforehand according to the nature of the road, and chose
pleasant places by the banks of clear streams and in the
neighbourhood of shady trees, where they built sheds and huts of
bamboo well thatched with the leaves of palm-trees, in which the
Rajah and his attendants might eat and sleep at the close of each
day.
And when all was ready, the princes and priests and chief men
came again to the Rajah, to tell him what had been done and to
ask him when he would go up the mountain. And he fixed a day, and
ordered every man of rank and authority to accompany him, to do
honour to the great spirit who had bid him undertake the journey,
and to show how willingly they obeyed his commands.
