The Malay man's _aberglaube_--his superstition--is undoubtedly of ancient origin. For five hundred years or more he has said his prayers five times a day in response to the muezzin's cry of _Allah ho akbar_, and his religion has penetrated the very life of his race and spread to the most distant confines of the archipelago, but it has never been able to remove entirely the heritage of that past when he was governed by Sanskrit gods or by deities of his own. Whatever he may have believed then and since changed, these fragments and relics of goblindom and superstition go back to that time, and so link on to all the weird love that prevailed in the ancient world. Another evidence of the primitiveness of Malay folklore may be seen in the fact that the inhabitants of the jungles and _padangs_ and the aboriginal dwellers of mountains and dense forests cherish much more heathen notions and greater elaborations of everyday superstitions than the more enlightened and modernized Malays of towns and _campongs_. In the East, as in the West, the man who lives close to Nature "holds communion with her visible forms," and likewise finds out, or thinks he does, a good deal about her invisible shapes. The Malay has on his list of uncanny things the names of several spirits. Disease is everywhere a great dread of men, and often looked upon as an infliction of the supernatural powers. There are several spirits of sickness recognized among the Malays, but they reserve their greatest horror for the influences of the _Hantu Katumbohan_, or spirit of smallpox. But other spirits abound; there are some that inhabit the sources of streams, and many that dwell in forests. Mines, too, have their patron goblins, which are propitiated by the miners. The sea-going Malay, also, whose vision has been clarified by bitter salt spray, knows and frequently sees the spirits that inhabit certain parts of the ocean. The _Hantu Pemburo_, or phantom hunter, is a spirit the Malays take special account of; in general, he seems to resemble the _wilde Jäger_ of German folklore. Long ago, so the story has it, there lived a certain man and his wife in Katapang, in Sumatra. One day the wife fell sick, and, thinking the flesh of a mouse-deer might strengthen her, she asked her husband to kill one for her. He went forth on the hunt, but was unsuccessful and soon returned. His wife now became very angry, and told him to try again--in fact, not to return till he could come home with the coveted game. The man swore a mighty oath, called his dogs, took his weapons, and set out into the forest. He wandered and wandered, and always in vain. The days ran into months, the months became years, and still no mouse-deer. At last, despairing of finding the animal on earth, he ordered his dogs to bay the stars, and they sprang away through the sky, and he followed. As he walked with upturned gaze, a leaf fell into his mouth and took root there.