On reaching the summit of the volcano, the various families and individuals again present their offerings to the priests, who mumble over them a few additional words: they are then thrown into the crater, each person eagerly repeating some prayer or wish. And thus concludes the strange ceremony by which the spirits of the Bromok are supposed to be propitiated. The crowd descend from the volcano to join in various games and pastimes; towards evening they begin to disperse, and as the night spreads its cloud of darkness over the scene, the Sea of Sand resumes its ordinary aspect of loneliness and desolation. THE DYAKS OF BORNEO. It is not certain that the Dyaks possess any religion. Temminck asserts that they _have_, and that it bears a close resemblance to “fetichism.” The god Djath, he says, rules the sublunar world, and the god Sangjang presides over hell. These gods wear the human form, but are invisible; the Dyaks invoke them by sprinkling rice on the ground, and offering various sacrifices. In the houses of the Dyaks, adds Temminck, wooden idols are frequently met with. Other travellers are of opinion that they profess a kind of Pantheism, and represent them as believing, like the ancient Greeks, in a multitude of gods, gods above and gods below the world, as well as innumerable good and evil spirits, of whom Budjang-Brani is undoubtedly the most wicked. All diseases are caused by the agency of evil demons, and all misfortunes; and therefore the Dyaks make vigorous efforts to drive them away by shouts, and shrieks, and the discordant gong. So in some of the West Indian islands the natives, during an eclipse, would seek, by a horrible clamour, to frighten away the monster they supposed to be devouring the moon. Some authorities go so far as to represent the Dyaks as cherishing vague ideas of the Unity of the Godhead and the immortality of the soul. Madame Ida Pfeiffer was by no means a philosophical traveller, but she was an honest observer; and as the result of her explorations in Borneo, she positively affirms that among the tribes she visited are neither temples nor idols, priests nor sacrifices. On the occasions of their births, marriages and funerals they perform certain ceremonies, but these appear to be devoid of all religious character. Usually on such occasions they kill fowls as well as hogs. When concluding treaties of peace they always slaughter swine, but they do not eat them, and in this custom we may trace perhaps the propitiatory idea. A few tribes burn their dead, and preserve the ashes in hollow trees; others inter them in the least accessible localities, such as the summits of lofty mountains; others bind the corpse to the trunk of a tree in the position in which S. Peter was crucified, that is, with the feet upwards and the head downwards. IN BOURU.