For four days and four nights an almost incessant beating of gongs and drums is kept up, and dances are performed by the young men only. The priestesses are decked out in their usual style, but upon this occasion their occupation is gone. Strong drinks, made from rice or the fruit of the tampui-tree, and also from the gomuti palm, flow freely; shrieks, yells, laughter, and shoutings, are heard in all directions, and the whole village seems given up to riot and dissipation. The interdict lasts eight days, two pigs are killed, and as many fowls as they can afford. An offering of food is made to the heads, and their spirits, being thus appeased, cease to entertain malice against, or to seek to inflict injury upon, those who have got possession of the skull which formerly adorned the now forsaken body. A curious custom prevails among the young men at this feast. They cut a cocoa-nut shell into the form of a cup, and adorn it with red and black dye. Into one side of it they fasten a rudely carved likeness of a bird’s head, and into the other the representation of its tail. The cup is filled with arrack, and the possessor performs a short wild dance with it in his hands, and then with a yell leaps before some chosen companion, and presents it to him to drink. Thus the “loving cup” is passed around among them, and it need not be said that the result is in many cases partial, though seldom excessive, intoxication. Before leaving the subject of feasts and incantations, I will mention some of their occasional ceremonies. They perform some on account of a bad dream, any threatening evil, or because of actual sickness; sometimes also by way of precaution, but this is only after harvest when they have nothing better to do. The theory of their ceremonies appears to be this: that the offering of food made to the spirits assuages their malice and secures their departure, these spirits being considered the proximate cause of nearly all the evils to which they are subjected. The minor ceremonies are called “nyirañgan,” because a bamboo altar[15] is erected by the roadside, and a fowl killed near it, part of which, with rice and betel-nut, is offered upon it: the taboo is only for a day. If any one meets with an accidental death in the jungle, a ceremony is gone through near the spot; at this a pig is occasionally killed, but in all such cases the taboo lasts only one day. If during farming time a tree fall across the path, a ceremony is held, and all whose farms are in that direction are tabooed. If during harvest the basket into which the ears of rice are cut be upset, a fowl is killed, and the family to whom the basket belongs is tabooed. Again, when the Government rice-tax is paid, there is a ceremony. On this occasion a shed is erected just at the entrance to the village, and in addition to the offerings of food, it is hung with a number of split cocoa-nut shells, which the spirits are supposed to appropriate as gongs.