After this explanation the man went home, picked up the plant and put it away carefully until another dream should reveal when he was to look out for the seven stars. In due time, under Patara’s guidance, the man noticed the “necklace of Pleiades” appearing in the sky. The little plant was then put in the ground, where it grew and multiplied. The people in neighbouring villages also procured roots to plant in their farms, so that the paddy now flourishes all over the country and the people of Sarawak have always enough to eat. Sarawak people have very beautiful ideas about paddy, and their mythical tales about the food-giving plant remind one of the many legends all over the world relating to Demeter and other earth-mother goddesses. Amongst some tribes, indeed, I fancy, nearly all over Sarawak, the people plant the roots of a lily called Indu Padi (or wife of the Paddy, by Sea Dyaks) in their paddy fields. They treat this flower as though it were the most powerful goddess, and every paddy field belonging to the Dyaks of the Rejang, of the Batang Lupar, of the Sadong, and also of the Land Dyaks near Kuching, possesses a root of this flower.[14] They build little protecting huts over it, and treat its delicate and short life with the utmost care and reverence. I have often tried to get a glimpse of this flower, but have never succeeded. However, a good many of the Rajah’s officers, who have lived some time in native houses, and who have witnessed the people’s harvest festivals, have given me a description of it. I have always thought it such a beautiful superstition of theirs that of caring for and nurturing the delicate petals of a flower as though its fragile existence were a protection to the well-being of their race. They greatly fear anything happening to the plant, for should it die or shrivel up before the paddy is husked and garnered, it is thought to bode disaster to their tribe. [Illustration: PANAU--A SEA DYAK CHIEF]