Many of the indigenous tribes of Sarawak are firmly persuaded that were the wives to commit adultery while their husbands are searching for camphor in the jungle, the camphor obtained by the men would evaporate.​[421] {p125} Husbands can discover, by certain knots in the tree, when their wives are unfaithful; and it is said that in former days many women were killed by jealous husbands on no better evidence than that of these knots. Further, the wives dare not touch a comb while their husbands are away collecting the camphor; for if they did so, the interstices between the fibres of the tree, instead of being filled with the precious crystals, would be empty like the spaces between the teeth of a comb.​[422] While men of the Toaripi or Motumotu tribe of eastern New Guinea are away hunting, fishing, fighting, or on any long journey, the people who remain at home must observe strict chastity, and may not let the fire go out. Those of them who stay in the men’s club-houses must further abstain from eating certain foods and from touching anything that belongs to others. A breach of these rules might, it is believed, entail the failure of the expedition.​[423] Among the tribes of Geelvink Bay, in north-western New Guinea, when the men are gone on a long journey, as to Ceram or Tidore, the wives and sisters left at home sing to the moon, accompanying the lay with the booming music of gongs. The singing takes place in the afternoons, beginning two or three days before the new moon, and lasting for the same time after it. If the silver sickle of the moon is seen in the sky, they raise a loud cry of joy. Asked why they do so, they answer, “Now we see the moon, and so do our husbands, and now we know that they are well; if we did not sing, they would be sick or some other misfortune would befall them.”​[424] On nights when the moon is at the full the natives of Doreh, in north-western New Guinea, go out fishing on the lagoons. Their mode of proceeding is to poison the water with the pounded roots of a certain plant which has a powerful narcotic effect; the fish are stunned by it, and so easily caught. While the men are at work on the moonlit water, the people on the shore must {p126} keep as still as death with their eyes fixed on the fishermen; but no woman with child may be among them, for if she were there and looked at the water, the poison would at once lose its effect and the fish would escape.​[425] In the Kei Islands, to the south-west of New Guinea, as soon as a vessel that is about to sail for a distant port has been launched, the part of the beach on which it lay is covered as speedily as possible with palm branches, and becomes sacred. No one may thenceforth cross that spot till the ship comes home. To cross it sooner would cause the vessel to perish.​[426] Moreover, all the time that the voyage lasts three or four young girls, specially chosen for the duty, are supposed to remain in sympathetic