represent sick persons, in order to lure the demons after them, is not uncommon.(467) For example, most of the pagan tribes on the coast of Borneo seek to drive away epidemic disease as follows. They carve one or more rough human images from the pith of the sago palm and place them on a small raft or boat or full-rigged Malay ship together with rice and other food. The boat is decked with blossoms of the areca palm and with ribbons made from its leaves, and thus adorned the little craft is allowed to float out to sea with the ebb-tide, bearing, as the people fondly think or hope, the sickness away with it.(468) (M142) In Selangor, one of the native states in the Malay Peninsula, the ship employed in the export of disease is, or used to be, a model of a special kind of Malay craft called a _lanchang_. This was a two-masted vessel with galleries fore and aft, armed with cannon, and used by Malay rajahs on the coast of Sumatra. So gallant a ship would be highly acceptable to the spirits, and to make it still more beautiful in their eyes it was not uncommonly stained yellow with turmeric or saffron, for among the Malays yellow is the royal colour. Some years ago a very fine model of a _lanchang_, with its cargo of sickness, was towed down the river to sea by the Government steam launch. A common spell uttered at the launching of one of these ships runs as follows:— “_Ho, elders of the upper reaches,_ _Elders of the lower reaches,_ _Elders of the dry land_, _Elders of the river-flats,_ _Assemble ye, O people, lords of hill and hill-foot,_ _Lords of cavern and hill-locked basin,_ _Lords of the deep primeval forest,_ _Lords of the river-bends,_ _Come on board this_ lanchang, _assembling in your multitudes._ _So may ye depart with the ebbing stream,_ _Depart on the passing breeze,_ _Depart in the yawning earth,_ _Depart in the red-dyed earth._ _Go ye to the ocean which has no wave,_ _And the plain where no green herb grows,_ _And never return hither._ _But if ye return hither,_ _Ye shall be consumed by the curse._ _At sea ye shall get no drink,_ _Ashore ye shall get no food,_ _But gape in vain about the world_.”(469)