The Malays are bad agriculturists and artisans but excellent sportsmen. From the small birds which they entangle in their snares to the large animals of the forest, which they shoot or entrap in pit-falls, or destroy by spring-guns, nothing worth catching escapes their attention. Such is their delight in fishing, that even women and children may be seen in numbers during the rains angling in the swampy rice grounds. Spearing excursions against the swordfish are undertaken during the dark of the moon by the light of torches. A good eye, a steady hand are necessary, and a perfect knowledge of the places where the fish are to be found. Each canoe carries a steersman, a man with a long pole to propel the vessel, and a spearsman, who, armed with a long slender javelin having a head composed of the sharpened spikes of the Nibong palm, and holding in his left hand a large blazing torch, takes his station at the stern of the canoe. They thus glide slowly and noiselessly over the still surface of the clear water, till the rays of the flambeau either attract the prey to the surface or discover it lying seemingly asleep at a little depth below. The sudden splash of the swiftly descending spear is heard, and the fish is the next moment seen glittering in the air, either transfixed by the spikes or caught in the interstices as the weapon is withdrawn. As a natural consequence of their extreme ignorance, the Malays, even the best educated, are inordinately superstitious, and people the invisible world with a host of malignant spirits. The Pamburk roams the forest, like the wild huntsman of the Haruz, with demon dogs, and the storm fiend Hantu Ribut howls in the blast and revels in the whirlwind. Tigers are considered in many instances to be the receptacles of the souls of departed human beings, and they believe that some men have the faculty of transforming themselves at pleasure into tigers, and that others enjoy the privilege of invulnerability. They rely firmly on the efficacy of charms, spells, amulets, talismans, lucky and unlucky moments, magic, and judicial astrology. To pull down or repair a seriously damaged house is considered unlucky, so that whenever a Malay has occasion to build a new house he leaves the old one standing. While the coasts of Borneo and Sumatra are occupied by the more civilised Mahometan Malays, the interior of these vast islands is inhabited by nations, probably of the same race, who, secluded from the rest of the world, exhibit in their customs a strange and almost incredible mixture of good and evil, of humane tendencies and diabolical barbarism.