The men of a certain district
in Borneo, fearing to look upon a European traveller lest he should
make them ill, warned their wives and children not to go near him.
Those who could not restrain their curiosity killed fowls to appease
the evil spirits and smeared themselves with the blood. "More
dreaded," says a traveller in Central Borneo, "than the evil spirits
of the neighbourhood are the evil spirits from a distance which
accompany travellers. When a company from the middle Mahakam River
visited me among the Blu-u Kayans in the year 1897, no woman showed
herself outside her house without a burning bundle of _plehiding_
bark, the stinking smoke of which drives away evil spirits."
When Crevaux was travelling in South America he entered a village of
the Apalai Indians. A few moments after his arrival some of the
Indians brought him a number of large black ants, of a species whose
bite is painful, fastened on palm leaves. Then all the people of the
village, without distinction of age or sex, presented themselves to
him, and he had to sting them all with the ants on their faces,
thighs, and other parts of their bodies.
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