e of
in the country is probably their own invention. "How do you secure a
prisoner (a man was asked) without employing a chain or our stocks?" "We
pen him up," said he, "as we would a bear!" The cage is made of bamboos
laid horizontally in a square, piled alternately, secured by timbers at
the corners, and strongly covered in at top. To lead a runaway they
fasten a rattan round his neck, and, passing it through a bamboo somewhat
longer than his arms, they bring his hands together and make them fast to
the bamboo, in a state rather of constraint than of pain, which I believe
never is wantonly or unnecessarily inflicted. If the offender is of a
desperate character they bind him hands and feet and sling him on a pole.
When they would convey a person from accident or otherwise unable to walk
they make a palanquin by splitting a large bamboo near the middle of its
length, where they contrive to keep it open so that the cavity forms a
bed, the ends being preserved whole, to rest upon their shoulders.

The custom of exacting the bangun for murder seems only designed with a
view of making a compensation to the injured family, and not of punishing
the offender. The word signifies awaking or raising up, and the deceased
is supposed to be replaced, or raised again to his family, in the payment
of a sum proportioned to his rank, or equivalent to his or her personal
value. The price of a female slave is generally more than that of a male,
and therefore, I heard a chief say, is the bangun of a woman more than
that of a man. It is upon this principle that their laws take no
cognizance of the distinction between a wilful murder and what we term
manslaughter. The loss is the same to the family, and therefore the
compensations are alike. A dupati of Laye, in an ill hour, stepped
unwarily across the mouth of a cannon at the instant it was fired off for
a salute, and was killed by the explosion, upon which his relations
immediately sued the sergeant of the country-guard, who applied the
match, for the recovery of the bangun; but they were cast, and upon these
grounds: that the dupati was instrumental in his own death, and that the
Company's servants, being amenable to other laws for their crimes, were
not, by established custom, subject to the bangun or other penalties
inflicted by the native chiefs, for accidents resulting from the
execution of their duty. The tippong bumi, expiation, or purification of
the earth from the stain it has rece