e dotted with the
wretched wooden huts of the native tribe called Tenggerese, the only
race in Java which has remained faithful to Buddhism. There are only
about five thousand of them and they keep to themselves in their own
community, shut out from the rest of the world. They are shorter and
darker than the natives of the plains and, like most savages, are lazy,
ignorant and incredibly filthy. Because the air is cool and dry, and
water rather scarce, they never bathe, preferring to remain dirty. As a
result the aroma of their villages is a thing not soon forgotten. The
doors of their huts, which have no windows, all face Mount Bromo, where
their guardian deity, Dewa Soelan Iloe, is supposed to dwell. Once each
year the Tenggerese hold a great feast at the foot of the volcano, and,
until the Dutch authorities suppressed the custom, were accustomed to
conclude these ceremonies by tossing a living child into the crater as
a sacrifice to their god. Though an ancient tradition forbids the
cultivation of rice by the Tenggerese, they earn a meager living by
raising vegetables, which they carry on horseback to the markets on the
plain, and by acting as guides and coolies. They are incredibly strong
and tireless, the two men who carried Hawkinson's heavy motion-picture
outfit to the summit of Bromo making the round trip of forty miles in a
single day over some of the steepest trails I have ever seen.

Growing on the mountainsides about Tosari are many bushes of thorn
apple, called _Datara alba_, their white, funnel-shaped flowers being
sometimes twelve inches long. From the seeds of the thorn apple the
Tenggerese make a sort of flour which is strongly narcotic in its
effect. Because of this quality, it is occasionally utilized by
burglars, who blow it into a room which they propose to rob, through
the key-hole, thereby drugging the occupants into insensibility and
making it easy for the burglars to gain access to the room and help
themselves to its contents. Which reminds me that in some parts of
Malaysia native desperadoes are accustomed to pound the fronds of
certain varieties of palm to the consistency of powdered glass. They
carry a small quantity of this powder with them and when they meet
anyone against whom they have a grudge they blow it into his face. The
sharp particles, being inhaled, quickly affect the lungs and death
usually results. A friend of mine, for many years an American consul in
the East, once had the misf