rom the coast to the square. Half-way they got tired
of the job and left the stone where it lies now, and will lie for ever.

On the other side of the altar are the drums, hollow trunks, whose
upper end is carved to represent a human face with wide, grinning
mouth, and deep, round and hollow eyes. Rammed in aslant, leaning in
all directions, they stand like clumsy, malicious demons, spiteful and
brutal, as if holding their bellies with rude, immoderate laughter
at their own hugeness and the puniness of mankind, at his miserable
humanity, compared to the solemn repose of the great tree. In front
of these are figures cut roughly out of logs, short-legged, with
long bodies and exaggeratedly long faces; often they are nothing
but a head, with the same smiling mouth, a long nose and narrow,
oblique eyes. They are painted red, white and blue, and are hardly
discernible in the dimness. On their forked heads they carry giant
birds with outstretched wings,--herons,--floating as if they had just
dropped through the branches on to the square.

This is all we can see, but it is enough to make a deep
impression. Outside, the sun is glaring, the leaves quiver, and the
clouds are drifting across the sky, but here it is dim and cool as
in a cathedral, not a breeze blows, everything is lapped in a holy
calm. Abandonment, repose, sublime thoughtlessness drop down on us in
the shadow of the giant tree; as if in a dream we breathe the damp,
soft, mouldy air, feel the smooth earth and the green moss that covers
everything like a velvet pall, and gaze at the altars, the drums and
the statues.

In a small clearing behind the square, surrounded by gaily coloured
croton bushes, stands the men's house--the "gamal." Strong pillars
support its gabled roof, that reaches down to the ground; the entrance
is flanked by great stone slabs. Oddly branched dead trees form a hedge
around the house, and on one side, on a sort of shelf, hang hundreds
of boars' jaws with curved tusks. Inside, there are a few fireplaces,
simple holes in the ground, and a number of primitive stretchers
of parallel bamboos, couches that the most ascetic of whites would
disdain. Among the beams of the roof hang all kinds of curiosities:
dancing-masks and sticks, rare fish, pigs' jaws, bones, old weapons,
amulets and so on, everything covered with a thick layer of soot from
the ever-smouldering fires. These "gamals" are a kind of club-house,
where the men spend the day and occa