cave without danger
from fire. Seven times he dies, each time going deeper and becoming
happier, and probably gains Nirvana in the end. Occasionally a good
spirit returns as a dove, and a bad one comes as a goat; indeed,
a few of the bad ones are doomed to wander over the earth forever.

A common belief is that the soul is absent from the body in sleep,
and if death occurs then the soul is lost. "May you die sleeping"
is one of the most dreadful of curses.

Among the Mangyan mountaineers it is customary to desert a person
who is about to die. They return after his death, carry the corpse to
the forest, build a fence about it, and roof it with a thatch. These
people seem to have no word for god, spirit, or future life; they do
not worship either visible or unseen things, and are the most moral
of the Filipinos. The lowlanders also desert their dying, and after
death close all paths to the house, leave the skeleton of the defunct
to be picked clean by ants, and change their names for luck.

When an islander in the Calamianes province dies his friends ask
the corpse where it would like to be buried, naming several places,
and lifting the body after each question. When the body seems to
rise lightly the dead man has said, "Yes." It may then be buried, or
placed in a tree in the desired locality, with such of its belongings
as the family can spare, and the mourners watch around a fire that
night until all the logs are consumed. The dead man walks about in
the ashes, leaving his footprints, and sometimes shows himself to
his relatives. Singing and feasting follow for several nights, and
the house of the dead is then abandoned.

The holes in the marble cliffs of San Francisco Strait formerly
contained the coffined dead of the tattooed Pintados, who sacrificed
slaves at the funeral that they might attend their relatives in the
next world. Fear of the spirits of these rocks was but partially
overcome when a Spanish priest smashed the coffins and tumbled the
bodies into the sea, for the strait is still haunted and the burial
rocks are good places to keep away from after dark.

Among the Moslem Moros it is a sure passport to heaven to kill a
Christian, and when one remembers how the people have been robbed,
tortured, and oppressed by nominal Christians, this item of faith
is not surprising. The more Christians he kills the greater will
be his reward. He bathes in a sacred spring, shaves his eye-brows,
dresses in white, take