The credulity and superstition of the Javans exceed belief. Dreams, omens, lucky and unlucky days, astrology, amulets, witchcraft, are with them matters of faith and reverence. They believe each bush and rock, even the air itself, to be inhabited by _Dhewo_ or spirits. Not satisfied with the numerous varieties of supernatural beings with which their own traditions supply them, they have borrowed others from the Indians, Persians, and Arabs. The Dhewos are good spirits, and great respect is shown to them. They regulate the growth of trees, ripen the fruit, murmur in the running streams, and abide in the still shades of the forest. But their favourite dwelling is the Warinzie tree (_ficus Indica_,) which droops its long branches to the earth to form then a palace. The Javans mingle their superstitions with the commonest events of every-day life. Thieves, for instance, will throw a little earth, taken from a new-made grave, into the house they intend to rob, persuaded that the inmates will thereby be plunged into a deep sleep. When they have done this, and especially if they have managed to place the earth under the bed, they set to work with full conviction of impunity. Bamboo boxes of soil are frequently found in the possession of captured thieves, who usually confess the purpose to which they were to be applied. During the English occupation, it was casually discovered that a buffalo's skull was constantly carried backwards and forwards from one end of the island to the other. The Javans had got a notion that a frightful curse had been pronounced upon the man who should allow it to remain stationary. After the skull had travelled many hundred miles, it was brought to Samarang, and there the English resident had it thrown into the sea. The Javans looked on quietly, and held the curse to be neutralised by the white men's intervention. Dr. Selberg gives various other examples, observed by himself, of the ridiculous superstitions of these simple islanders. A very remarkable one is given in the works of Raffles and Crawford. In 1814, it was found out that a road had been made up to the lofty summit of the mountain of Sumbing. The road was twenty feet broad, and about sixty English miles in length, and a condition of its construction being that it should cross no water-course, it straggled in countless zig-zags up the mountain side. This gigantic work, the result of the labours of a whole province, and of a people habitually and constitutionally averse to violent exertion, was finished before the government became aware of its commencement. Its origin was most absurd and trifling. An old woman gave out that she had dreamed a dream, and that a deity was about to alight upon the mountain top. A curse was to fall upon all who did not work at a road for his descent into the plain. Such boundless credulity as this, is of course easily turned to account by mischievous persons, and has often been worked upon to incite the Javans to revolt. The history of the island, even in modern times, abounds in insurrections, got up, for the most part, by men of little talent, but possessing sufficient cunning to turn the imbecility of their countrymen to their own advantage.