some anxiety for Sělěma; and when he spoke of the child, whose advent he prophesied so noisily, he be- came almost sentimental.
He rushed off to the most famous midwife in the place, and presented her with the retaining fee prescribed by Malay custom-a small brass dish filled with leaves of the sirih vine, and six pence of our money. The recipient of these treasures is thereafter held pledged to attend the patient when- ever she may be called upon to do so, and after the child is born she can claim further payments for the services rendered. These are not extravagantly high, according to European notions, two depreciated Mexican dollars being the charge for a first confine- ment, a dollar or a dollar and a half on the next occasion, and twenty-five or at the most fifty cents being deemed an adequate payment for each subse- quent event.
When mat had "placed the sirih leaves," he had done all that was immediately possible for Sělēma, and he sat down to endure the anxieties of the next few months with the patience of which he had so much at his command. The pantang ber-anak, or birth-taboos, hem a Malayan husband in almost as rigidly as they fence his wife, and Umat went in constant dread of unwittingly transgressing any of the laws upon the nice observance of which the welfare of Sělěma and the future of their child depended. He ceased to shave his head, foregoing the cool com- fort of a naked scalp. Ile dared not even cut his hair, and a thick, black shock presently stood five
