A Buffalo's Skull.
Nowhere has superstition a greater power over the human mind than among the inhabitants of Java. Mr. Crawford relates that some years since it was accidentally discovered that the skull of a buffalo was superstitiously conveyed from one part of the island to another. The point insisted upon was never to let it rest, but to keep it in constant progressive motion. It was carried in a basket, and no sooner was one person relieved from the load than it was taken up by another; for the understanding was that some dreadful imprecation was denounced against the man who should let it rest. In this manner the skull was hurried from one province to another, and, after a circulation of many hundred miles, it at length reached the town of Samarang, the Dutch governor of which seized it and threw it into the sea, and thus the spell was broken. The Javanese expressed no resentment, and nothing further was heard of this unaccountable transaction. None could tell how or where it originated.