Another time upon arriving at a village where a child had been born a few hours before, I was flatly refused hospitality, some Sakais preferring to accompany me a long way off and there erect a hut for my use on the formal understanding that I should not for any motive whatever attempt to approach the settlement. Had I not kept to this condition I should probably have been killed.
One cannot reason with terror.
The hut in which the poor woman is fulfilling the noblest of Nature's missions is jealously guarded by day and by night.
Woe to the unfortunate individual who is found loitering around it if he is not one of the village!
The floor of the hut does not touch the ground that the odour of excrements may not penetrate into the earth and proclaim to the Evil Spirit: Here a babe is born!
The mother herself, with extreme caution places everything of this sort in vessels of bamboo which she hangs high up on the bough of a tree.
There the torrid sun quickly dries it all up and the smell emanating from it being diffused in the upper air the spirit cannot find out the sick woman or her child.
As soon as the period of gestation commences neither the woman nor her husband must eat the flesh of monkey or serpent in order not to transfer to the unborn child the tendencies of a quadruped or reptile.
They must also abstain from eating fish and meat on the same day and are obliged to be very careful not to enter a hut whilst it rains, this being always a very bad omen but especially so when an increase is expected in the family.