“Peace be with you, O ‘big Mĕdang’ and ‘low-growing Mĕdang!’
Be ye not parted brother from brother,
I desire you to speed me, to the utmost of your power,
To such and such a place;
If ye will not, ye shall be rebels against God,” etc.
I need hardly explain, perhaps, that “big mĕdang” and “low-growing mĕdang” are the names of two varieties of the same tree, which are supposed in the present instance to have furnished the timber from which these different parts were made.
Then you stand up in the bows and call upon the Sea Spirits for their assistance in pointing out shoals, snags, and rocky islets.[280]
Sometimes a talisman is manufactured by writing an Arabic text on a leaf which is then thrown into the sea.
So, too, it is not unusual to see rocks in mid-stream near the mouths of rivers adorned with a white cloth hanging from a long stick or pole, which marks them out as “sacred places,” and sometimes in rapids where navigation is difficult or dangerous, offerings are made to the River Spirits, as the following quotation will show:—
“We commenced at last to slide down a long reach of troubled water perceptibly out of the horizontal. The raft buried itself under the surface, leaving dry only our little stage, and the whole fabric shook and trembled as if it were about to break up. Yelling ‘Sambut, sambut’ (‘Receive, receive’) to the spirits of the stream, whom Kulup Mohamed was propitiating with small offerings of rice and leaves, the panting boatmen continued their struggles until we shot out once more into smooth deep water, and all danger was over.”[281]