LOMI30K, a fertile and populous island, divided from Bali by a narrow strait. The population consists chiefly of Sassak, Balinese, and Bugi. The Bugi reside upon the coasts. The raja of Lombok has the title of Anak Agong, which means son of heaven. The indigenes are called Sassak. The people of Lombok believe that some men can turn themselves into crocodiles, which transformation they adopt in order to devour their enemies. The Sassak are a Malay race, hardly differing from those of Malacca or Borneo, and have been converted to Muham madanism. But the ruling race are Brahrnanical, and from Bali. The men are jealous and strict with their wives; infidelity is punished by the couple being tied back to back and thrown into the sea, where crocodiles devour the bodies. Even a married woman accepting a flower or betel from a stranger has been punished by death with the kris, and any one found without leave within the grounds of a house is krised, and his body thrown out to the street. The people frequently do amok, but it seems to be deliber ately done. On one occasion a person doing amok killed seventeen people before he could be killed. In war, a whole regiment will agree to amok, and then run on with such desperate resolution as to be very formidable to men less excited than themselves.
Mr. Crawfurd considers the Lombok language to have a strong affinity with the Javanese. This is the termination in an easterly direction of the group of tongues which begins with Sumatra. According to Mr. Logan, Javan has a much broader, more forcible aspirate and primitive phonology than Malay, and the Javan group embraces Sundan, Madman (with its dialect Rawian)„and Bali. In Lombok are beautiful
grass-green doves, little crimson and black flower pickers, large black cuckoos, metallic king-crows, golden orioles, the jungle-fowl, the l'itta con curna, the Megapodus Gouldii, small white cocka toos, the I'tilotis honey-sucker, and the little yellow zosterops. In a pond at Gumong Sari, in Lombok, the fish swam round after Mr. Wallace, expecting food.
The Balinese may not eat beef, but substitute for itpork. Both races eat buffalo flesh, goat's flesh, fish, and poultry.
The raja of Mataram is, by right of conquest, absolute sovereign of the island. The rajas of Mataram are, like their ancestors of Kawang, Assem, and Baling, members of the Vaisya caste of Hindus. Although absolute monarchs, they nevertheless, of their own accord, in all important matters consult the principal gusti and ida of the country, some of whom are entrusted with the execution of what is resolved upon.
In Lombok, wives may suffer themselves to be burned after the death of their husbands; theyare not compelled to it. They have the choice of allowing themselves to be burned or krised. The first is the more rare.
The straits of Lombok are about 15 miles wide, but on the opposite sides of the straits the animals of various classes differ as greatly as the animals of the old and new world, not only in species, but in genera.