TENGGER MOUNTAINS, a range in Java connected with Gunungdasar, E. of Sourabaya, where a remnant of the people still follow the Hindu worship. These people occupy about 40 villages, scattered along this range of hills in the neighbourhood of. what is termed the sandy sea. The site of their villages, as well as the construc tion of their houses are peculiar, and differ entirely from what is elsewhere observed in Java. They are not shaded by trees, but built on spacious open terraces, rising one above the other, each house occupying a terrace, and being in length from 30 to 70 and even 80 feet. The door is invariably in one corner, at the end of the build ing, opposite to tha.t in which the fireplace is built. At the interment of an inhabitant of Tengger, the corpse is lowered into the grave with the head placed towards the south (contrary to the direction observed by the Muhammadans), and is guarded from the immediate contact of the earth by a covering of bamboos and planks.
This terrace practice seems to have once pre vailed in the Philippines. The inhabitants of the Serwatti Islands select the summits of hills or the brows of cliffs which rise abruptly from the sea, as sites for their habitations. The crest or extreme summit of the hill is occupied by a large wiring tree, the Ficus Indica, of Rurnphius, beneath which the idols of the village are placed on square plat forms of loose stones. Here the elders meet when any important matter is to be discussed. - Below
the tree the sides of the hills are scarped into a succession of platforms or terraces, on which are erected their oblong barn-like houses, with wooden walls and palm-leaf thatch. At Letti, a neighbouring island, where the hills are far inland, the brows of the cliffs which overhang the sea are selected, and a similar inode of scarping into terraces is adopted when necessary. The same system also prevails at Baba and Timor Laut. The Serwatti islanders have a more general resemblance to the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands than to those of tho Indian Archipelago. They are taller and fairer than the Malays or 13ugis. They wear a waist-cloth made of cotton orof tho bark of the paper mulberry, and allow their long wavy hair to float over their shoulders, or tie it at the back of the head. Their vessels, the cora-com, are long and graceful, with low sides and great breadth of beam, high stems and sterns, which rise like horns at each extremity of the vessel, and are ornamented with festoons of largo cowrie shells and bunches of feathers. Major Ilamilton, II.31. 21st 31.N.I., who had travelled in Java, mentions that he found the sante system of terracing amongst the Malai Arasar or hill kings of the Putney Hills in the extreme south of India.—Raffles' Java, p. 329.