This Edition, with Heliotype plates, is
limited to Five Hundred Copies.

THE
HOME-LIFE
OF
BORNEO HEAD-HUNTERS

ITS FESTIVALS AND FOLK-LORE

BY
WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS, 3rd, M. D.; F. R. G. S.
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; OF THE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY;
DE LA SOCIÉTÉ DE GÉOGRAPHIE; FELLOW OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
INSTITUTE OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1902

Copyright, 1902, by W. H. Furness, 3rd

Westcott & Thomson,
Electrotypers, Phila.

Press of J. B. Lippincott Company,
Phila.

PREFACE

While to scenery, it is distance,—and photography,—which lends enchantment, it is, on the contrary, propinquity which, in my experience, lends to the Borneo Head-Hunters and to their Home-life, a charm which cannot be wholly dispelled even by the skulls hanging from the rafters of their houses. After living among them, for months at a time, an insight is gained into their individualities and peculiarities which a casual sojourn can never disclose. Some, of course, are ill-tempered, crotchety, selfish; others, again, are mild, gentle, generous. The youths have their languishing loves, which they are eager to confide to sympathetic ears. The maidens are coy, or demure, or bashful, when their lovers are near, and delight in teasing and tormenting. The Bornean mothers and fathers think their babies the prettiest that ever were born; and the young boys are as boyish as school-boys here at home, and are quite as up to all mischief.

It is so much easier to descend than it is to rise in what we call civilization, that, before a month is passed in a Kayan or a Kenyah house, the host and hostess, who, on first sight, seemed to be uncouth savages, frightfully mutilated as to eyes, ears, and teeth, are regarded as kind-hearted, devoted friends. It becomes well-nigh impossible to realise that they cannot add the simplest of sums without the aid of fingers and toes; and that Cæsar, Shakespeare, and Washington are to them meaningless, unpronounceable words.

Their honesty, (in a twelve months’ residence the only thing stolen from me was a tooth-powder bottle,) their simple, child-like nature, their keen interest in the pursuit of the moment, and their vivacious excitability, place them in advance of any ‘savages’ with whom I have ever, in my many wanderings, come in contact.

The greater part of my time in Borneo was spent among the Kayans and Kenyahs of the Baram district of Sarawak; consequently, in the following pages I have barely mentioned the Dayaks, (or Ibans, as they call themselves,) or any of the coast tribes, of whose home-life I saw comparatively little; so much has been already written about these tribes that I am jealous for my friends of the far interior.

I have refrained from giving dates, or details, as to the height of the thermometer, or as to my personal comfort or health, or as to the number of men who carried my luggage, or what I had for breakfast, or dinner,—items extremely important at the time, but of no permanent or public interest whatsoever.

I have attempted to portray the impressions made on a mind which I endeavoured to keep wholly unprejudiced, and even free from all tendency to despise as gross superstition that which by the natives is deemed holy and religious. I do not wish to forget that I was received as an honoured guest in Kayan Long-houses; it is a sorry payment to vilify my hosts. Rather let me throw what charm I may over the daily round of the natives’ dateless life.

To His Highness Rajah Brooke, I owe sincere thanks, not alone for his kind hospitality, but for facilities in freely visiting all parts of his admirably governed territory, and for his liberal permission to collect Ethnological and Natural History material.

It is with pleasure that I acknowledge my indebtedness to the Rajah’s Resident, Dr. Charles Hose, for valuable information on innumerable points, for a genial hospitality of many weeks, and for the opportunities to visit the people of his District, ‘my people,’ as he likes to call them, whose manners and customs he knows so thoroughly, and whose interests he guards with so much vigilance and efficiency.

W. H. F. 3rd.

July, 1902.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE TATTOOING OF A KAYAN MARRIED WOMAN

ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE, ON THE TINJAR

THE CLUSTER OF STAKES AND POLES IN THE FOREGROUND IS A CHARM TO DRIVE AWAY THE EVIL SPIRITS OF ILLNESS. IN THE LEFT CORNER OF THE PICTURE, THE TALLER POLE, DECORATED WITH STRIPS OF PALM LEAVES, IS THE RECORD OF A SUCCESSFUL HEAD-HUNT. THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS ABOUT TWO-THIRDS OF THE LENGTH OF THE HOUSE.

THE
HOME-LIFE OF BORNEO HEAD-HUNTERS
ITS FESTIVALS AND FOLK-LORE

HOME-LIFE

The houses in which the Borneo people live are the outcome of a life of constant apprehension of attacks from head-hunters. In union alone is strength. Surrounded by a dense jungle which affords, night and day, up to the very steps to their homes, a protecting cover for enemies, the Borneans live, as it were, in fighting trim, with their backs to a hollow square. A village of scattered houses would mean the utmost danger to those on the outskirts; consequently, houses which would ordinarily form a village have been crowded together until one roof covers them all. The rivers and streams are the only thoroughfares in the island, and village houses are always built close to the river-banks, so that boats can be quickly reached; this entails another necessity in the construction of the houses. The torrents during the rainy season, which, on the western half of the island, lasts from October till February, swell the rivers with such suddenness and to such an extent that in a single night the water will overflow banks thirty feet high, and convert the jungle round about into a soggy swamp; unless the houses were built of stone they would be inevitably swept away by the rush of water; wherefore the natives build on high piles and live above the moisture and decay of the steaming ground.

Beneath the houses is the storage-place for canoes that are leaky and old, or only half finished and in process of being sprung and spread out into proper shape before being fitted up with gunwales and thwarts. It is generally a very disorderly and noisome place, where all the refuse from the house is thrown, and where pigs wallow, and chickens scratch for grains of rice that fall from the husking mortars in the veranda overhead. Between the houses and the river’s bank,—a distance of a hundred yards, more or less,—the jungle is cleared away, and in its place are clumps of cocoanut, or Areca palms, and, here and there, small storehouses, built on piles, for rice. In front of the houses of the Kayans there are sure to be one or two forges, where the village blacksmiths, makers of spear-heads, swords, hoes, and axes, hold an honorable position. In the shade of the palms the boat-builders’ sheds protect from the scorching heat of the sun the great logs that are being scooped out to form canoes; the ground is covered with chips, from which arises a sour, sappy odor that is almost pungent and is suggestive of all varieties of fever, but is really quite harmless. In the open spaces tall reedy grass grows, and after hard rains a misstep, from the logs forming a pathway, means to sink into black, oozy mud up to the knees.

Just on the bank of the river there are usually four or five posts, about eight feet high, roughly carved at the top to represent a man’s head; these have been put up after successful head-hunting raids, and on them are tied various fragments of the enemy,—a rib, or an arm, or a leg bone; these offerings drive away the evil Spirits who might wish to harass the inmates of the house, and they also serve as a warning to enemies who may be planning an attack. Such remnants of the enemy are held by no means in the same veneration with which the heads, hung up in the house, are regarded; after the bits of flesh and bone are tied to the posts they are left to the wind and rain, the pigs and chickens.

POSTS ERECTED IN FRONT OF A HOUSE AFTER A HEAD-HUNT

ON THESE POSTS ARE HUNG SMALL FRAGMENTS OF THE ENEMY. THE CARVED FACES RECORD THE NUMBER OF HEADS TAKEN.

Not a few of the Kayan and Kenyah houses have been enlarged and built out at both ends until they shelter from six hundred to a thousand persons, and are possibly a quarter of a mile long; this statement seems to verge on a ‘traveller’s tale,’ but it must be remembered that these houses are really villages of a single street, the veranda being a public thoroughfare, unobstructed throughout its whole length, in front of the private family rooms. From the ground to the veranda a notched log serves as steps, and it takes no little practice to enable a clumsy, leather-shod foreigner to make a dignified entrance into a Borneo house. The notches in the log are worn very smooth by the constant tread of bare feet, and, as there is no door-mat below for muddy feet, the shallow notches are often coated with a thin and treacherous layer of slime; foreigners generally enter a Kayan house on all fours, giving to the natives an astounding idea of occidental manners. To the natives, however, these steps present no difficulties,—no matter how steep or slimy the log, they seem to get a firm hold on the edge of the notches with their prehensile toes, and, even with heavy loads on their backs, walk up as freely as if on level ground. The piles on which the large houses rest are fifteen or twenty feet high, and often two and a half feet in diameter at the base; in some few cases they are carved with grotesque figures of human heads, or conventionalised representations of monkeys, crocodiles, and snakes.

In the days before the humanising influence of Rajah Brooke’s government had spread to the Kayans, and Kenyahs, and tribes living in the central highlands, it was a preliminary custom, in building a house, to thrust into the first excavation wherein the heavy, up-river, corner post was to rest, a young slave girl alive, and the mighty post was then planted on her body, crushing out her life as a propitiatory offering to the demons that they should not molest the dwelling. Happily, this custom has been abolished, and in houses now built, instead of a girl, a pig or a fowl has been substituted. I regret to add that in the house of Tama Bulan, wherein we lived for some time, the earlier custom had been followed.

The roofs of the houses are partly thatched and partly shingled. The shingles are hewn out of ‘Billian,’ a species of iron-wood which stands for years, without decay, the alternate change from damp to dry heat; each one has a square hole at its upper end, through which passes the strip of rattan wherewith it is tied to the frame of the roof. The thatching is of palm leaves doubled over a stick five feet long and then bound on the roof, overlapping like shingles; several layers of these palm-leaf tiles make a perfectly tight roof, and one that may be quickly repaired. In building a Borneo house not a nail is used and but very few pegs; all beams and cross-ties are either roughly mortised and bound together, or else merely tied one on top of the other with rattan or with long strips of fibrous bark; even the planks of the floor or walls are not pegged, but are tied to one another and laced to the joists.

In selecting the site for a house, before so much as a twig of the jungle is cleared away, there are always extreme and prolonged pains taken to discover, through ‘Omen birds,’ the temper of the evil Spirits of that locality,—to a Kayan there are no such things as beneficent Spirits. Until this temper is definitely discovered the whole household is under a ‘permantong,’ or taboo, and may not leave its quarters, whatever these quarters may be, be they the old house or a temporary shelter.

This taboo lasts many days,—ten days perhaps,—during which certain old men who know the habits of omen birds and omen animals make frequent trips into the surrounding jungle to observe whether the red hawk fly, or whether the little honey-sucker bird, (called the ‘Isit,’) chirp to them, on the right or on the left of their path. Finally, they must catch a glimpse of the barking deer, and then the welfare of the house is assured. As soon as one of these favorable omens is seen the hunters build a fire,—a signal to the birds and animals, conveying thanks for favors received. When the last of these omens has been seen, then, and not until then, is the permantong over and the clearing for the house begun, and all hands turn in to help.

The veranda, or main street, of these houses is where all public life goes on; here, in the smoky atmosphere that pervades the place, councils of war and peace are held, feasts spread, and a large part of the daily work performed. It is seldom a very bright or cheery place; the eaves come down so low that the sunlight penetrates only at sunrise and sunset, and the sooty smoke from the fires turns all the woodwork to a sombre, mahogany hue. The floor is usually of broad, hewn planks, loosely laid upon the joists, with little care whether they fit close or warp and bend up out of shape, leaving wide cracks through which a small child might fall; they show plainly the cuts of the adze, but they soon become polished by the leathery soles of bare feet shuffling over them from dawn till dark. At intervals of perhaps fifty feet are fireplaces,—merely shallow boxes about five feet square by six inches deep, filled with flat stones imbedded in clay; herein are built the fires that give light at night and add to sociability at all times; no council or friendly talk is complete without the crackle of a fire to enliven it and to keep away evil Spirits. Of course, no chimney carries off the smoke, which must disperse as best it can among the cob-webby beams overhead, after giving a fresh coat of soot to the row or bunch of trophy-skulls that hangs in the place of honor opposite to the door of the chief’s room. The odor of burning resinous wood, mingled with other ingredients, saturates the veranda, and in after-life the smell of musty garret, cedar-wood chests, and brush-wood burning in the autumn instantly recalls the veranda of a Borneo long-house. It must be confessed that occasionally there mingles with this aromatic odor a tang of wet dog, wallowing pig, and ancient fish, but then, after all, these are not peculiar to Borneo.

THE VERANDA OF ABUN’S HOUSE AT LONG-LAMA ON THE BARAM.

THE ROW OF SKULLS HANGS FROM A BEAM SUSPENDED OPPOSITE TO THE DOOR INTO THE CHIEF’S ROOM; BENEATH THE SKULLS IS A CLAY AND STONE HEARTH WHEREON A FIRE IS LIGHTED EVERY EVENING, NOT ONLY TO GIVE LIGHT, BUT ALSO “TO DIFFUSE A PLEASANT WARMTH ABOUT THE SKULLS.” THE WALL OF PLANKS, EXTENDING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE PHOTOGRAPH DIVIDES THE FAMILY ROOMS FROM THE PUBLIC VERANDA. THE BOYS ON THE RIGHT ARE SEATED UPON ONE OF THE LARGE MORTARS WHEREIN THE RICE IS HUSKED. ON THE LEFT IS THE USUAL CROWD OF LOUNGERS SEATED UPON THE LOW PLATFORM WHICH EXTENDS ALMOST THE WHOLE LENGTH OF THE HOUSE BELOW THE EAVES.

There is no ceiling to a Borneo long-house; above the plank walls that divide the private rooms from the veranda, and from one another, the space is open to the ridge-pole. Across the rafters are placed, higgledy-piggledy, spare boards, supplies of dried rattan, and long rolls of bamboo matting; here and there, hang rice baskets, hampers, wicker fish-traps of all sizes; and sometimes every available space is hung with bunches of bananas, which must be gathered green and ripened in the house, to keep them from the depredations of monkeys and fruit-bats. At intervals along the roof are trap-doors of palm-leaf thatch, which can be lifted and supported on a pole to admit more light and air. [For the accompanying photograph as many of these trap-doors as possible had been raised in order to get enough light, and just over the row of skulls several shingles had been taken off. In the photograph this row of forty or fifty skulls hanging from a beam begins with one that looks like a gourd, on the left.]

Along the whole length of the veranda at its outer edge, under the eaves, is a railing, or fence, of poles and boards tied to the upright supports of the roof; when parents in the household are unusually careful of their children, this fence extends from the floor to the eaves, which are here only about four feet above the floor, but usually this safeguard is only two poles about six inches apart, and serves as a rest for the backs of men when they sit on the wide platforms, which are raised about a foot above the floor and extend nearly all along this lightest and airiest part of the house. These platforms are of much smoother planks than the floor, and are often of single huge slabs of wood from the buttress-like roots of the ‘Tapang’ tree. To make these lounging-places still more luxurious, mats of fine rattan or bamboo strips are spread upon them, and then a Bornean desires no more comfortable place whereon to sit by day or to recline by night, unless, perchance, it be a dry sandy river-bank, above the rapids, where are no crocodiles, mosquitoes, nor pestiferous black-flies, and where grow gigantic Caladiums, whereof a single leaf is large enough to cover his entire body and afford him a protection from the rain, as impervious as a rubber blanket. These low platforms, especially in front of the chief’s door, [which in the photograph is directly opposite the row of skulls just mentioned,] are the places where men congregate after nightfall to gossip and smoke round the fire, which is here needed to dispel darkness, dampness, and evil Spirits. Diversion is often created by one of their number, who, more self-sacrificing than the rest, goes through the violent antics of a war-dance, or sings long, rambling songs about the valorous deeds of Tokong, who originated head-hunting, or of some other warrior who gained the blissful regions of ‘Apo Legan’ by the slaughter of his enemies. Whatever the theme,—and the themes are generally legends or familiar stories,—the details are supplied by the imagination of the singer, who composes them on the spur of the moment, while the chorus is singing the last two or three words of the verse, followed by ‘Ara Wi Wi, Ará!’ a meaningless refrain, like our own ‘Tooral, looral,’ although I am afraid that in a former publication I unwittingly gave the impression that its translation was ‘Sleep dear little one, sleep.’[1]

To these songs an accompaniment is often played upon an instrument, known among certain Kayans and Kenyahs as a Kaluri or Kaleeri or Kaludi. It is probably of Chinese origin; substantially the same instrument is used in China and in the countries bordering thereon to the northward and westward. I saw almost an exact counterpart of the Borneo Kaluri played by the Naga tribes inhabiting the hills near the Burmese border. It consists of a bottle-shaped gourd with six hollow reed pipes set into the body of it; a finger-hole is cut in each pipe at such a place that the fingers of both hands while holding the instrument can cover all the holes. The middle reed is the longest, and is therefore the bass; it has no finger-hole, but its tone is subdued by a movable cap at the end; the neck of the gourd forms the mouth-piece. The music of a Kaluri somewhat resembles that of organ pipes, perhaps slightly nasal in timbre, but having an impressive charm withal when heard amid native surroundings, in the dim, smoky atmosphere of a Borneo long-house at night, when light from the flickering fire accentuates the harsh lines in the faces of the natives grouped about the performer, and where eyes, robbed of the softening effect of lashes and eyebrows, glitter fiercely, and where brass studs glisten in pointed and blackened teeth, and where carnivorous ferocity and alertness is imparted to the men’s faces by the upturned tiger-cat’s teeth in their ears,—all these so intensify the relentless, recurring, savagely persistent minor key of the Kaluri that dim questionings are stirred whether or not, after all, bloodshed be not the noblest aim in life and the blackened and battered skulls overhead be not glory’s highest prize. Music hath charms to soothe,—Kaluri music hath charms to make,—a savage breast.

JUNGLE IN THE LOW COUNTRY NEAR THE BARAM FORT

THE LARGE LOG IN THE FOREGROUND HAD BEEN ROUGHLY HEWN FOR MAKING A CANOE, BUT ON ACCOUNT OF A WARNING FROM AN OMEN-BIRD WAS ABANDONED.

In the verandas of the Kayan houses there are always large wooden mortars wherein rice is hulled; from morning until night there is always to be heard, somewhere in the length of the house, the rhythmical thumping that betokens that young girls are at their everlasting task of threshing, hulling, and winnowing the rice for the daily repast. The rice mortars are cut from large logs of wood, and are somewhat prismatic in shape, usually five or six feet in length by two or three feet wide on the upper surface; they rest upon a base not more than a foot wide, [as in the photograph, where, on the right, some boys are sitting on the edge of a mortar,] but are made firm by stout poles that are set into them and extend through the flooring to the ground below, and also by strong braces that are pegged to the house beams above. The upper, broad surface of these mortars is slightly concave, and is divided into two or more sections, each with a round pit six inches deep in the centre. In husking the rice, these pits are filled with the grains, and then two, or sometimes four, girls, standing upon the broad top, pound the rice in the pit with wooden pestles five or six feet long, which they hold at the middle with both hands. The motion that they adopt is exceedingly graceful; they stand with the heels together, and lift the pole or pestle perpendicularly above their heads as high as they can reach, then, bending the body at the hips and swinging the arms down, they jam the pestle into the rice pit; as they raise the pestle again for another stroke they put one foot forward to push back into the pit the grains that may have jumped out on the flat surface of the mortar. When thus pounding, the young girls keep perfect time with one another, the poles never clash, and each girl brushes back, first with one foot, then with the other, the grains she jostles out, so that when they pound fast the motion becomes almost a dance. Not infrequently the pestles are ornamented at their upper end with several sliding rings or a sliding block that jingles when the pestle strikes; this rhythm and this jingle impart some alleviation to the tedious task. When the husks are all beaten off, the chaff is winnowed out by tossing the grains and catching them again and again upon a flat basket. The task of hulling rice falls exclusively to the women and girls; they begin it when they are so small that they can barely lift the pestle, and, once started in proficiency, the task becomes an element of their life, and their winnowing-baskets are hung as symbols of industry on their graves.

In the accompanying photograph of a veranda, the coffin-shaped box hanging on the wall on the right is a case wherein war-coats are kept, so that the goat-skin and feathers whereof they are made cannot be eaten by hungry dogs. The photograph does not give an absolutely correct idea of the daily appearance of a veranda; there is only one dog to be seen,—there should be at least a dozen. The exposure had to last so long that, lest the dogs should jar the camera, we had them all driven down the notched log to the ground, and then the log was turned wrong side up, so that they could not return. (We tried this method of getting rid of the dogs once at night when they were particularly troublesome and quarrelsome, and seemed to prefer our bodies to any other couch, but the crafty curs knew an adequate revenge; as soon as they found themselves locked out they made night hideous with concerted and disconcerting baying at the moon, until we were glad to readmit them. Our leather shoes we always had to tie high up on the rafters at night, or they would have been eaten up, all but the soles and heels.)

This photograph was taken from a point just opposite the chief’s door, about half way down the length of the veranda.

KALURI—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.

The family rooms, even those of the chief, are often dark and disordered little compartments, and in them it is usual for anything but quiet to reign; the smallest of the infants sprawl on the floor, the fowls, that have flown up to steal the rice drying on the platforms at the back of the house, squawk and cackle, and the old women who are relegated to culinary sinecures, such as rice-boiling, add a mild confusion by whacking the dogs that wander in and prowl about the cooking-pots. The space under the eaves, unlike that of the veranda, is boarded up from floor to roof with rough hewn planks; the only light is admitted through small windows in the planks or through trap-doors in the roof. Of course, there is never a pane of glass in the windows, and I doubt that the natives of the interior, or even of the coast towns, ever saw a glazed window.

In spite of the darkness of these rooms, there is, nevertheless, more industry in them than is ever found in the veranda; the women are really the workers of the community, and seem never to sit absolutely idle gossiping, as do the men; when the harvesting is finished and there is no more work out of doors, they employ their time in making mats and baskets of rattan strips, in stringing beads into ornaments for war-coats, in weaving cloth for feast-day garments, and in fashioning large, round, flat hats for the next season’s work in the rice-fields. During the rainy season, the husbands and lovers seem to have little to do but sit in the veranda, lounging against the railing at the open space under the eaves, whence they can observe the river and its incidents, and watch the smoke from their long cigarettes curl and drift among the fronds of tall cocoanut palms that sway and rustle on a level with their faces. These are the days when war expeditions are planned and resolutions made to add fresh heads to the row already hanging in front of the chief’s door, and thereby remove any taboo enforced by the death of relatives. The men seldom linger in the family rooms during the day, and the women, except when busy hulling the rice in the big wooden mortars, spend no time in the veranda.

The doorway from the veranda into the family room opens into a very dark and narrow passage, with the partition wall of the next room on one side and a rack for fire-wood and long bamboo water-bottles on the other. Possibly it is to announce the coming of a guest that the flooring of these little entries is always laid down in such a wobbly fashion, and of logs and billets of wood so rickety, that it is impossible to walk upon it without stumbling or an unseemly clatter; whatever be the reason, such is the fact, and I never stepped over the high threshold into the dark of one of these passages without expecting to trample on babies or to fall through on the wallowing pigs below.

The end of the passage opens directly into the middle of the room, where the floor is better laid and made more comfortable by the addition of mats. The whole room is perhaps twenty-five feet square, but this space is diminished by two or three little sleeping-closets for the parents or for the grown daughters. In the right-hand corner, near an opening under the eaves, the floor is raised a few inches, where the sons or the male slaves sleep at night, and where the women work at their bead-stringing or mat-making during the day; it is the lightest and pleasantest place in the room. Against the partition that divides the veranda from the room is the fireplace, which is merely a hearth of clay and large flat stones, as in the veranda, except that in the centre are three stones whereon the cooking pots rest; above is a rack, just beyond the reach of the flames, where firewood is kept dry, ready for immediate use, and where scraps of pork may be preserved by the smoke. Here and there, on the walls, on hooks made of deer horn or of the twisted branch of a tree, hang all sorts of implements for farming, fishing, and hunting, little hoes for weeding the rice-fields, home-made axes called ‘biliong,’ scoop-nets for catching fish when the streams are poisoned with Tuba root, paddles, spears, large round sun-hats, basket-like holders for the few but valuable china plates used only on feast-days, and sometimes, as a mural decoration, the warrior’s coat and shield are displayed; these personal adornments, however, are usually kept in the little sleeping-closets, or else in a wooden case attached to the wall of the veranda just outside the room.

A FAMILY-ROOM, OR LAMIN, IN ABUN’S HOUSE ON THE BARAM.

BEYOND THE MAN SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR, IS THE FIRE-PLACE; ABOVE IT, A RACK WHEREON WOOD IS KEPT DRY, READY FOR USE. ON THE LEFT OF THE FIRE-PLACE IS A DOORWAY OPENING INTO ONE OF THE SMALL SLEEPING-CLOSETS FOR THE MARRIED PEOPLE OR FOR THE UNMARRIED GIRLS. LEANING AGAINST THE WALL IS A BAMBOO WATER PITCHER WITH A COVER OF PALM-LEAF MATTING; ABOVE, HANGS A BASKETWORK CASE FOR HOLDING CHINA PLATES. ON THE WALLS OF THE ALCOVE ARE HANGING SEVERAL LARGE, FLAT, PALM-LEAF HATS, A SCOOP-NET, AND A FLAT SIEVE OF SPLIT RATTAN. THIS ALCOVE, WITH ITS SLIGHTLY RAISED FLOOR, IS THE SLEEPING-PLACE FOR THE UNMARRIED MEN OF THE FAMILY, OR FOR THE MALE SLAVES.

These sleeping-closets, partitioned off for married couples or for unmarried girls and widows to sleep in, are as dark and stuffy as closely fitting planks can make them, and the bed is merely two or three broad and smooth planks whereon a fine rattan matting is spread; sometimes a roll of matting or a bundle of old cloth serves as a pillow, but more often there is nothing but the flat boards. On one occasion, I was ushered into the bedroom of a Chief’s daughter who was ill with the grippe and had asked for medicine; it was almost pathetic to note the attempt that this poor ‘first lady’ had made to adorn her little boudoir. By the light of a sputtering lump of damar gum, burning in an earthen dish and disseminating mainly an aromatic smell and dense smoke, and only incidentally a flickering light, I could see that there had been fastened on the walls bright pieces of gay-colored cloth, and over in one corner, in a sort of pyramid, were her ‘ladyship’s’ best bead-work baskets; even ill as she was she called my attention to them. She was tossing in fever on the most uncomfortable bundles of coarse cotton calico, (sadly in need of washing,) which she had crumpled in folds to counteract the unevennesses of her bed of planks. Grippe is intolerable enough when the patient is surrounded with every comfort, on a soft clean bed and in an airy room, but the lowest depth of discomfort is reached when to the fever are added a sweltering tropical heat in a dark closet, the air dense with damar smoke and soot, a bed of hard boards, and never a drop of ice-water. Yet in the midst of all these, the girl, fortunate in her ignorance, was dignified and uncomplaining.

On all ordinary occasions, the family eat together, usually only twice a day, morning and evening, in the family room. In the centre of the room is placed a large wooden dish piled high with boiled rice, and then, as a plate for each member of the family, is set a piece of fresh banana leaf, whereon are a little salt and a small quantity of powdered dried fish, highly odorous; this is the usual bill of fare, but it may be supplemented with a sort of mush or stew of fern-frond sprouts and rice, or with boiled Caladium roots and roasted wild yams. When there is a feast and guests from neighboring houses come to dine, the meals are spread in the veranda and the menu is enlarged with pork and chicken, cooked in joints of bamboo, which have been stoppered at both ends with green leaves, and put in the fire until they are burnt through, when the cooking is done to a turn.

All hands are plunged into the common dish of plain boiled rice, and it is ‘excellent form’ to cram and jam the mouth as full as it will hold. It is, however, remarkable how deftly even little children can so manipulate the boiled rice before conveying it to their mouths, that hardly a grain is spilt; it always filled me with shame when dining en famille with the Kayans or Kenyahs to note what a mess of scattered rice I left on the mat at my place, while their places were clean as when they sat down; to be sure, I did not follow my hosts’ example in carefully gathering up and devouring all that had fallen on the unswept floor. Whenever I apologized for my clumsiness, their courtesy was always perfect; the fault was never attributed to me, but rather to their poor food and the manner in which it was served.

The long intervals between their meals and the unsubstantial quality of their food give them such an appetite and force them to eat so voraciously that the usual welcome by a Kayan host to his guests is, ‘Eat slowly,’ and this admonition is unfailingly given. They seem to regard their family meals as strictly private, and would always announce to us that they were going to eat,—possibly to give us warning not to visit them at that time, and they were also quite as punctilious to leave us the moment that our food was served.

When any member of a family is ill and calls in the services of an exorciser, or, as they call it, a ‘Dayong,’ the room is placed under a taboo, or permantong, and only members of the family may enter, and even they are under certain restrictions, for instance, to refrain from singing or playing musical instruments, and they are debarred from eating meat. The sign of a taboo is a bunch of green leaves or a flat basket used in winnowing rice tied to the door-post. If, by accident, a man should violate this taboo, he must pay a fine to the owners of the tabooed room; this fine is usually a few cheap beads or a china plate. They seem to regard this custom with such reverence that we availed ourselves of its privileges whenever we wished for privacy, and although the natives laughed at our adoption of their customs, they left us nevertheless strictly alone when we tied a basket or a bunch of leaves in front of our little apartment in the veranda.

VERANDA OF A NEWLY BUILT IBAN HOUSE ON THE BAKONG RIVER, A TRIBUTARY OF THE BARAM.

THE SKULLS ARE HANGING NEAR THE VERY END OF THE VERANDA IN A CLOSE CLUSTER, AND NOT SUSPENDED ALONG A BEAM. THE FLOORING IS OF STRIPS OF THE STALK OF THE NIBONG PALM, INTERLACED AND TIED TO THE BEAMS. THE LOW, SQUARE BOX IN THE FOREGROUND IS A HEARTH, LINED WITH CLAY AND FLAT STONES. BESIDE IT ON THE FLOOR, AND ALSO HANGING FROM A RAFTER IN THE UPPER LEFT-HAND CORNER, ARE WATER GOURDS. IN FRONT OF THE DOOR, LEADING INTO ONE OF THE FAMILY-ROOMS, A WOODEN RICE MORTAR IS TURNED UPSIDE DOWN. ON THE DOOR IS HUNG A FLAT BASKET, TO INDICATE THAT THE ROOM IS TABOOED ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS. BEYOND THE RANGE OF THE PHOTOGRAPH ON THE LEFT, AND EXTENDING OUT INTO THE OPEN AIR IS A WIDE PLATFORM OF SPLIT BAMBOO, WHEREON THE RICE BEFORE IT IS HUSKED IS SPREAD OUT ON MATS TO DRY.

Possibly, this description of Home-Life in a Borneo household would be incomplete without a detailed account of its ordinary daily routine, which, as I saw it during several weeks in Tama Bulan’s house, is somewhat as follows:—[2]

The crow of a cock breaks the silence of the night; then a dog rouses up, yawns and stretches, and shakes off the ashes of the fireplace where it has been sleeping, and begins the daily round of quarrels with its companions. Then daylight gradually creeps in and a door slams with a bang at the far end of the house, where the poorer and hard-working people live; a woman with a bundle of bamboo water-vessels slung on her back hurries along to the stairway down to the river. She looks just the same as when she went to sleep. Her dress is the same and her hair is in a disordered tangle, and as she walks her feet come down heavily on the warped planks and make them rattle, no doubt to wake the lazy men, who sleep on and let the women make the fire and get the water while they snooze. Soon she comes back, her hair dripping and glossy, and little drops of water still clinging to her skin. By this time there is quite a procession of women going down to bathe and get the cooking water from the river, and there is a slamming of doors and a few wails from the children. Then the men who have been sleeping on the raised platform along the open space below the eaves, unroll themselves from their shroud-like coverings of cotton cloth, once white, and a little hum of conversation springs up, possibly a comparison of dreams, the interpretation of which, as in all uneducated classes, has a great bearing on their daily life. The mother who comes out with her babies in her arms, or sitting astride of her hips, knows nothing of our custom of caressing with a kiss, but in her maternal bursts of affection she buries her face in the neck of the child and draws in a long breath through her nostrils; in fact, she smells it. In their language the verbs to smell and to kiss are the same. Then down she goes to the river and takes the morning bath with her child in her arms, sometimes holding it by the hands and letting it kick out its legs like a frog,—the first lessons in swimming. One by one the men straggle off to bathe in the river, and never missed the opportunity of telling us that they were going to bathe, and when they returned they were also most punctilious in telling us that they had bathed. With all this bathing, however, they are not a clean people. Soap is unknown to them, and they never use hot water, consequently their skins have not the soft, velvety appearance that constant bathing usually produces. (We once gave some of the girls cakes of Pears’ soap, but they ate them.)

After bathing there is a lull in the activity of the house, while the married women and young girls cook the morning meal of boiled rice and dried salted fish.

Breakfast over there are always parties of men and women setting out for the clearings where the rice is planted, and armed with a billiong (an adze-like axe, which they use) and their parang, and their spear, the men go down and get the boats ready, and the women follow after with the paddles, and hampers to bring back bananas or bunches of tender, young fern-fronds, which they make into a stew. Then the house settles down to the ordinary tasks of making large flat hats of palm leaves, drying and flattening banana leaves for cigarette wrappers, or of pounding the husks off the rice by the women, and sharpening spears or decorating parangs by the men industriously inclined; but the latter are rare. They usually spend their time in gossip with their companions or merely sit and blink, soothed by long draughts of smoke drawn deep into their lungs from the strong Java tobacco cigarettes, which they roll for themselves. Men, women, and children all smoke.

Morning wears into afternoon, and then the hours are given up to recreation by those who had not gone in the forenoon to the rice-fields. Occasionally, we sat on the river-bank and watched from a high bluff the young boys or the young girls playing in the water. Here let me say that we never saw the faintest conscious immodesty in either the one or the other. We used to sit lost in admiration at the skill of the girls in swimming. It was a sort of game of tag that they were always playing, only, instead of one chasing all, all chased one, and this one would get off some little distance from the rest and then suddenly disappear under water. Then the chase begins. All swim as fast as they can to the spot where she had vanished, some swimming with a rapid overhand stroke, while others swam entirely under the water. Then, possibly still in front of them, possibly far behind, up bobbed the girl who was ‘it,’ shaking the water from her eyes and giving a shout of derision at her pursuers. Down she went again and the chase was renewed, all under water, so long, sometimes, that the surface of the river became perfectly smooth, and no one would have imagined that in another moment it would be again bubbling up and dashed into spray by a crowd of laughing, shouting, black-haired, merry girls. Back and forth, up and down, they splashed from one side of the river to the other, until one of the men called to them from the house to stop their sport lest they rouse a sleeping crocodile. This put an end to the fun. Another thing, which was quite new to us, was the way in which they could play a sort of tune by splashing their hands in the water and flapping their arms to their sides. They stood in a group, and by sinking their hands, the back downward, in the water and then clapping them above the water and slapping their elbows to their sides, they produced a series of different sounds, like that of a large stone dropping into a deep pool, with a rhythm that was perfect and very pleasing.

Afternoon deepens into dusk, and the workers from the fields come home and trudge wearily up the bank and disappear through the little doorways. Small flickering lamps are lit here and there, and the fire on the hearth disseminates a cheery glow and warms up the row of human skulls hanging in front of the Chief’s door. The veranda gradually becomes deserted, even by the dogs, while the families are eating their evening meals in their private rooms. The noisy flapping of wings and cackling of chickens seeking their roosts for the night and the low, contented grunts of pigs beneath the house betoken that the day’s foraging is over.

After the evening meal the men once more lounge out in the veranda and, grouped about the low, smouldering fires, smoke their long cigarettes and gossip, or listen to the drone of the Kaluri played by one of the youths. By eight or nine o’clock they are all once more wrapped in their coverings of cotton cloth, and, stretched in a row beneath the eaves, lulled by ‘lisp of leaves or ripple of rain.’

CEREMONIES AT THE NAMING OF A CHIEF’S SON

One day, during my second visit to Borneo, I was sitting in the veranda of a native’s house on the Tinjar River, chatting and gossiping with my host and his household, when I noticed in the group a man whose face was very familiar to me and closely associated with some incident or other in the year before; I looked at him for a minute, and then asked if he were not the man who had so effectively helped us when we were unable to find men to paddle our canoe down the river from the house of deceitful old Laki La. He modestly replied that he was one of the men; whereupon I reiterated my gratitude to him; but, unfortunately, his name, once so familiar to me, had quite escaped my memory, and, apologizing for my forgetfulness, I asked him what it was. His countenance fell; he looked much embarrassed for a moment, and then nudging the man sitting next to him looked from him to me. His neighbor took the hint, and at once told me the name, which was one I had never before heard; I concluded, therefore, that either he or I had mistaken the incident. A little while afterward I happened to meet the man again when he was alone, and being so sure in my recollection of his face, asked him if that were really his name which had been told to me; he assured me that it was, but even then I doubted, and insisted that it was not the name by which I had known him a year ago. ‘You are quite right, Tuan,’ he replied, ‘but since you were here I have been exceedingly sick—so sick that the evil Spirits were trying to make my soul wander away from my body [and here his voice dropped to a whisper]; so I changed my name; now they will not know where to find me.’ He looked furtively on all sides, as if afraid that the trick would be overheard by the Spirits; it was only after much persuasion and repeated assurances that the Spirits could never harm him through a white man that I induced him to tell me his former name, which he did in a timid whisper close to my ear. This incident, trifling in itself, is valuable, I think, in that it adds another to the list of instances recorded in Dr. J. G. Frazer’s valuable The Golden Bough (vol. i., pp. 404-420), where the utterance of a personal name is fraught with an unknown and deadly peril. To speculate on the source of this mysterious dread is tempting enough,—especially since in theorizing about the beliefs prevalent in the youth of the world there is no one who can contradict. As to its antiquity there can be no doubt; and that it is well nigh universal, the records of folk-lore are full of proof. It is sufficient here and now to note its existence among the Kayans and Kenyahs in the interior of Borneo, where, moreover, this unwillingness to utter the name of a person extends to inanimate objects. When they have planned a Tuba fishing, nothing will induce them to utter the word for fish. A Kayan, Kenyah, or Punan never thinks of saying that he is going to search for camphor, but that he is going to look for the ‘thing that smells,’ and even this he says in a whisper, for fear the camphor crystals deep in their secret, native home might hear and elude him after he had all the trouble of chopping down the tree.

TAMA BULAN, THE MOST INTELLIGENT CHIEF IN THE BARAM DISTRICT.

HE IS OF THE KENYAH TRIBE, AND LIVES ON THE PATA RIVER, ABOUT TWO HUNDRED MILES FROM THE COAST. THE NAME TAMA BULAN MEANS ‘FATHER OF MOON,’ AND WAS ASSUMED AFTER THE BIRTH OF HIS FIRST CHILD, A DAUGHTER, NAMED ‘BULAN.’ HIS PREVIOUS NAME WAS WANG.

These superstitions connected with the utterance of a name are deeply rooted among the Borneans, but the interdiction on the speaking of names of relatives is not so extended as it is among some other primitive people, notably the Kaffir women of South Africa, who may not speak a word, or even a word containing a syllable, resembling their husband’s name or the names of any of his male relatives, but must use paraphrases which do not contain the interdicted syllables.[3] Among the Kayans and Kenyahs, as far as I know, the restriction on the utterance of names of relatives extends only to the fathers-in-law of a married couple, whose names must not be mentioned by either the husband or the wife. Again, it is most ill-omened for a son to mention his dead father’s name; and, of course, neither man nor woman dare pronounce their own name; this is a downright courting of all conceivable disasters and diseases. It is quite possible that this unwillingness to mention their own name leads them to adopt a substitution, which for every-day use sufficiently designates them. Thus, when a child is born the parents substitute for their own names the name of the child prefixed by ‘Tama,’—father of,—or ‘Tina,’—mother of,—a highly ingenious device; the combination thus formed is really no name at all; it is merely a designation. On the same principle, when wife or husband dies the survivor is designated as ‘Aban,’—widower,—or ‘Bállo,’—widow,—of such a one. The simple-hearted folk evidently believe the Spirits to be the very strictest of constructionists, and that they pay no attention to anything but the name itself, pure and uncombined; to a substitution they pay no heed.

One might suppose that under such circumstances it would be rather more convenient, certainly far less hazardous, to have no name at all. But without a name there would be no existence,—how could a nameless thing be admitted to ‘Apo Legan,’ or Heaven? The receiving of a name is really the starting-point of life; and the bestowal of a name by the parents is probably the most serious of parental duties, and to be performed with ceremonies proportioned to their rank. So essential is the ceremony of naming that in the enumeration of a family an unnamed child is not counted; and should a child die before the ceremony of naming, a Kayan or Kenyah mother would mourn for it no more deeply than had it been stillborn. This is true even when an unnamed child lives to be nearly a year old.

Children of the labouring classes are named at the completion of what the father considers a successful harvest of rice; and the day is set for the ceremony when the phase of the moon is deemed auspicious; the rest of the household, with the exception of the few friends who assist, is undisturbed. When, however, the son of a Chief is to be named, and thereby admitted into the circle of kindred or into humanity, the occasion is made a holiday, and a feast-day for the whole community, and friendly households far and near for miles around are summoned to attend. It was on such an occasion as this, that we, Dr. Hiller and myself, had the rare fortune to be the visitors of Tama Bulan, the most influential Chief in the Baram District of Sarawak.

We had but recently come to Borneo when we first met Tama Bulan at the Baram Fort, whither he had come to attend a peacemaking and ratification of friendship with certain Ibans who had recently moved into the district, and also to barter at the Bazaar the rattans, raw gutta-percha, and camphor that his people had collected. We were much impressed with the sedate dignity of this inland Chief and the quiet demeanor of his people, and greatly desired to become more thoroughly acquainted with them. As he was sitting cross-legged on the veranda of Dr. Hose’s bungalow and discussing the affairs of the up-river people, he mentioned with pride that as soon as he reached home there were to be great feastings and ceremonies over the naming of his only son. Here was the chance of a life-time could we but induce him to let us be present during these ceremonies. We were totally unacquainted with Tama Bulan’s language,—the Kenyah,—or even with Malay, the Lingua Franca throughout Borneo and the greater part of the adjacent islands,—but what of that? Sign language is all sufficient at a pinch, and, furthermore, a vocabulary of a hundred and fifty to two hundred words is soon acquired, and, in simple Polynesian dialects, will prove adequate for all ordinary purposes. I doubt if any Caucasian has ever witnessed these ceremonies as observed by the Kenyahs; at any rate, as far as I know, they have never been recorded; accordingly, we strenuously urged Dr. Hose to obtain for us an invitation. When he, finally, with much tact, told the Kenyah Chief how anxious we were to return with him and pay him a visit in his home, the proposal was listened to with unusual gravity. Tama Bulan’s keen black eyes studied us very carefully from head to foot; evidently he was weighing the chances of possible accidents either to us or to his people. At last he broke silence, and, having in mind the dangerous rapids in the river, his first question was, ‘Can the Tuans [gentlemen] swim?’ When assured that we were adepts in that art, he deliberated again for a while, and then asked, ‘How can we get along without talking? the Tuans cannot speak my language, nor can I speak theirs.’ This objection was put aside by Dr. Hose, who flatteringly rejoined, ‘Ah, Tama Bulan does not know the power of the white man as well as I thought he did. The Tuans are so clever that in two days they will be able to speak your language as well as you do yourself; everything is easy to a white man.’ Whereat Tama Bulan smiled broadly, and, after another searching gaze, consented to let us return with him,—provided the government would not hold him responsible for any accidents. And so it was agreed, and the matter settled. But for some time my conscience did not acquit me of the conviction that we had forced ourselves unwarrantably on an unwilling host; however, I solaced myself with the cheering reflection that we could amply recompense him at the close of our visit.

Tama Bulan is a Chief of the Kenyah tribe, and his home is between three and four hundred miles in the interior of the island, on the Pata River, a tributary of the Baram. His house is one of the largest and best built in that large district, and is, moreover, conducted on rigid principles of Kenyah morality. Of course, in such a community theft is unknown, where every one knows every article of property belonging to the others. Thieving being thus eliminated, one of the strictest rules in Tama Bulan’s house is that no woman, young or old, shall frequent the veranda after nightfall; young girls must remain in their family apartments, and if they have sweethearts they must entertain these sweethearts there, and not sit sentimentally with them in convenient dark corners, whereof there is no lack in a veranda. Another of Tama Bulan’s rules is wisely sanitary, namely, that no rice may be hulled in the veranda; the dust arising from the chaff is not only irritating to the nostrils, but is also apt to produce an itching rash on the skins of young children and infants. To each family is apportioned a small shed at the back of the house for the threshing and hulling of the rice; and where, moreover, the workers are to a certain degree secluded, and not liable to distraction and idleness as they would be in a veranda.

Tama Bulan himself is one of the best types of a Bornean Chief. Although only about five or six years ago he was a passionate head-hunter (and is still, I believe, in his heart of heart, having been carefully and religiously brought up by his parents), he is now a genuinely loyal and highly valuable subject to Rajah Brooke, and has been made a member of the ‘Council Negri,’ a legislative body composed of the Rajah, of the English Resident Officers of the first class, of several of the most influential Malays in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, and of three or four of the most trustworthy and intelligent of the native Chiefs. This Council Negri, one of the admirable devices of that wise legislator, Rajah Brooke, meets once a year to discuss what might be termed national affairs, and to lay before the Rajah all complaints or suggestions.

THE HANDLE OF A PARANG, OR SHORT SWORD, CARVED OUT OF DEER’S HORN, AND DECORATED WITH TUFTS OF HUMAN HAIR AND WHITE GOAT’S HAIR. THE DESIGN IS CALLED “KOHONG KALUNAN”—A MAN’S HEAD, BECAUSE IT IS COMPOSED OF SEVERAL GROTESQUE FACES.

Our host, with whom we became eventually intimately acquainted, and of whom I became very fond, (his staunch friendship on one occasion saved our lives,) was a man of about forty-five, well built, but not muscular in appearance, about five feet six inches tall, his face broad, cheek bones somewhat high, eyes wide apart, lips thin, and mouth large but well shaped; his smile is ready, kind, and benignant, and his laugh reveals two rows of polished, regular, and highly blackened teeth. In his general expression there is not the least suggestion of what we are pleased to term a savage; his demeanor was quiet, unobtrusive, and dignified, and his voice soft and subdued. In obedience to fashion (to whose behests every son of Adam is a slave) his ear-lobes are pierced, and by means of heavy copper rings, inserted in early infancy, are so elongated that they almost touch his shoulder. The upper part of each ear is also perforated, so as to permit the insertion of a tiger-cat’s tooth; this ornament is, however, inserted only for full dress; in every-day life a plug of wood about half an inch in diameter is substituted. These ‘looped and windowed’ ears serve, in the lack of clothing, as pockets, and are extremely convenient receptacles of cigarettes, or even of boxes of matches. His head is shaved in a straight line extending horizontally from one temple to another, but his straight, black hair is allowed to grow long at the back. I describe Tama Bulan thus somewhat at length because he is a typical and pure-blooded Kenyah.

The skin of the Kenyahs and Kayans is not yellow, but somewhat darker than a Chinaman’s; they have none of the characteristics of the thick-lipped African negro, nor have they the bushy, krinkly hair of the Papuans; nor the almond eyes, or the stretched inner canthus of the Mongolians.

On ordinary occasions, they wear nothing but a loin-cloth, made either of bark fibre of native manufacture, or of red, white, or black cotton cloth, bought from Chinese traders in the Bazaar (the Malay name for a trading-post). On their heads they wear a close-fitting, pointed cap made of thin strips of rattan, (or ‘rotan’ as they call it,) or of bamboo woven into a pretty chequered pattern of black and yellow; when exposed to the sun they often exchange this skull cap for a broad, flat disc made of palm leaves and tied to the head.

In order that we might not burden Tama Bulan and his canoes with our heavy luggage of several boxes of tinned provisions, cooking utensils, and not a few articles for judicious presents, such as tobacco, bolts of cheap cotton cloth, and a quantity of steel bars, wherefrom the natives forge parangs and spear-heads, Dr. Hose kindly lent his large dug-out, which afforded comfortable quarters for ourselves and also (a pleasant arrangement) for our host, the Chief. The dug-out was about sixty feet long and five feet wide amidship, made of a single log, but deepened considerably by the addition of planks bound along the sides with rattan and caulked, thus giving about six inches of additional freeboard. The party consisted of eight canoes, bearing Tama Bulan’s followers, and as they swung into view after their start from the Bazaar, a short distance below Dr. Hose’s bungalow, which stands on a high and steep bluff, they shouted to us and loudly rapped their paddles on the sides of the canoes, by way of urging us to hurry down to the bank, so great was their impatience to be fairly started on the homeward voyage. We had divided the central third of the canoe into two compartments, separated from each other by our luggage, sleeping mats, mosquito curtains, etc.; in the forward division we took up our quarters, reserving the aft division for Tama Bulan, who seemed to fill and overflow it with his shields, parangs, large sun-hats, bundles and baskets packed with cheap cloths, Malay sarongs, heavy copper ear-rings, pressed glass bowls, and beads of every description,—all commissions executed for his household and received in exchange for jungle products. Where, or how he managed to sleep I cannot imagine,—but he was the Chief, and uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. As for us, we were really comfortable with rubber blankets and thick rugs spread over the flooring of bamboo strips which rested on the thwarts amidship, except that after awhile, as sitting cross-legged became misery, we longed for a chance to dangle our legs. Overhead was a roof of ‘kajangs’—a thin thatch of palm leaves—to protect us from the sun and rain. As soon as the canoe was all packed, and our Chinese cook and two Malay servants were properly ensconced in other canoes, and it took a deal of excited shouting and innumerable shiftings before this was accomplished to the satisfaction of the crew of each canoe, the word was given, and with a few powerful strokes from the paddles which sent the spray dashing and the water eddying all about us, we were round the turn of the river and had bid adieu to even such comfort and civilization as the Baram Bazaar affords, and had fairly started on this journey to the far interior of Borneo, with its untold possibilities, at the mercy of unknown natives, of whose very language we knew not a word.

THE CHINESE BAZAAR AT CLAUDETOWN—BARAM FORT.

IT CONSISTS OF A ROW OF SEPARATE SHOPS, WITH A WIDE VERANDA IN FRONT. TO TEMPT THE NATIVES, THERE IS THEREIN DISPLAYED EVERY VARIETY OF MERCHANDISE, FROM GLASS BEADS TO SEWING MACHINES, FROM SILK SCARFS TO CALICO, FROM ARRACK TO WHITE-SEAL CHAMPAGNE, FROM CHINESE CONFECTIONS TO PATENT MEDICINES.

MEXICAN DOLLARS ARE THE MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE, BUT A LARGE PART OF THE TRADING IS IN THE JUNGLE PRODUCTS COLLECTED BY THE NATIVES, SUCH AS RATTANS, GUTTA-PERCHA, CAMPHOR CRYSTALS, TAPIOCA, SAGO, RHINOCEROS HORN, EDIBLE BIRDS’-NESTS, ETC.

IN THE PHOTOGRAPH, WHICH WAS TAKEN DURING THE RAINY SEASON, WHEN STEAMERS CANNOT CROSS THE BARAM BAR, THE OPEN SPACE IN FRONT OF THE ROW OF SHOPS IS PILED UP WITH RATTANS AWAITING SHIPMENT. THE GROUP OF IBANS CLAD IN MALAY SARONGS ARE ADJUSTING THE GAFFS ON A FIGHTING-COCK PREPARATORY TO ENGAGING IN ONE OF THEIR FAVOURITE SPORTS.

Until the central high-lands of Borneo are reached, the river scenery is utterly uninteresting and monotonous; near the coast, where the river water is still brackish, the banks are lined with the feathery Nipa palm with fronds like stiff ferns, often forty feet high. These palms have no stalk, but start in a cluster close to the ground or just at the surface of the water, and grow so close together as to make an almost impenetrable wall. At first they appear beyond measure beautiful, with their polished, glancing leaves, quivering and wavering with every breath of air; and the gleam of the dark maroon mid-rib of the leaves swaying slowly with the motion adds a flickering light to the deep shadows, suggestive of mystery through the illimitable aisles beneath the over-arching fronds. But a closer acquaintance reveals the realm of crocodiles and snakes, not to mention the unromantic mosquito, diminutive in size but mighty to annoy. [Once on a time, in the salad days of my Borneo life, I tried to take a photograph in the depth of a Nipa swamp, but indeed, the torment of the myriads of rapacious and voracious mosquitoes which attacked me while making the necessary exposure was absolutely intolerable. When I threw the focussing cloth over my head I entrapped unwittingly so many mosquitoes that I could hardly see to focus; in one minute they had stung me on the lips, cheeks, eyelids, within the nostrils, and on the ears. I am not a coward, but I really could not face, literally, the overwhelming onslaught for the two minutes which, on account of the dim light, were necessary for the exposure; the poor wretch of an Iban who was with me, clad only in his loin-cloth, actually cried and moaned with the suffering; my negative turned out to have been under-exposed because both of us had been over-exposed.] After twenty or thirty miles of this unbroken wall of Nipa palms the charm diminishes, until at last all beauty is lost in satiety and the sight becomes infinitely tedious. It is, by the way, from these Nipa palms thus growing in brackish water that the natives obtain salt; the ashes of the stalks, leaves, and roots are soaked in water, which, when the water is evaporated, yields a very dirty looking salt, much preferred, however, by the natives to that which can be bought in the Bazaar. Where the Nipa palms end wild sugar-cane begins, and its gray-green, grassy stalks become quite as monotonous as the Nipa; it is not until the low muddy banks of the river change, first to sandy and then to pebbly beaches, that the real beauty of the river begins.

Notwithstanding the exciting novelty of our situation I cannot say that that first day passed quickly, or that it was full of interest; a day is a long time when it is spent hour after hour in gliding along a wall of unvarying green. Tama Bulan’s last purchase at the Bazaar was a Chinese tea ‘cosy’—a little cylindrical basket lined with felt, holding a small teapot closely fitted and keeping the tea hot for a long time. Every five minutes, as it seemed, we heard the click of the hasp; then the creak of the cover as the teapot was lifted out; then a loud and prolonged sucking sound as Tama Bulan luxuriously drained with infinite gusto a diminutive cup of tea. I am quite sure that the teapot was so often replenished from the river that it yielded, finally, nothing but tepid and muddy water,—but ah! the charm of drinking from a china teapot and quaffing with an ecstatic gurgle! The old Chief often peered through a little crevice in the pile of luggage between us, and then he would chuckle and give vent to a flow of words which bubbled out so fluently between his broad smile and his blackened teeth that they seemed to stumble over themselves and end off in fit of coughing. We smiled, nodded, mumbled, and pretended to understand it all,—even the cough.

Toward dusk of the first day we halted at a sloping sand-bank, enclosed on three sides by a dense hedge of wild sugar-cane, full of mysterious rustlings and sighings, and stretching far over the low ground to the beginning of the jungle. The other boats of our party were already tied up to the shore, and the brown-skinned men in their scarlet waist-cloths were bustling about collecting fire-wood and building cranes whereon to hang their little kettles of rice. A row of fires was soon started, and the short twilight of the tropics deepened into dark; the dancing fires cast giant shadows on the gray-green leaves of the wild sugar-cane, and lit up the intent faces of the natives and their glistening eyes and brass-studded teeth as they squatted about the fires or stirred the bubbling pots. When the meal was ended and they were smoking long cigarettes of Java tobacco rolled in the dried leaf of the wild banana, the moon rose and the embers of the fires were scattered. To become more at home with our hosts and fellow travellers we entered into their games and contests in broad jumping, high jumping, and tugs of war. Alas for me, I was indiscreet enough to turn a handspring for them, and also walk on my hands, feats that apparently were perfectly new to them; ever after I was introduced by Tama Bulan to his friends with the laudatory remark that I could walk on my hands and turn over; whereupon, be it on muddy bank or hard floor, I was incontinently obliged to repeat the performance.

SCENE ON THE BARAM

A RAFT BRINGING RATTANS TO THE BAZAAR.

When the Chief retired to his boat it was the signal for the general breaking up of the pastime. Grass mats were brought from the boats and spread on the sand, whereon the men threw themselves, and, in the soft light of the tropical moon, we were all soon lulled to sleep by the constant drone and chirp of nocturnal insects.

Early the next morning we awoke and saw, by the light of the setting moon, the men shaking out their mats and making preparations for starting off. We were soon under way once more, and between waking and sleeping we were conscious of the rhythmical click of the paddles and of an occasional command of ‘Mishai! Mishai!’ from Tama Bulan to the rowers to wield their paddles stronger and faster.

It is not worth while to give in detail all the long fifteen days of our journey up the river, or of our visits to the various houses on our way; as may be readily inferred, there were many hours, monotonous, weary, and at times perplexing; three men died of the grippe,—which seems to have penetrated this most remote corner of the world, and was at that time fairly epidemic on the Baram. Unfortunately for us, these deaths were attributed to our presence; a council was held, and we were, in consequence, requested to return; but we protested our innocence, asseverated our friendship, and having already come so far begged to be allowed to go on, and finally allayed their fears and gained their consent. We distributed tobacco and medicine freely, and held numerous clinics in our boat and on the river-banks, for the treatment of a troublesome inflammation of the eyes, probably due to the depilation of eyelashes, added to constant bathing in the muddy, turbid river. At one time the rains descended and the floods came, and for five mortal days we were tied up to the bank of the river, unable to advance on account of the irresistible current and of the immense logs and trees that were constantly brought down by the stream. During this enforced inactivity we became better and better acquainted with our companions; we learned their names and a generous smattering of their language,—an easy task; we powdered many and many a wound and abrasion with iodoform, whereof the color and smell delighted them, and brought us greatly into favor. From the boys who accompanied the party, and who acted as general ‘slaveys,’ we picked up most of our familiarity with the language; they were always ready to talk unconstrainedly with us, and we amused ourselves while amusing them. One little fellow in particular we never grew tired of watching; his actions were as quick and inquisitive as those of a monkey, with the added revelation of a shrewd intelligence. I blush to confess that we taught him the bad manners of putting his thumb to his nose and wiggling his fingers whenever his elders told him to do anything for them; the outraged indignation with which this perfectly novel and insulting gesture was received, and the sly winks little Adom gave us over his shoulder, at every repetition, were truly delightful. One day we painted him from head to foot, with water colors, in stripes of blue, green, yellow, and black, to his joyous delight; and although he was greeted with outbursts of laughter by the whole party, he was, nevertheless, exceedingly reluctant to wash off his decoration. Lishun was another of our particular ‘pals,’ and a sturdier, braver little fellow it would be hard to find; he was certainly not over eight or nine years old, but on many occasions he saved our canoe from being swept back round a sharp turn of the river where the current ran at headlong speed. Just as the men were losing all hold with their poles and the bow of the canoe was inevitably swinging out toward the middle of the river, Lishun, with a rattan rope attached to the bow, in one hand, would plunge into the swirl of water, and, disappearing for a breathless moment, would emerge among the roots and branches on the river-bank, with a shout of laughter from pure enjoyment, and there make fast his rope, while the polers with a fresh hold brought the bow of the canoe to the right direction. Why his little limbs were not torn to pieces and his body battered against the rocks in that seething, whirling water is to be explained, I suppose, only by the fact that water was almost as much his element as the earth or air. Then there were Terluat, a solemn little fellow, who preferred listening to talking; Apoi, a fat and greasy lumpkin with an inane giggle if you did but look at him; Deng, about sixteen years old, as clean-limbed and symmetrical an example of adolescence as can be imagined; and Gau, an ugly little monkey-faced boy, but as bright as a new penny and an expert in cat’s-cradle. Blari, Tama Bulan’s nephew, and Tama Talun, the Chief’s right-hand man and a kind of ‘master of ceremonies,’ were our particular friends among the men, apart from the Chief, Tama Bulan, himself.

SOME OF OUR KENYAH COMPANIONS DURING OUR VISIT TO TAMA BULAN’S HOUSE.

THE WELL-BUILT MAN IN THE CENTRE IS BLARI; THE BOY ON THE RIGHT IS LISHUN, SQUATTING CLOSE BY HIM IS DENG, AND STANDING BETWEEN HIM AND BLARI IS DENG’S ELDER BROTHER. THE NAMES OF THE THREE OTHERS I DO NOT RECALL.

During the weary days of waiting for the floods to subside, we used the youngsters to teach us their language, and never missed the opportunity of having them in our boat, where we could make the idle moments pass in showing them a collection of illustrated papers that we had brought with us. One evening, after they had been giving us a concert of their own music, we tried what effect some of our songs would have on them. Somewhat to my surprise, such melodies as ‘The Suwanee River’ and ‘The Old Kentucky Home’ possessed not the smallest charm for them; they evidently thought our style of singing exceedingly amusing,—perhaps it was; and they made no attempt to restrain their laughter. Afterward we heard them trying to imitate it by merely a continuous rise and fall of voice in a high key. One song, however, did appeal to them as more like their own; this was ‘Three Old Crows Sat on a Stone’ with the refrain of ‘Jimmy Magee Magaw;’ frequent repetitions were called for; and finally they caught the air and adapted words of their own to it, with a refrain of ‘Balli Boin Akán,’ a phrase wherewith the Dayongs, or priests, address pigs that are about to be sacrificed.

At the end of five days, during which the freshet acquired daily and nightly new strength from heavy thunder-showers, the Omen Birds, the guides and guardians of these people, were harangued and alternately cajoled and threatened. At one time a fruitless attempt was made to deceive them. The whole party disembarked, and, donning their spears and parangs, made a wide circuit in the jungle, so as to make the birds believe that the canoes were not going home, but were on an ordinary hunting expedition. Once Tama Bulan, while sitting in our canoe, shook his fist at a bird perched on a bough near by, and upbraided it for not causing the rain to cease. When he observed our interest in his proceedings his face broke into an embarrassed smile, and he poked me in the ribs, and said, chuckling, ‘Tuan does not believe in the birds, does he? He thinks Tama Bulan is crazy.’ I assured him that when in Borneo the white man was as much under the protection of the birds as were the natives themselves, which was equivocal, but gratifying to his belief. On another occasion both Dr. Hiller and myself were sprinkled with water from a stick cut into shavings at one end and held on the blade of a parang. Had the skies immediately cleared, it would have afforded such irrefragable proof of our league with evil Spirits that I know not what would have been our fate. But at last the waters fell, and, finally, we reached the mouth of the Pata River, the large tributary whereon Tama Bulan lives; and then after three days of hard boating over rapids which necessitated our disembarking twice and carrying our boat and all our baggage overland for a short distance, we arrived within one turn of the river from Tama Bulan’s house. Here a halt for final purification was made. An arch of boughs about five feet high was erected on the beach, and beneath it a fire was kindled, and then Tama Bulan, holding a young chicken, which he waved and brushed over every portion of the arch, invoked all evil Spirits which had been accompanying us, and forbade them to follow us further through the fire. The fowl was then killed, its blood smeared all over the archway and sprinkled in the fire; then, led by Tama Bulan, the whole party filed under the arch, and as they stepped over the fire each one spat in it vociferously and immediately took his place in the boats.[4] A half hour more brought us to the huge log which serves as a landing along the shore below the house of Tama Bulan.

BULAN, THE DAUGHTER OF TAMA BULAN.

(From a photograph taken, and kindly loaned, by Professor A. C. Haddon, F. R. S.)

Tama Bulan did all in his power to show us that we were welcome, and assigned to us an immense slab of Tapang wood about eight feet square and suspended about three feet above the floor by beams from the roof; hereon we could spread our mats at night and keep our possessions out of the reach of the hungry mongrel dogs that pervaded the veranda. As soon as we were thus properly shelved, and had our things stowed away comfortably, our host came and requested us to visit him in his private apartment and meet his family. With much pride he conducted us into the presence of his daughter, Bulan, who had gathered about her a bevy of her intimate girl friends, all busily engaged in making cigarettes; she received us with quiet dignity, but, owing to our lack of proficiency in Malay, I must acknowledge that the conversation could not be termed particularly brilliant. However, we did our best to be entertaining; Dr. Hiller and myself displayed the elaborate Japanese tattooing on our arms, and I sprung by hand, at her father’s instigation, into Bulan’s good graces. She was about seventeen or eighteen years old, with a strong resemblance to her father, and mild, gentle eyes which she slowly opened and shut with demure solemnity; her teeth were, of course, blackened; her hair was parted in the middle, and brought down low in glossy black waves over her forehead and held in place by a fillet of plaited rattan; her eyebrows and eyelashes had been either shaved or depilated. The one ineradicable blemish in her beauty is her left ear; over-ambitious parents had suspended therein too heavy weights when she was young, and one beautiful ear-lobe had given away; to be sure, it had been patched and reunited, but the patch was undeniable, and an ugly lump the result. Alas! even three hundred miles in the heart of Borneo il faut souffrir pour être belle. I showed her some of the pictures of American men and women in the Magazines we had with us; she was much amused at the small waists of the women, which I was obliged to tell her were effected by steel bands laced tightly about them. This was incomprehensible to her, and the torture which she inferred excited her sympathy. In every picture where neither beard nor moustache marked the sex I had to tell her which were men and which were women; she could see no difference in the faces, and the dress and coiffure had no meaning to her.

We were next shown the little son and heir who was to be the centre of the coming festivities; he was the whitest Bornean baby that I ever saw, his skin was what might be called a dark-cream color. Infant as he was,—not yet a year old,—he evinced the utmost terror at the sight of us, and emitted such bawls that he had to be carried away quickly. His ears, even at that early age, had been slit, and were already quite elongated with large bunches of pewter rings, which were, in fact, his sole article of dress. It always seemed strange to see babies in arms carried about without a rag of clothing on them; long clothes are so indissolubly associated in our minds with infancy that there seemed to be something monstrous and discordant in a tender little baby continually stark naked. This baby, in spite of its bad temper, was, however, the idol of the household; nephews, nieces, friends, and slaves of its parents were all proud to be allowed to carry it about the veranda, in its sling hung with charms.

While we were away on a five days’ visit to another Chief on the Apoh River, Tama Bulan most hospitably caused to be constructed for us in the veranda, nearly opposite his apartment, a little room partitioned off by matting and a wall of bamboo rods, wherein, as he explained, we should be free from the annoyance of children and dogs; but even while he was speaking a row of little, beady eyes peering at us through the cracks between the bamboos made me sympathize with the feelings of the freaks at a circus when the small boy lifts the flaps of the tent.

On the day of our arrival, the only indication of the approaching festivities were hundreds of bunches of bananas, suspended everywhere from the roof; but when we returned from the Apoh River, preparations were already in full swing for the Naming, and we contributed freely from our store of tobacco for the manufacture of cigarettes. Bulan’s room was the centre of this industry, and the workers, all women and girls, occupied every inch of the floor, squatting in groups round baskets piled high with the stringy weed. While some prepared the dried banana leaves, others rolled the cigarettes; some rolled them on their thighs, others on polished boards held in their laps. It was a merry gathering, with a constant buzz of gossip, and now and then loud bursts of innocent laughter that bespake the vacant mind. The holiday had already begun, and during the days devoted to the ceremonies there is no work in the rice-fields, consequently the house was full of young people who would be, at other times, hard at work out of doors. The small boy was, of course, ubiquitous,—as, on similar busy occasions, he is in civilized countries; and little Adom seemed to be everywhere at every instant, upsetting baskets of tobacco, purloining rolls of banana leaf, dropping chips and rubbish from rafters above on the heads of the workers beneath, and at every turn in everybody’s way; nevertheless he was treated with uniform forbearance, and only occasional playful sallies from the girls kept him from downright hindering them in their work. Kindliness and hilarity ruled the hour.

GROUP OF BOYS

THE FOURTH ON THE LEFT IN THE FRONT ROW IS LAWI, AN ADOPTED SON OF ABAN LIAH, AND A PRESUMPTIVE CHIEF. THE OTHERS WERE ALREADY HIS DEVOTED FOLLOWERS.

As fast as the cigarettes were made they were strung on a thread and hung, a dangling fringe, on a framework of rattans about six feet long, representing a horn-bill with his wings outspread. The head was carved of wood and painted, so that it had a most life-like appearance, and in addition it was ornamented with several strips of bead-work cloth draped around it and enveloping the neck; its tail was composed of real feathers with the broad black band. The cigarettes were hung almost as closely as feathers all over the body, wings, and tail,—indeed, there must have been a thousand affixed to it. When the last cigarette was hung in place, and it took far into the night before the whole was finished, the huge bird was suspended from a rafter beyond the reach of pilfering hands, until the proper time for distribution.

In deciding the exact date for the important ceremony of naming the son of a Chief, the phase of the moon is of vital importance. According to the Kenyah calendar, the moon passes through twelve phases, whereof only two or three are really auspicious; and when some are in the ascendant they prognosticate even downright ill luck to all who are then named. These phases are as follows (‘bulan,’ meaning moon): (1) ‘Bulan musit,’ the birth of the moon; (2) ‘Bulan anak,’ the moon has a child; (3) ‘Bulan dyipu boin,’ the pig’s tooth moon; (4) ‘Bulan bakwong,’ the bird’s-bill moon; (5) ‘Bulan petak,’ moon of sickness; (6) ‘Bulan batak-palan,’ the fish moon, moderately good, but not auspicious for building houses; (7) ‘Bulan salap jiit’ and (8) ‘Bulan salap bioh,’ the big and the little belly-moons; both good moons; the ‘Salap bioh’ is the best for naming children. (9) ‘Bulan loong-payong jiit,’ moon of the small payong fruit; (10) ‘Bulan loong-payong bioh,’ moon of the big payong fruit; these two phases are auspicious for almost any undertaking. (11) ‘Bulan blasong jiit,’ moon of the small pearl shell (the shell often attached to the front of a war-coat); this is also an auspicious phase. (12) ‘Bulan blasong bioh,’ moon of the big pearl shell,—i.e., full moon; this is considered not a very favorable phase. A child born under it goes to extremes. It is either very intelligent or else an idiot. Fighting and trouble are most apt to occur during the full moon.

The usual age at which a child is named is at about the end of the first year or at the beginning of the second. Up to this time all the children, especially those of a Chief, are under a ‘lali,’ a word signifying a restriction, and used in the same sense as taboo. As long as this lali is in force the child must not be bathed in the river, but in the private apartment of its parents; it must not be carried even down the ladder from the house to the ground; even to mention its future name is so ill-omened as to be prohibitory; it is known only by the indefinite appellation ‘Angat’ if a boy, and ‘Endun’ if a girl,—Angat means literally a little worm; what Endun means, if it have a separate meaning, I do not know. On the present occasion, the moon was in the phase of Salap bioh, the big-bellied moon,—that is, gibbous.

Numerous guests now began to arrive to participate in the ceremonies; they came so quietly, and so little commotion followed their arrival, that we were hardly aware of their presence until we noticed the large groups outside of Tama Bulan’s door.

On the morning of the appointed day, alternate blows on two large gongs gave notice that the ceremony was about to begin. We filed into the Chief’s room with the others, and, passing through the narrow and dark little entry with its very ramshackle floor, we found the family and the guests sitting cross-legged about a large mat in the middle of the room. In the centre of this mat was a heap about a foot high of white husked rice; at one side of this heap sat the proud mother, holding the pale little son and heir. When we were all seated, the gongs redoubled and trebled their din, to drown all sounds of evil portent while the rites take place.

It is the first duty of the Dayong, or priestess, (on this occasion Tama Bulan’s first wife, the mother of Bulan,) to drive away all evil Spirits which may be perchance still lurking near the child. Old age is seldom, if ever, beautiful in Borneo, and as old Tina Bulan stood up to officiate, with her straggly hanks of swarthy hair, her blackened snags of teeth, her shrivelled, bony arms and corded neck, she looked the supreme incarnation of a witch, straight from the ‘pit of Acheron.’ But ugliness, as well as beauty, is only skin deep; and we learned to know this Tina Bulan as a dear old soul, as kind and good-natured as mortal can be.

She held by its legs a young chicken, which, with excited gesticulations, she waved above and about the little stark-naked, bawling baby, struggling in its mother’s lap, and as she waved she dipped water from a bowl, and, sprinkling it upon the fowl, exhorted it, as follows:

‘Misau balli yap!

Balli Isit! balli Sakit!

Misau balli Mibang nelatang,

Balli nupi jiat, iya malat!

Ja! dua! talu! pat!

Pat porat petat, peti pasi balli jiat!’

Which, somewhat freely translated, means, ‘Drive away, O hallowed fowl, and hallowed Isit [omen bird], all sickness and evil Spirits that surround us! Render harmless all bad dreams! One! two! three! four! Away, all evil demons, here, there, and everywhere!’

As she counted ja! dua! talu! pat! she waved her hands violently and threateningly, as if fairly pushing the evil Spirits from her. Trembling with excitement, she then dropped cross-legged close to the heap of snow-white rice, and with a bamboo joint measured out eight portions; out of these, she made a separate pile at one side. Eight measures of rice are the portion for the child of a Chief, half that number suffices ordinary children. The rice, thus measured, is for the god, Penylong, the guardian of all souls, and for his wife, Perbungan; the spiritual essence alone of the grains goes to the gods; the ceremony over, the rice may be eaten by mortals. In the middle of this lesser pile of rice she planted a small sprig of a tree, called the tree of life, ‘Kayu urip;’ with this symbol in front of her, she carefully picked out from the pile eight full, well-shaped grains; wrapping them in a strip of bark-fibre, and holding the strip close above the child’s head, she tied a knot in it enclosing and holding fast the grains. (This strip thus knotted is called ‘Tebuku urip.’) Eight times was this repeated, and all the while the brazen gongs kept up their hideous, deafening din; now and then, when the wearied performers stopped for a moment to change hands, the vigorous and well-sustained bawling of the noble infant filled the gap. Once I caught sight of little Adom sliding stealthily down from his perch on the rack for bamboo water-bottles, whence he had been enjoying his wonted bird’s eye view of the whole performance, and, seizing the arm of a tired gong-beater, his little dust-begrimed face all contorted with earnestness, helped him to beat louder.

Every time that Tina Bulan enclosed in a knot the eight grains of rice, she murmured: ‘May your soul live long, and, by the omens of this knotted cord of life, may you live to a venerable old age!’[5]

If each grain of rice mean a year of life, the reckoning does not fall far short of the Biblical three score and ten.

When the ceremony was completed of the Tebuku urip (where ‘urip’ means of life), the ‘Kayu urip’ (the tree of life) was placed in a joint of bamboo, wherein also the tebuku itself was stored. The bamboo joint is assigned only to a man-child; out of bamboo are made tobacco-boxes, and quivers for the poisoned darts of the blow-pipe. Such things are carried only by men, never by women.

KENYAH WOMEN IN ORDINARY COSTUME.

THE RINGS STRETCHING THE EAR-LOBES ARE OF COPPER, CAST BY CHINAMEN AT THE BAZAAR. THE GIRDLES OF BEADS ROUND THE HIPS ARE MADE IN GERMANY AND IMPORTED BY CHINESE TRADERS.

At the naming of a girl, the Kayu urip and the Tebuku are placed in a small basket, like those wherein rice is carried; this symbolises women’s work in the rice-fields.

These symbols are hung up in the child’s room, over the sleeping-place, and are ever after venerated.

The moment that Tina Bulan had placed the Kayu urip and the Tebuku in the bamboo joint the gongs ceased, and I think a sigh of relief swept over the whole assembly. Thus far no sound of evil omen had been heard; indeed, any malevolent lizard or rancorous frog, in order to make his fateful croak audible above the indescribable din of those fearsome gongs, would have to employ a siren whistle with megaphone attachment.

The little baby was now danced and jiggled and carried about in its sling to stop its wailing. Several young girls and old women handed round on flat baskets, heaps of little packages of salt and ginger-root wrapped in pieces of green banana leaf; these, together with two or three bananas, they distributed to each guest.

Tama Talun, who sat beside me on the floor throughout the ceremony, and with genuine courtesy explained from time to time what was going on, told me that the salt, the ginger, and the sweet banana indicated what it was hoped would be the future disposition of the child, namely, he should be duly calm, hot, and gentle, never sluggish nor apathetic. Of course, I opened my package, ate a pinch of salt, nibbled the ginger-root, and wished the while good luck to the babe; then cheerfully pledged him in a cup of arrack, which was also passed to each guest. This apparently completed the ceremonies of the first day for Tama Bulan, Junior (I cannot call him by his real name; what that was, as yet not a soul but his father and mother knew). The women all arose and began to file out of the room; wishing not to miss anything, I too rose up, and was slowly making my way among them to the door when I became aware of an unusual amount of giggling around me, nay, of several explosions of laughter from the men in the room behind me. I turned about and saw all their faces on a broad grin. What ridiculous breach of etiquette had I committed? I paused, and good-natured Tama Talun came to my rescue, shouting out over the heads of the rest, ‘Go on, Tuan, it’s all right; they are only foolishly laughing because the Tuan seems to think he is a woman. We men have to stay behind until all the women get into the next room.’ With the exception of Dr. Hiller, I was the only one in that dusky assemblage that could blush; my cheeks and forehead at once fulfilled their duty, and I gently edged out of the crowd.

It is usual, on the naming-day of a Chief’s son, to bestow names on all the babies of a befitting age in the house; advantage must be taken of the same auspicious day. Therefore as soon as the ceremony was thus far completed in Tama Bulan’s room, there was a second wild uproar of gongs a little further down the veranda, and to this room the guests all repaired. There, the same ceremonies were repeated, except, as I mentioned before, only four measures of rice were apportioned for the humbler folk; but, nevertheless, eight grains were tied up in each knot of the Tebuku.

Thus it went on throughout that whole day; the guests wandering from room to room, tasting pinches of salt, nibbling ginger, sipping arrack, and stuffing themselves with bananas; between whiles cooling off by bathing in the river.

The rites of the first day are but preliminary to the more august ceremonies of the second day, which are conducted in public outside the Chief’s room, in the veranda, opposite to his door, where all the household and guests can assemble to welcome the youngster as soon as his name is proclaimed.

When the morning meal was over, the strong young men of the household, provided with rattan ropes, descended to the muddy wallows among the massive upright posts that support the house, and began at once to give chase to the pigs. These knowing, omen-yielding animals perform a highly important part in the rites, but they pay the dear forfeit of their lives for the privilege; they seemed verily to suspect, on the present occasion, the fate in store for them, and, at an early hour, had ungraciously betaken themselves to the woods. An hour passed, then another, and then another,—and no hunter with his pig had returned. Tama Bulan gradually became greatly worried, and kept reiterating that no one could estimate how evil would be the omen if the large pig which he had destined for this ceremony could not be found. At last, however, cheering shouts were heard from the neighboring jungle, and, soon after, one by one, the pigs, six or seven in number, with the pig to the fore, were brought up to the veranda, slung on poles, with their four feet tied together; here they were plumped down in a row close to the place where the rites were to be held.

On the hearth, below the row of human skulls hanging opposite the Chief’s door, there must now be started New Fire,—that is, fire produced by the fire-saw, the most primitive method of obtaining it, and, possibly, because it is the most primitive, it is obligatory at all august ceremonies. According to tradition among the Kayans and Kenyahs, one of the early inhabitants of the earth, named Laki Oi, the Prometheus of Kayan mythology, taught the people this method, and called it ‘Musa;’ he also invented the fire-drill, which he called ‘Nalika.’ The Musa consists of a piece of soft fibrous wood, which is held down by the feet, firmly on the ground, and rests upon a bundle of fine slivers of dry wood; underneath it, is passed a strip of dry but flexible bamboo, which is sawed back and forth until the friction starts a spark in the fine dust which has been thereby rubbed up; the spark is fostered and soon blown into a flame in the bundle of slivers. When the materials are in proper condition, fire can be produced in much less than a minute. Should all the fires in a house go out, or when fire is to be started for the first time in a new house, the Musa is the only method whereby fire may be kindled,—no flint and steel, nor fire-drill, nor fire-syringe, nor matches, (common enough, thanks to the Chinese bazaar,) can be used; it must be the Musa, and the Musa alone. At the naming of a child, the piece of soft wood is carved into a grotesque head at one end. The image thus made is called ‘Laki Pesong,’ the god of the Musa.

The Stick, ‘Laki Pesong,’ and Strips of bamboo used in making New Fire. One-quarter of the natural size.

But to return to Tama Bulan’s house. As soon as New Fire had been kindled, the gongs, as on the day before, began their deafening clangour; the parents, looking very grave, slowly emerged from their ‘Lamin,’ or private room. The mother carried the baby, who, for a wonder, was not crying,—but I could see by his expression that he was well primed for a vigorous bawl on the slightest provocation. Solemnly they marched and took their places on the large mat close to the hearth. Some strong youths now seized the big black pig, Tama Bulan’s prime selection, and partly lifting it, and partly swinging it about by the ears and tail, not without squealings which would have been ear-piercing but for the gongs, they hauled it up close beside the Chief. Across the swine’s body and over its neck were wreathed the mother’s most prized and costly strings of beads; according to Kenyah computation, the value of these beads amounted to the price of several slaves, or probably to the cost of two whole houses. I suppose that this was not merely for the sake of decorating the victim, but was designed to flatter and cajole it into having a beautiful liver, overspread with bright omens for her boy.

MAKING FIRE WITH A ‘FIRE-DRILL.’

THE PIECE OF WOOD WHICH IS HELD UPON THE GROUND MUST BE SOFT, FIBROUS, AND DRY; THE STICK WHICH IS DRILLED INTO IT IS HARD. FIRE CAN BE THUS STARTED IN ABOUT FORTY SECONDS. THIS METHOD OF PRODUCING FIRE IS NOT HELD TO BE SACRED, AS IS THAT OF CREATING FIRE WITH THE ‘MUSA’ OR FIRE-SAW.

The relatives and the guests disposed themselves in a large circle around the solemn parents, the infant, and the pig; directly in front, and facing them, the Dayong sat cross-legged, a very tall and skinny old man, whose lower jaw was furnished with but one tooth, which, when he omitted to suck it in, stuck out at right angles. He did not wear, as far as I could see, any peculiar costume or badge of office; he was clad in nothing but an ordinary loin-cloth.

When the assemblage had settled themselves in their places, some sitting on the floor, others standing on the large rice mortars so that they could look into the centre of the circle, the old Dayong arose, and grasping in his right hand a parang and a stick, the latter cut into a brush of splinters at one end, with his left hand he sprinkled water upon them from a bowl held by an assistant. The dripping stick and the parang he waved over the child’s head and muttered words, which Tama Talun, again my kind interpreter, said expressed the desire that the life of the child might be as ‘laram,’ cool, as the water he was sprinkling over it.[6]

To insure protection to the child against evil Spirits, a young chicken was waved above and around it, as on the previous day; and then at once the chicken’s head was chopped off and some of its blood smeared on the baby’s hand. This indignity supplied the provocation, which, from the first, I had anticipated, and instantly stirred up all the depravity of the infant, who had been thus far just as quiet as a lamb; the gongs now stopped their din, but the bonnie babe proved an excellent substitute, and awoke every echo in the smoky rafters overhead. He kicked, and roared, and wriggled in his mother’s lap, bent himself backward, and beat with his little fists at the fluttering chicken every time it was waved near his face; I was really afraid he would burst a blood-vessel so scarlet did his little body become with the exertion of expelling those piercing shrieks; not a tear issued from his eyes, and the bunches of pewter rings in his stringy little ears kept flapping against his cheeks as he shook his head and thrashed about in violent contortions. He never once stopped bawling throughout all the rest of the ceremony.

All evil Spirits having been now effectually dispelled, the Dayong squatted down by the pig, and taking from the fire a small stick of wood with a glowing end he touched it to the pig’s side, by way of calling the poor beast’s attention to what he was about to say. When the pig’s struggles had calmed down, the old man laid his hands on its side and soothingly addressed it as ‘Balli Boin Akán, Balli Boin Akán,’ and begged it to intercede with Penylong and Perbungan, and to tell unerringly whether or not the name now about to be given to the child had been auspiciously chosen. The name had never yet been divulged; even the old Dayong knew not what it was. It was an absolute secret between Tama Bulan and the mother of the child. Some days before, not knowing that the name was thus sacredly secret, I had asked what it was to be, but Tama Bulan courteously told me that it was utterly impossible for him to reveal it. All through this ceremony, Tama Bulan sat cross-legged beside his wife quietly, every feature wearing a very serious expression, keenly watching the Dayong.

Most of the time, the mother sat with her legs straight out in front of her, and with her squirming baby wriggling on her knees from side to side; she kept her eyes cast down, watching the child, but never attempting to stop its bawling, to which, indeed, no one seemed to pay the slightest attention.

Little Adom had a view better, of course, than any body except the principals; there he was lying flat on his face on a beam directly above the naming-party, his legs and arms dangling down on either side. When I caught sight of him his little, black eyes danced with mischief, and from his lofty perch he defied us with that impudent gesture which, in an unhappy hour, I had taught him: putting his thumb to his nose, twirling his fingers, and winking and blinking his eyes and lolling his tongue out like a veritable little goblin. All the solemnity in the world could never impress him.

When the Dayong had finished his address to the pig, italicising important words by prods in the ribs with a bony thumb, he took up a strip of bamboo, such as is used for the fire-saw, and, bending it into a loop so that the two ends just touched, he set fire to it at the bend and allowed it to burn through. The burning of this loop was watched with breathless interest by Tama Bulan, as well as by a group of old crones who had now gathered close about the Dayong. When the loop snapped asunder and the flame went out, the Dayong put the two strips side by side and so rested the unburnt ends on his thumb-nail as to make them exactly even, and then closely scrutinized the burnt ends. He said not a word, but ominously shook his head, assumed a troubled expression, and even forgot to suck in his solitary tooth. The two strips were taken from him by one of the old women and subjected to the same measurement and scrutiny, except that she kept up a constant argument, and a shaking of her head; finally, she fumbled over the burnt ends and knocked off a little particle of ash just ready to fall; then she held them up before the Dayong, and the tone of what she uttered was decidedly more reassuring. He measured them again very closely, and seemed to be better pleased. Tama Bulan could restrain himself no longer, but got up hastily to examine the strips for himself; he also rubbed with his finger one of the charred ends, and then adjusted the sound ends on his thumb-nail, but he shook his head, and said, somewhat despairingly, ‘I’m afraid one is much too long.’ Hereupon, the ever kind Tama Talun explained to us that by these strips it is decided whether or not the undivulged name which had been chosen is a good one; if the two pieces are of exactly the same length, the omen is unfavorable; if they are very unequal in length, the name is likewise ill-chosen. There should be just the tiniest, slightest difference in the length of the strips; then it is absolutely certain that the name is well-chosen. (Ah! what a shrewd, clever head devised this augury! how easy by this rule of thumb-nail to make the difference slight, and how hard to make the strips exactly even or greatly uneven!) So it happened that, after the strips had passed over the thumb-nails of half a dozen of the wisest crones and toothless old men, they were returned to the Dayong, who was now fully convinced that his first measurements had been entirely wrong, and he now emphatically declared that the omens were most auspicious. Throughout this momentous discussion the object of it all kept up an unintermitting bawl; if the evil Spirits have ears, never during this hour would they have molested him; there was no need of gongs with that baby to the fore.

The charred ends of the bamboo strips were then dipped in a cocoanut shell of water held by one of the old women standing near; the ash and water were mixed by the Dayong into a paste between his thumb and finger and smeared on the baby’s forehead and in its hair. At the instant of doing this he leaned forward and asked Tama Bulan what name he had selected. Tama Bulan whispered mysteriously very low close to the Dayong’s ear. The Dayong then reached for the cocoanut shell of water held by the old woman, and most carefully and solemnly advanced it toward the child; the shell was nervously followed every inch of the way by four or five pairs of brown claw-like, old hands with anxious zeal, lest a drop of its precious contents should be spilled; in spite of the risk it ran from this excess of zeal, it got to its destination safely, and the very instant that the water was poured over the head of the baby the Dayong said aloud, impressively, ‘Be thy name Lijow!’ The name, for the first time thus uttered aloud, was murmured throughout the large assemblage, and the happiness of the selection commended with ‘nods and becks and wreathed smiles;’ it was the name of one of Tama Bulan’s ancestors, and means Tiger. (It is unlucky to name a child after a living person,—it is apt to make the child stupid; and it is fatal to select the name of one who has recently died,—speedy death follows.)

The cocoanut shell was now refilled with home-made arrack, whereof a drop was placed on little Lijow’s lips from the finger of the Dayong; then the mother, henceforth Tina Lijow, took a sip from it, and Tama Bulan drained it to the dregs, whereof I imagine there were plenty, due to the Dayong’s grimy finger. Then the Dayong poured out a measure for himself, and then we, as guests of importance, were courteously served, and after us followed all the rest of the guests in turn. Again, as on the first day, packages of salt, ginger-root, and bananas were passed around, and The Ceremony was over. Everything had gone off to perfection, not an evil omen had marred its smooth success,—thanks to the gongs and the strength of dear little Lijow’s lungs; if his voice keeps its promise until manhood, he will make himself heard throughout Sarawak.

It now only remained to wrap up the precious strips of bamboo in a piece of banana leaf and place them in the bamboo joint along with the symbols of the first day’s rites. After this was properly accomplished, the ‘Balli Boin,’ that sacred pig, was killed, and his considerate liver politely proclaimed in its every tint that Lijow’s life would be all that the heart of a devoted Kenyah parent could desire.

Tama Bulan, with a beaming face, said to us, ‘Don’t forget to tell Tuan Hote [Hose] that I have called my boy Lijow; he wanted to know what the name was to be, but I couldn’t tell him then.’

The naming of little Lijow having been thus most successfully finished, the Chief’s family party moved out of the circle gathered about the hearth, and another family party took its place in front of the Dayong; their Balli Boin was hoisted and pulled into position, and the same ceremonies with the taking of omens were punctiliously repeated. Of course, for these people of lesser rank, there was not felt the same widespread interest as for the Chief’s son, and, therefore, the assemblage gradually dwindled; the cool river offered more attractions than the hot, breezeless veranda, with its din of gongs and of squalling babies and of squealing pigs, and its loud-voiced Dayong with an unruly, projecting tooth. I think there were in all six babies named on that day, and by the time the last had been proclaimed a member of the clan the afternoon was well advanced.

Many a jar of arrack had been broached during the ceremonies, consequently all the members of the household and their guests were decidedly fain to sing and dance. The raised portion of the flooring extending along the greater part of the veranda under the eaves was lined with men waiting in turn for the cups of arrack that were freely passed from lip to lip. Tama Bulan beamed upon his whole large household, and with his own hands dipped out the mild drink from the large jars with a ladle made from a seed of the Billian tree (iron-wood). The minor notes of Kaluris now resounded, and here and there on the floor of huge, broad planks, for which Tama Bulan’s house is famous, the horny feet of dancers thumped and shuffled and scraped as one after another essayed to outdo all predecessors in the wild movements of a war-dance. They leaped in the air, waving their parang and shield; they stamped in time to the music; they whirled and twisted, sometimes falling on one knee, slashing at imaginary foes; the long feathers of the Argus pheasant waved from their war-caps, and the black and white feathers of the horn-bill rattled on their war-coats and glittered in the crimson level rays of the sun that swept in under the eaves of the house. Now was the time to bring forth the great horn-bill with its plumage of cigarettes; it was tenderly moved to a beam within easy reach, and its bristling feathers, which had cost so much fair labor, were greedily snatched off, and in a trice the atmosphere of the veranda, thick with tobacco-smoke, became even to the long rays of the setting sun almost impenetrable.

While this smoking was literally in full blast, the women retired to their rooms and arrayed themselves in every bit and shred that they possessed of gaudy bead-work, for their necks, their ears, and their waists; they donned their brightest fillets for the hair, and they tied round their waists their skirts of black cloth with patches of bright calico stitched down the side. Down to their waists, except for these bead necklaces, they were, as usual, bare.

The withdrawal of the women was a signal to the men to range themselves in two long rows facing each other; thus they sat on the floor, puffing hard at their cigarettes and chuckling with one another in anticipation of the ordeal they were about to undergo. From one of the rooms the women issued in single file; she who headed the procession carried a large bowl, the next carried a cocoanut-shell spoon, the third bore a large flat dish piled high with cubes of raw fat pork, behind her, fourth in the line, followed Bulan, the daughter of the house, who carried nothing; but everyone could see, by the twinkle of her eye, that she meant mischief; this same order:—bowl-bearer, spoon-bearer, pork-bearer, helper, was preserved in a regular series all down the whole line of sixty or more women.

Sedately and slowly and silently they marched the whole length of the veranda close to the wall of the apartments, and then turned in between the lines of squatting men. When the first man was reached, the procession halted, and from the bowl held by the first woman, the spoon-bearer dipped a spoonful of a muddy-looking liquid and poured it into the man’s gaping mouth. As it touched his tongue, his face was a study in contortions; when the spoon was withdrawn he tried first to smile, then his eyes were lost in wrinkles, his mouth puckered up, he looked seasick, and then with a shudder that shook his frame, gulped down his dose; the spoon-bearer passed on, then the bearer of the pork cubes halted in front of him, and Bulan, taking from the dish one of those nauseating gray, greasy, tepid cubes of raw fat, popped it dexterously into his mouth and then wiped her greasy fingers across his upturned face. Again shuddering tremors shook his frame, but—he bolted it! then gazed about him with a sickly smile. Down both lines there burst forth peals on peals of laughter; the men shouted and stamped their feet with merriment over the victim’s misery, unmindful that his fate would soon be theirs. The women tried hard to maintain their gravity, but the varied and ludicrous sufferings of their lords and masters were often too much for their dignity, and they unreservedly joined in the mirth; to those against whom they had any private grudge they administered an extra dose, or stirred up the dregs of the drink, or bestowed a particularly flabby and repulsive piece of pork. As we sat about half way down the line, we had quite a while to await our turn, and to speculate on the ingredients of the awful drink,—it was almost adequately nauseating that we should have to take it out of that family, that tribal spoon. My turn came at last. Well, it was a ghastly dose and no mistake. It was lukewarm, it was fiery hot with peppers, it was salt, it was pungent, it was sweet, it was flat, it was sour, and it tasted strongly of brass bowl. All this was administered from a spoon that without washing or wiping had been already in the mouths of thirty or forty black-toothed predecessors. Our uncontrollable and immeasurable disgust created infinite amusement and prolonged laughter, and when Bulan, full of mischievous merriment, followed with the pork cubes, knowing that she had the Tuans at her mercy, she did not leave the fraction of an inch of our faces that was not bedaubed with grease. And then how she laughed! As though one such dose was not enough, there was the prospect before us of having it, Heaven save the mark! again and again administered down to the very last woman of that long, interminable procession; first a spoonful of that appalling, unnameable liquid! then a mouthful of raw pork! The devoted Tama Bulan and Tama Talun came at length to our rescue, and told us that after the first two or three doses there would be no offence if we just dipped our finger in the drink and touched it to our tongue, and if we merely took the pork between our lips; sometimes this evasion was successful, but now and then the drink was forced upon us, and we got a worse smearing from greasy fingers. Shrewd old Laki La, profiting by experience at other similar feasts, held a tumbler under his chin, and as fast as the drink and pork were deposited in his mouth they were re-deposited in the tumbler. Tama Usong, to whose house on the Apoh River we had paid a visit only a little while before, sat next to me, and I asked him how he was getting along, and if his stomach was not nearly full. ‘Oh, no, indeed, Tuan,’ said he, laughing; ‘I long ago put my stomach out here,’ and he pointed behind him to a row, a foot long, of cubes of pork which he had surreptitiously deposited on the railing of the veranda. It was a hideous nightmare! But at last the little girls brought up the end of the procession, and then the greater part of the assembly dashed for the river to wash off a little of the fat with which their faces were fairly dripping.

Tama Talun explained to us that this was a survival of old times, when warriors returned from a head-hunt, and sat thus and were obliged to take in their mouths a small piece of their enemy’s flesh, served to them just as the fat pork is served now-a-days. They were not to swallow the human flesh, but merely hold it between their lips to show contempt for the enemy, and also thereby to absorb his valour. Dr. Hose, when told of this interpretation, asserted that the object of this ceremony is to impress evil Spirits, who, when they see so many men with faces smeared with food, will be led to think that a very great feast had taken place in honor of the newly named children, and that, therefore, these children must be most important people, and to harm them would stir the anger of a vast multitude. Dr. Hose’s knowledge of the Kenyahs extends over so many years that it is venturesome to dissent from him; nevertheless, our interpretation was received directly from an unusually intelligent native, while the ceremony was going on before us, and was, moreover, given voluntarily without any questions on our part. Dr. Hose rejects this interpretation, because of his conviction that cannibalism, in any form whatsoever, never existed in Borneo.

MUJAN, ONE OF THE BELLES OF TAMA BULAN’S HOUSEHOLD.

(From a photograph taken, and kindly loaned, by Professor A. C. Haddon, F. R. S.)

By the time we had returned to our places in the veranda, after having washed off in the river the abhorred grease from our faces, the women had doffed their uncomfortable burdens of finery and were squatting among the men, in a close group round Tama Bulan, who was cutting the rattan bindings of several more large jars of arrack. The Chief was the first to quaff the beverage, and as he lifted the cup to his lips the whole assemblage began to intone a continuous ‘oo-oo-oo-oo,’ in harmony but with a deep bass predominant, and kept up this resonant accompaniment until the last drop was drained. After Tama Bulan, the guests were served in turn, and as each one lifted the cup to his lips (and it must be drained to the last drop at one draught) this ‘oo-oo’-ing rose and fell like a bewildering, deafening humming in the ears; it was to me a noteworthy experience; unquestionably it marvellously accelerates the action of the alcohol in the arrack. When the cup had been passed round several times to each man and woman, and the oo-oo-ing was becoming somewhat discordant and boisterous, the door of one of the rooms was flung open and the genuine feast was brought in, piled high in three small canoes borne on the shoulders of men staggering under the weight. One-half of each canoe was heaped with little packages of boiled rice wrapped in green banana leaves and tied with pieces of grass; the other half fairly bristled, like a fretful porcupine, with bamboo skewers whereon were several bits of boiled pork. (It will, perhaps, be noted that a feast does not consist in variety or quality, but in quantity.) Here and there among the guests were placed bowls of salted fish pulverised, and to each guest were given a packet of rice and a stickful of meat, while Tama Bulan shouted the hospitable injunction, ‘Kuman plahei plahei’—Eat slowly, slowly! There was no stint; everyone was freely at liberty to have as many portions of rice and of meat as he could eat, and was welcome to help himself to all he wished of the dried fish.

In my packet of rice there was a little discoloration at one end, that looked like iron rust, but Ma Obat, a one-eyed and villainous-looking old fellow, who sat beside me, seeing that I scrutinized the spot rather carefully, politely took the lump of rice out of my hand, and with a thumb-nail that looked, I must say, like a coal-heaver’s shovel, scraped away the dubious portion and then handed the lump back to me. The discolored grains were gone, but, woe’s me, they were replaced by several grimy finger-marks. For the sake of his triumphant and kindly beaming smile I could not refuse to eat it, and so with eyes fixed on the rafters overhead,—it was bolted!

This feast marked the conclusion of the ceremonies, and we stuffed and smoked, and then as darkness was beginning to fall, Dr. Hiller and I, with several of the young men, strolled down the veranda to pay respectful visits in the family rooms. In Mujan’s room, I am sorry to say, we found both Mujan and her elder sister in a state of—well, intoxication; the arrack and the oo-oo-ing had been too much for them. Ordinarily, they were quiet, demure girls, the belles of the veranda, and industrious workers at rice-pounding. But such lapses are, according to Kenyah morality, by no means unpardonable, nay, at such a high tide and festival as the present, were to be rather applauded as a great and ladylike compliment to the host. Mujan and her sister were sitting with their backs against the partition; the head of the elder reclined on the shoulder of the younger, and, though awake, she gave, from time to time, a sighing snore. Mujan, the younger, was trying to entertain a group of visitors, and her fingers were crumpling cigarette wrappers and tobacco in a futile attempt to make some cigarettes for her friends. All she could murmur to us was,’Aku mabok, Tuan, Aku mabok’—I’m drunk, sirs, I’m drunk. We stayed only a few minutes, joking with her about her state, and then went with the others to visit Sara, another fashionable belle, who, however, in our eyes, was far from personally attractive; she had lost four of her upper front teeth; their loss made her conversation anything but easy to understand. When we arrived, Sara had retired to her modicum of a sleeping-room, but she was persuaded to emerge, and then she announced that the arrack had given her a severe headache. Deng’s elder brother,—I forget his name,—at once volunteered to apply cups to her temple, and she acquiesced. She provided the cupping instrument, which consisted of a small cylinder of bamboo, sealed at one end with a lump of wax. The operator, with a small knife, scratched four or five little wounds on her temple, and then making a small hole through the lump of wax on the bamboo cylinder he applied the open end to the wound and proceeded to suck the air out of the cylinder with his lips. When the air was sufficiently exhausted he closed the hole in the wax with his teeth, and the bamboo remained adhering to her temple, like a horn. She smiled, chatted, and never once winced throughout the whole operation, and after about half an ounce of blood had been drawn pronounced herself much better.

SARA, ANOTHER BELLE OF TAMA BULAN’S HOUSEHOLD.

SHE WAS UNATTRACTIVE IN APPEARANCE, BUT HER VIVACIOUS CONVERSATION RENDERED HER VERY POPULAR

(From a photograph taken, and kindly loaned, by Professor A. C. Haddon, F. R. S.)

Just at this minute, Tama Bulan hurried into the room, and, asking us to come out, excitedly told us that a woman, named Lueng, whose child had been one of those to receive a name that day, was very ill and had fallen down in her room suddenly, and could not be wakened; had we ever heard of such a thing, he asked, in our country, or had we by chance any medicine for her. We went at once with him and found the woman in a state of profound collapse; she had been suffering from a severe attack of grippe, and the excitement of the day had been too great for her; we could get no further history than this, and from the cackling old women who were busy about her and from her husband and her brother we could get no coherent answers to our questions. We did the best we could with our limited resources; we stimulated her heart with hypodermics of strychnia; we had her laid flat instead of propped up, as she had been by the old women; at length she revived sufficiently to ask for water. When we bade them to give it to her they positively refused, saying we wanted to poison her; by administering a hypodermic injection we had indiscreetly overstepped the bounds of Kenyah submission to the white man’s medicine. Instead of water, the old women insisted on pouring down the patient’s throat a thick, warm paste of rice and water, at which, of course, she gagged and choked. We saw that our efforts were of no avail, and were therefore compelled to resign her to her friends and the Dayongs. One very officious old woman seemed to think that the sovereign remedy for such ills was to reach and scratch the patient’s back-bone by kneading the finger-tips deep down into the abdomen. Indeed, at one time, I thought she would actually push her fingers through the skin and tear the vitals from the unconscious woman. We told Tama Bulan that we could do nothing further, and that the woman would probably die; whereupon, knowing the temper of his people, he urged us to leave her to the Dayongs and to come away. Shortly after, as we were sitting in the fading twilight in the little apartment which Tama Bulan had caused to be put up for us, we saw them bring the limp body out of the room and place it on a mat in the veranda, only a few feet away from our door. The husband and the brother were frantic with grief and anxiety, and continually bent over her and shouted her name; then they took a blow-pipe and, putting one end close to her ear, they shouted her name again, hoping to call back her soul that was wandering off. They told her that her little child was crying for her and wanted to be fed. I crept into the group, once, and listened for her heart-beats, but they had stopped for ever. Tama Bulan asked me, aside, ‘Is she alive, Tuan?’ and when I told him she was dead, he whispered, ‘Don’t tell them; let them discover it themselves.’

A female Dayong was then summoned to find out whither the soul had gone, and to lure it back to the body; to this end she made several successive demands of valuable beads from the husband, as a fee, and the agonised, headlong haste with which he ran to get them from time to time, was truly pathetic.

I have said elsewhere that I could detect among this people no signs of genuine, unselfish affection. Perhaps this should be qualified by saying that at the solemn hour of death, or of its threatened approach, they manifest an emotion in which there certainly seems to be an element of affection, but even then alarm or terror seems to predominate.

A flickering damar lamp was placed on the floor near the body, and within the circle of its light the old hag of a Dayong, chanting in a monotonous minor key, strutted backward and forward with a shield in one hand and a parang in the other, and many strings of beads about her neck and waist. Twice she paused to ask for a young chicken, and when it was handed to her, she seized its head in her mouth and bit it off, sucked a mouthful of blood from the neck and spat it on the floor, closely scrutinising how it had splattered. Throughout this scene the grief-stricken, wailing reiteration of the dead woman’s name echoed through the veranda, now but dimly lit with damar lamps; every sound of mirth and gaiety was hushed; the only noise, except the wailings and the Dayong, came from the dogs and the pigs beneath the house, where they snarled and fought over the remnants of the feast that had fallen through the floor.

When the female Dayong had done her utmost to recall the soul, and had failed, our good, faithful friend, Tama Talun, volunteered to try his power. He demanded no costly beads, merely a parang, and in the same manner as his predecessor he walked backward and forward in the circle of light. We could not understand a word of what he was saying, but every now and then he threw down his parang so that its point stuck in the floor, where it remained swaying from side to side. As it swayed he walked slowly, about ten paces from it, and then gave a hop in the air and a shrill shout. Then slowly he walked back to the parang, pulled it up, and continued his chanting and walking.

While this was going on, the group suddenly realised that the woman was veritably dead, beyond all hope. With a scream the husband and the brother snatched up the body and rushed into the family room with it; some of the group followed, and some crept silently away into the dark corners of the veranda.

Before long, Tama Bulan came to tell us that the people were in a highly excited state, and, most unfortunately, they held us responsible for the woman’s tragic and sudden death, and that we had better remain in our little room and not venture out into the veranda.

It was not the most pleasant situation imaginable. We were well aware of the excitable nature and the undisciplined minds of the people among whom we were; we knew that they passed in an instant from extreme friendliness to a Berserker rage; and we were but two against three hundred; our means of defence consisted of only two revolvers. Grave as we knew the danger must be, we very fortunately did not know until some time afterward, from Tama Bulan, how extreme it was, and how difficult it had been for him to save our lives.

After Tama Bulan had left us, we heard a pounding and chopping against the partition wall of the room to which the body had been carried; several boards were removed, and an opening made from it into the veranda; through this opening the corpse was borne; it must not pass through a doorway used by the living. The poor, inanimate body was decked out in all the gay garments so recently worn at the feast, and, with a cigarette between the fingers, it was laid partly recumbent on a bier that had been quickly constructed, and draped with white cloth. On the bier beside the corpse an old woman seated herself (all this we could observe through the crevices of our room) and at once began a wail for the dead. This lugubrious wailing was kept up, to my certain knowledge, without intermission for two nights and a day. Of course, there were constant relief parties.

During these two nights and a day we remained close prisoners in our little room. Throughout the first long night Tama Bulan proved himself inflexibly our staunch friend; he insisted over and over again on our innocence, and pleaded for us with the adherents of Lueng’s husband and brother, who were clamouring for our heads as offerings to the dead woman and as decorations for their homes. This thirst for our blood lasted during our imprisonment, and was throughout restricted to the husband and brother of Lueng and to their immediate friends. They were all guests, who had come to the Naming.

When the wailing had been adequately performed the corpse was placed in a coffin hewn from a large log and the cover sealed down with raw gutta percha.

Our most friendly relations with Tama Bulan’s household had not for a moment been broken. Nevertheless, the next day Tama Bulan came to us and said that, in view of all the circumstances, he thought it best that our visit should come to an end; and, inasmuch as Laki La and his followers were going down the river, we had better take advantage of the chance and accompany them. Of course, we acquiesced. The object for which we had come was accomplished. We had seen that which no white man had ever before reported, namely, the noteworthy ceremonies of a Naming, and we had passed six delightful weeks in the far interior of Borneo, in intimate, friendly intercourse with men, whom nous autres are pleased to term savages. So we fell to work, packed up our things, distributed among our especial friends all that was left of our stores of cloth and tobacco, made Tama Bulan’s eyes sparkle with delight over our present of silver dollars, bade good-bye to his daughter Bulan, and his two wives, not forgetting a chuck under the chin to little Lijow, and hastened down to the boat. Our final parting with dear old Tama Bulan was almost watery; and, as we swept out into the current, with our pith helmets we waved a prolonged farewell to the row of flapping palm-leaf hats which lined the long veranda.

Old Laki La was as affable as possible while he sat in our canoe, and we even volunteered to draw for him the solitary tooth remaining in his lower jaw. He waggled it with his tongue pensively for a moment, and then remarked that as he should not live much longer anyhow, he thought that it had better die with him. We considered him a most pleasant old fellow, until we reached his very large house on the Pata, not far below Tama Bulan’s; but as soon as we touched his landing-place we were undeceived; he disembarked without so much as turning round to say good-bye, and behind him trooped all our paddlers, whom we had expected to take us down at least as far as Tama Lohong’s house on the Baram.

Here was a serious difficulty, and Laki La would pay absolutely no attention to any appeal to him for men.

It was on this occasion that the man I mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter came forward most kindly, and offered to get together some men to take us as far as Tama Lohong’s, and all the way down to the Fort, if necessary; and so it fell out. It made me blush to think of the ingratitude I showed in forgetting his name, and I am still blushing; for even now, cudgel my brains as I will, I cannot recall it.

EARLY TRAINING OF A HEAD-HUNTER

One evening, an hour before sunset, at the time when in every direction, the angular outlines of the huge fruit-bats, with bodies as large as a cat, are silhouetted against the sky, as they make an unswerving and majestic flight toward their nocturnal feeding-grounds, we halted our dug-out canoes at the muddy sloping bank in front of the house of Aban Avit, an influential Chief on the Tinjar River.

We were uninvited, and, as far as we knew, unexpected, but the host, upon whom we were thus unceremoniously forcing ourselves, advanced to meet us, as we ascended the unsteady, plank walk, raised on piles, leading to his house, and, with a warmth unusual among an undemonstrative people, welcomed us with a smile that revealed every one of his thirty-two coal-black teeth. We were, to be sure, old friends, having stopped at his house on our way up-river; but, as he had afterward heard that we were going to make the ascent of Mount Dulit, where all varieties of evil Spirits and dragons have their haunts, he said he had really never expected to see us again; and had we not returned just when we did, he, good soul, had planned to go with a party of his bravest men in search of us; but here we were again safe and sound, none the worse for the dreadful journey, and not one of us marked with the scar of ‘Gum Toh,’ a ghost’s-clutch,—a cutaneous tumor, to which these dark-skinned people are subject, well known to us as a Keloid of Addison, but which the Borneans aver is due to the clutch of a ghost’s hand. As soon as we were within the veranda of the house, Aban Avit insisted that his own private room should be resigned to us; accordingly, his manifold possessions were moved to one side, and clean rattan mats spread upon the floor; his fireplace, heaped with dry wood, was put at the disposal of our Chinese cook, and several long bamboo water-jars were brought from the river so that there should be no delay in the preparation of our evening meal. Ah, the hospitality of a head-hunter!

ABAN AVIT, A BERAWAN CHIEF OF THE TINJAR RIVER.

When all our numerous boxes and bundles had been brought up from the boats, we wandered inquisitively about the long-house, asking endless questions of our host and of his brother; and, as they both spoke Malay fluently, our conversation drifted into all sorts of channels. Aban Avit is a widower, as the Aban in his name declares, and Avit was the name of his wife. The Kayans, and allied tribes, adopt names to suit the varying events of their lives. Thus, a widower always takes his dead wife’s name prefixed by Aban; a father bears the name of his first-born child prefixed by Tama, or Ma, meaning father, as long as the child lives; should the child die, Tama is changed to Oyang. For instance, Tama Bulan means the father of Bulan. Oyang Batu means he who is bereft of his son Batu. Bulan is a girl’s name, meaning Moon; Batu is a boy’s name, and means Stone, equivalent to our Peter. If Bulan, the daughter of Tama Bulan, should have a son named Madang, Tama Bulan, whose original name was Wang, would then adopt the grandfather’s title of Laki, and be known as Laki Madang.

Our host [whose photograph is given on the opposite page] was one of the best types of the inland tribes.

Throughout his house, on partition walls and on rafters, there was scroll-work in black and white paint, the black lines evidently made with a finger and the dots of white with a thumb. On the wall of his private room, just above his sleeping-place, were two much conventionalised and interlaced figures with arms and legs like long tendrils. These figures, Aban Avit explained, represented ‘Wawa’ monkeys (the Gibbon Ape), animals held sacred by his family for certainly three generations, and never killed by any member of the household; he regarded them as his best of friends, and that day was sure to be lucky when they crossed his path in the jungle, or when their musical, almost bird-like, call was heard near the house.

This hereditary veneration of an animal suggests a trace of totemism, otherwise rare in Borneo. Aban Avit, in telling us about his veneration for the Wawa, cast down his eyes and spoke in a voice so low we could hardly hear him, as if the very breathing of a name so sacred were profanation. He told us the painting was the work of his own hands.

From this private apartment, which even at high noon was dark, but as soon as the sun had set was verily as dark as the proverbial pocket, we made our way to the veranda, where daylight still lingered; here again we noticed our host’s love of decoration; the rack whereon visitors as soon as they enter the veranda, hang their parangs, instead of being a customary row of pegs or merely crotched sticks, was a board, whereof the lower edge, as it hung horizontally from the rafters, about half way up the slant of the roof, had been carved by the Chief himself into graceful double-headed hooks and loops, so that the belts attached to the parangs could be easily hung on them and the weapons would be out of the way, yet conveniently at hand. It is an unequivocal insult for a guest to enter a friendly veranda with his parang about his waist; etiquette demands that it be unfastened before stepping into the house; it should be then laid aside or hung on the rack while the owner is engaged in friendly gossip. The house was new at the time of our visit, in fact, it was not yet wholly finished; at the up-river end, five or six huge piles had been planted for its further extension; these posts, about fifteen feet out of the ground and eighteen inches in diameter, were likewise carved, but with grotesque devil-faces, from whose grinning mouths tusks like the wild boar’s protruded, below them snakes, and spiral curves representing the recurved protuberance on the beak and head of the Horn-bill,—the war-bird of all the Kayan and Kenyah tribes. Here and there, of course, conventionalised figures of the Wawa were to be detected. It seems an inviolable rule with all Bornean decoration that the representation of any living thing must be hinted at so grotesquely, that it takes a subtle imagination to discern what it really represents; possibly, this is due to the idea, so widely scattered throughout the far East, that to make a life-like image of any animal involves a risk of danger to the maker,—a danger which may be vague or otherwise as chance may interpret it,—and of which we see an intimation, possibly, in the second commandment of the Decalogue.

When twilight suddenly deepened into night and blazing brands were brought to replenish the fire on the hearth opposite the Chief’s door, we squatted round about it, not for warmth, but for the cheer of its flicker, and because,—well, does a pipe ever taste as good as when lit by an ember?

A KAYAN YOUTH, SHOWING THE RAISED SCAR, CALLED BY THE NATIVES ‘GUM TOH’ OR GHOST’S CLUTCH.

IT IS BELIEVED BY THE KAYANS THAT SUCH A SCAR OR WELT IS CAUSED BY THE FINGERS OF AN EVIL SPIRIT; SHOULD THE VICTIM BE SEIZED ROUND THE NECK HE NEVER CHOKES TO DEATH, BUT AWAKES. THEY MAINTAIN THAT THESE SCARS FORM IN A SINGLE NIGHT; BUT THIS IS EXTREMELY DOUBTFUL. RAISED SCARS OVER ALL OLD WOUNDS ARE EXCEEDINGLY COMMON AMONG THESE DARK-SKINNED RACES.

Aban Avit sat beside us, and while we were filling our pipes he produced from the bamboo box, hanging at his side, some tobacco and some of that beautifully delicate dried leaf of the wild banana cut from the heart of the plant, before the leaf is unfurled; in unskilled hands it tears like wet tissue-paper, but in Aban Avit’s a tapering, symmetrical cigarette, eight inches long, was skilfully rolled on his thigh. A circle of small boys squatted around us, their bright, little eyes watching our every movement as intently as we stare at the actions of some strange animal in a Zoölogical Garden. If we struck a match, or sneezed, or buttoned our coats, or wiped our faces with a handkerchief, dilated eyes and open mouths attended the action with wrapt interest. A few men sat near their Chief, and now and then murmured comments to one another in their native tongue, which we did not fully understand, but could guess from the direction of their eyes, that we were the subject of their conversation. The evening duties of the household were not, however, interrupted on our account; men with bundles of dried fire-wood on their shoulders, women staggering under a load of bamboo joints filled with water, and stacked in hampers on their backs, were constantly passing by us, treading heavily, and making the loose boards of the floor clatter and rattle as they plodded their weary way to their apartments. For a time there was almost a constant succession of canoes coming to the landing-place, bringing back the workers from the rice-clearings. The women all bending under full hampers, some with fresh, uncurled fern-fronds, and the sprouts of a variety of large Canna, which they stew with rice to add variety to their diet; some with bundles of the young banana leaf, whereof to make cigarette-wrappers, and others with wild tapioca and wild yams. Each one carried her own light paddle in one hand, and a large round and flat sun-hat in the other. None of them glanced to right or left, but made her way direct to her family room, and like a ghost faded into the darkness through the small doorway. After them followed the men, dangling their parangs in one hand and trailing their blow-pipes and spears in the other. They, too, looked fixedly ahead, until they had hung up their parang and stuck their spear perpendicularly into a rafter so that the shaft should be kept straight; this done, they joined the group round the fire, or went down to the river to bathe. At the far end of the house some young fellows were playing mournful tunes on a Kaluri, and its organ-like notes were wafted fitfully down to us; now and then a baby’s wail chimed in, and then was quieted by the mother’s crooning lullaby. Beneath the house, the contented grunting of pigs and the clucking of chickens denoted that these omen-givers had returned from their foraging in the jungle, and had sought the shelter of home for the night.

VERANDA OF ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE.

THE COLLECTION OF TROPHY-HEADS IS HUNG, AS USUAL, ABOVE THE HEARTH IN FRONT OF THE CHIEF’S ROOM. ON THE LEFT, NEAR THE EDGE OF THE PHOTOGRAPH, IS THE WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN ABDUCTED FROM HER HOME ON THE BARAM RIVER, AND WAS AT THIS TIME BEING RETURNED TO HER FAMILY BY LAKI JOK ORANG, A CHIEF OF THE REJANG RIVER (see p. 105). THE MAN RESTING HIS FEET AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE HEARTH IS THE BROTHER OF ABAN AVIT. IN THE UPPER LEFT-HAND CORNER IS THE RACK WHEREON THE PARANGS OF VISITORS MUST BE HUNG.

Thus we sat as twilight faded in Aban Avit’s veranda,—in the home of these people, whereof every detail made up their familiar, common-place life, the only life from cradle to grave that they had ever known or would know, while we by their side were aliens from a world twelve thousand miles away, from a country that they had never heard of, and of a race which many of them had never seen before. We were in the very heart of the Bornean jungle, guests, in the house of a barbarous ‘savage’ and bloodthirsty ‘head-hunter,’—but, these terms, when applied at that moment to our host, what misnomers! Could contrast be more emphatic than the perfect peacefulness of our surroundings, and the thought that a man as benignant and hospitable as Aban Avit should cherish as his highest aim in life to add every year to that cluster of human heads hanging from the rafters just above us, and gently swaying in the heat ascending from the flames? Is it conceivable that this gentle-hearted man, and his circle of good-humored friends, could take pride and pleasure in recognising and rehearsing the slashes and gashes borne by each head? The long gash there, on the left side of that skull, showing through the piece of old casting-net, was made by Tama Lohong’s parang, the very one with carved wooden handle that he carries to this day. The owner of the next skull was fishing when he fell a victim to a stealthy thrust from Apoi’s spear. This small one is that of a young girl who tried to escape from the rear of a house when they burned out those Madangs, way over near the Rejang River. Thus they can enumerate them all, chief and slave, man, woman, girl, and boy. It all seemed so at variance with Aban Avit’s genial, courteous hospitality, that I wondered if it were possible to look at these skulls through his eyes, and to sympathise with his thrill of pride and exultation in them. I waited until Aban Avit had his cigarette fairly rolled and lit, and then, trying not to appear in the least antagonistic, lest I should fail to elicit his genuine feelings, I asked, ‘O Sabilah, [Blood-brother] why is it that all you people of Kalamantan kill each other and hang up these heads? In the land I come from such a thing is never known; I fear that it would be ill-spoken of there, indeed perhaps, thought quite horrible. What does Aban Avit think of it?’ He turned to me in utter, absolute surprise, at first with eyes half-closed, as doubting that he heard aright, and letting the smoke curl slowly out of his mouth for a moment, he then replied, with unwonted vehemence:—‘No, Tuan! No! the custom is not horrible. It is an ancient custom, a good, beneficent custom, bequeathed to us by our fathers and our fathers’ fathers; it brings us blessings, plentiful harvests, and keeps off sickness, and pains. Those who were once our enemies, hereby become our guardians, our friends, our benefactors.’ ‘But,’ I interrupted, ‘how does Aban Avit know that these dried heads do all this? Don’t you make it an excuse just because you like to shed blood and to kill?’ ‘Ah, Tuan, you white men had no great Chief, like Tokong, to show you what was right; haven’t you ever heard the story of Tokong and his people? He was Rajah of the Sibops and the father of all the Kayans, and lived long, long, long ago.’ I was not acquainted with the story of Tokong, so I begged him to relate it; then, squatting on the floor with his forearms lightly resting on his knees, and his hands dangling in front of him, he meditatively relit his cigarette, and, gazing lovingly up at the cluster of skulls, began:—

‘It was in the old, old days, long before the Government came here, (by the Government, I mean our Tuan Rajah Brooke,) it happened that on a time the descendant of the heaven-born Katirah Murai, Tokong, and his men of the Sibop tribe were on an expedition down-river to punish a household of thieves who had stolen their crop of rice the year before, and had chased Tokong’s women and children from the jungle-clearings. It was the time of year when the fields had just been planted, and before the rice had sprouted; so Tokong took out his warriors to teach these thieves that this year there should be no more stealing. When they had gone down-river to the great bamboo clump where they had to cross through the jungle, they drew their canoes up to the bank, and, with Tokong leading, started on their stealthy march. When the eye of day looked straight down at them over their heads, they rested on the bank of a small stream which ran round that great rock, (perhaps, Tuan, you have seen it,)—we call it “Batu Kusieng,”—near the head-waters of the Belaga and Tinjar Rivers. They had cooked, and eaten, and had drawn out the pegs of wood whereon their rice-pots rested, and Rajah Tokong was slipping his head through his war-coat and girding on his parang, when he heard, coming from under the great rock, a squeaking, croaking voice, uttering, “Wong kokók teta Batók.”[7] He paused, and, turning round to listen to the voice, saw a large frog with its young ones about it sitting just under the edge of the rock. “Greetings to you, Kop,” [Frog] said the Rajah. “What is the meaning of your croaking?” and Kop replied, “Alas, what fools you Sibops are! You go out to battle and kill men, but you take back with you to ornament your shields only their hair; whereas, did you but know it, if you took the whole head you would have blessings beyond words. Insooth, you heavy-livered people know not how to take a head. Look here, and I’ll show you.” Thus spoke Kop, and straightway seized one of his little ones, and with one stroke of his parang cut off its head. Tokong was exceedingly angry at the impudence and the cruelty of the frog, and, paying no further attention to it, ordered his men to advance at once. But some of the older men among them could not help thinking that perhaps Kop spoke the truth, and that night, while they sat round the fire, holding a council of war over the attack on the enemy’s house, close at hand, they urged Tokong to allow them to follow the frog’s advice. At first, Tokong, still very angry because Kop had called the Sibops “fools” and “heavy-livered,” refused; but finally, seeing that many of his best men were in favor of it, he granted their request. Next morning, when the sky began to turn gray and the birds in the trees were just waking up, the Sibops noiselessly carried armfuls of bark and grass, and placed them beneath the thieves’ house, and set fire to them, and the flames ran quickly everywhere. Out rushed the men and women, some jumping into the flames, others trying to slide down the house-posts; but all were met with slashes and stabs from the swords and spears of Tokong’s men. Many were killed that day, and the heads of three were cut off and carried away by Tokong’s party, who retreated at once, and, almost before they knew it, were at the landing-place on the river. To their great amazement, they found their boats all ready and launched! No sooner were they seated than the boats began to move off, of their own accord, right up-stream in the direction of home. It was a miracle! The current of the stream changed and ran up hill, as it does at flood-tide at the mouth of a river. They almost immediately reached the landing-place close to their house, and were overjoyed to see that the crops planted only fifteen days before had not only sprouted, but had grown, had ripened, and were almost ready for the harvest. In great astonishment they hurried through the clearings, and up to their house. There, they found still greater wonders! those who were ill when the party set out were now well, the lame walked and the blind saw! Rajah Tokong and all his people were convinced on the spot that it was because they had followed Kop’s advice, and they vowed a vow that ever afterward the heads of their enemies should be cut off and hung up in their houses. This is the story of Rajah Tokong, Tuan. We all follow his good example. These heads above us have brought me all the blessings I have ever had; I would not have them taken from my home for all the silver in the country.’

SKULL OF A CHIEF OF THE KELABIT TRIBE.

IT IS DRAPED WITH STRIPS OF PALM LEAVES, POSSIBLY TO REPRESENT HAIR, AND ORNAMENTED WITH WOODEN EARS, EAR-PENDANTS, AND A LONG WOODEN NOSE. SUCH ORNAMENTATION OF SKULLS IS NOT USUAL, AT LEAST IN THE BARAM DISTRICT.

He turned to appeal to his people sitting near, and they, as many as understood Malay, nodded their heads, glancing from him to us, and murmuring ‘Betúl, betúl!’ [’Tis true, ’tis true] He paused to get an ember out of the glowing heap of ashes to light his cigarette again, which had become much crumpled during the narration of Rajah Tokong’s first head-hunt, and after he had it once more in shape, I asked him if he would not regard it as somewhat of an inconvenience if his own head were to be cut off, just to bring blessings to an enemy’s house. ‘Tuan,’ he replied, ‘I do not want to become dead any more than I want to move from where I am; if my head were cut off, my second self would go to Bulun Matai, [the Fields of the Dead,] where beyond a doubt I should be happy; the Dayongs tell us, and surely they know, that those who have been brave and have taken heads, as I have, will be respected in that other world and will have plenty of riches. When I die my friends will beat the gongs loud and shout out my name, so that those who are already in Bulun Matai, will know that I am coming, and meet me when I cross over the stream on Bintang Sikópa [the great log.] I shall be glad enough to see them. But I don’t want to go to-day, nor to-morrow.’ His faith seemed immovable, but I could not resist the temptation of suggesting a doubt, so I asked him what if the Dayongs were wrong, and there were no Bulun Matai, and that when he stopped breathing he really died and knew no more. He answered me almost with scorn for such a doubt. ‘Tuan, nothing really dies, it changes from one thing to another. The Dayongs must be right, for they have been to the Fields of the Dead and come back to tell us all about it.’ ‘Don’t you feel sorry,’ I asked, ‘for those that you kill? It hurts badly to be cut by a parang; you don’t like it, and those whom you cut down dislike it as much as you do; they are no more anxious to go to Apo Leggan or Long Julán [Regions in Bulun Matai] than you are.’ ‘Ah, Tuan,’ he replied, with the suggestion of a patronizing chuckle in his voice, ‘you feel just as I did, when I was a little boy and had never seen blood. But I outgrew such feelings, as every one should. My father, a very great warrior, and known and feared by the people of many, many rivers, wanted his sons to be as brave and fearless as he was himself. So one day he dragged out into the jungle old Bállo Lahíng, [widow of Lahíng,] and tied her fast to a tree by rattans on her wrists and ankles. She was a slave-woman, captured when she was a young girl, by his grandfather over in the Batang Kayan country, and, at the time I speak of, she was very old, and weak, and very thin, and couldn’t do any work because she was nearly blind. My father told my brother yonder and me, and one or two other boys, all of us, little fellows then, (I remember, my ears were still sore from having these holes for tiger-cat’s teeth cut in them,) well,—he told us we must go out with spears and learn to stick them in something alive, and not to be afraid to see blood, nor to hear screams,—then I felt just as you do. Besides, I was really very fond of old Bállo Lahíng; she it was who tied on my first chawat [waist-cloth] for me, I remembered it well, for she laughed a great deal at me, and then I saw how few teeth she had, and she often used to sing me to sleep with that song about “Tama Poyong with a twisted leg.” I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her, and sending her away off to Long Julán, so I flatly refused to take a spear with me. But my father said I must; there was no harm in it; that it was right, and I must take one; he pulled me by the arm, and I had to follow. Then I was afraid she might see me, so I sneaked round behind the tree and just pricked her with the point of the iron, then she guessed what my father had tied her there for, and screamed as loud as she could, “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t!” over and over again, and very fast; I pricked her a little harder the next time to hear what she would say, but she only kept on shrieking the same words. Then one of the other boys, smaller even than I, ran his spear right through her thigh, like this, and the old people laughed and said that was good; and the blood ran down all over the wrinkles on her knees; and then I wanted to make it run just in the same way, so I pushed and pushed my spear hard into her; and after that, I never thought whether it was Bállo Lahíng or not, I just watched the blood; and we all ran round her piercing her here and piercing there until she sank right down on the ground with her hands in the rattan loops above her head, which tumbled over to one side, and no more blood came out of her. Then my father praised us all loudly, and me in particular, and said we had been good boys and had done well! How could I feel at all sorry then for the old thing? I thought only that I had obeyed my father and that I was a great warrior and could wear horn-bill’s feathers, and tiger-cat’s teeth. That’s the way to become a Man; a baby is afraid of blood, Tuan. My father was right. No man can be brave who doesn’t love to see his spear draw blood.’

I responded with many nods, drew furiously at my pipe, and fell silent. Aban Avit believed that he had made a convert.

ONE OF THE BELLES OF ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE.

ACCORDING TO THE FEMININE FASHIONS OF THE BERAWANS, THE EAR-LOBES ARE NOT ELONGATED WITH WEIGHTS, BUT ARE STRETCHED AROUND DISCS OF WOOD OR LARGE MUSHROOM-SHAPED PLUGS OF SILVER-WORK, IMPORTED BY MALAY TRADERS FROM BRUNEI, THE METROPOLIS OF NORTHERN BORNEO. FAINT LINES OF TATTOOING MAY BE SEEN ON THE ARMS BELOW THE ELBOW AND ON THE INSTEP OF THE RIGHT FOOT. THE YOUNG WOMAN WAS EXCEEDINGLY WORRIED BY THE APPEARANCE OF MY CAMERA, AND ASSUMED, SO SHE DECLARED, THAT WITH IT I COULD SEE HER THROUGH AND THROUGH AND KNOW HER VERY THOUGHTS.

Aban Avit’s faith in a future life was invincible, and thoroughly characteristic of the Oriental mind, which accepts that faith with an assurance which should put to the blush an Occidental Agnostic. To be sure, to attain the Oriental Paradise does not depend upon the adherence in this life to that morality which distinguishes good and bad actions. It is noteworthy, that in several of these Oriental languages there is no word to express ‘sin.’ A cruel and vindictive man is to be shunned merely because his actions are disagreeable or inconvenient to those about him. But when he dies, and can then cause no more trouble, his memory is as cherished as a Saint’s, and those who knew him will give him the customary amount of profuse wailing, and believe that his spirit passes as surely to the same ‘heaven’ as the kindest and gentlest of them all.

How greatly the faith of the Borneans in eternal life is indebted to their surroundings can be realized perhaps only by one who has lived in that boundless jungle, where, on every hand, Nature is in her wildest, most exuberant, most lavish mood; where life dies and is renewed in an hour. Is it any wonder that the Jungle people, with this eternal loss and eternal gain ever present, think no more of cutting down a human fellow-creature than of chopping down a tree or of plucking a gaudy flower? The jungle is an ever-present ocular proof that life follows life. Here beneath our cold skies we are every year reminded of decay and death in the withering grass, the falling leaves, and the bare branches of winter; the long waiting for Spring bids us look forward to a future away from this scene of death. In the jungle there is no death, the leaves fall while they are still green, and in a night, lo! new ones take their place; an ancient tree falls, but the mighty trunk does not lie arid and stiff to be slowly covered with pale leathery lichens; hardly has it touched the ground before it is covered with a translucent shroud of tender green, which seems but a renewal and continuation of its own life; and before the burning sun shining through the gap can scorch the delicate orchids, the gap is closed by a new eager growth and a young tree springs from the earth upturned by the broken roots. Can any dweller amid such scenes believe otherwise than that death is but an exchange of life?

Of what can be called a religion the Borneans have little; they are, to a certain extent, idolaters, and their projects are banned or blest by omens drawn from certain birds and animals, but mainly by auguries interpreted from the livers of sacrificed swine and from fowls; wherein they are no more barbarous than the ancient Romans. But the one custom, to which they all cling with a tenacity born of what is to them its proved efficacy, is the taking of human heads. Can they not recount indisputable proof after proof, drawn from their own veritable experience, that these precious influences over the domestic hearth bring the very purest of blessings, and health, and wealth to the whole household?

THE DRUDGE OF A KAYAN HOUSEHOLD.

ONE OF THE OLD, WORN-OUT DRUDGES OF A KAYAN HOUSEHOLD, WHOSE DAYS OF ACTIVE LABOR IN THE FIELDS BEING OVER, HER DUTIES CONSIST IN CARRYING UP THE WATER FOR COOKING FROM THE RIVER. IT WAS SUCH AN OLD WOMAN AS THIS WHO WAS SACRIFICED IN THE EDUCATION OF ABAN AVIT AND HIS BROTHER.

Be it borne in mind that an enemy’s head is not like the scalp of our American Indians, a mere trophy; it is an object of heartfelt veneration, an earnest of blessing to the whole community. Such is the round of life among them that a pretext for a head-hunt is readily found; the solemn ceremony of putting off the mourning for a dead Chief suggests it; or when a harvest is completed; or when a Chief takes a new wife, etc. In all these ceremonies the acquisition of new heads is of prime importance, and those, too, who did not participate in the hunt, and even very young boys, may share in the glory of this acquisition, if they will merely put on war-clothes, and before the heads are taken up into the house strike a blow at them with a parang. [The ceremonies attending head-hunts I give elsewhere.] Water sprinkled from the palm leaves, wherein the heads have been wrapped, purifies women after periods of mourning, and they may once more wear their ornaments, and bathe in the river, and the men may thereafter shave their temples. When finally hung up in the house, the heads have lost all semblance to life, and are mere blackened skulls, not exactly ornamental, it must be admitted, but by no means as repulsive as might be at first supposed.

Among the Kayans it is most strictly forbidden for any one, except the very aged, to touch these heads. Sickness, possibly death, follows a disregard of this rule; but the aged, who are at any rate on the brink of the grave, may fearlessly handle them. At a harvest festival, it is an Iban custom to take the old skulls down, and women then carry them, together with the new ones, in their dances; rice is thrust between the jaws, and arrack poured over them, that they also, to the extent of their limited capacity, may share in the feast.

[This account of Aban Avit’s conversation is more or less composite; the words which I have put into his mouth are not solely his, but there is none of them that I have not heard emphatically expressed by other natives; I have merely made one man the mouth-piece of several. The story of the sacrifice of the old woman for the moral and physical training of the boys, I have endeavored to give as I heard it.]

In the accompanying view of the veranda of Aban Avit’s house, the skulls may be seen hanging in a cluster over the fireplace around which the people are grouped. For this photograph a trap-door in the roof had to be raised to admit light. Draped over the skulls, here and there, are pieces of bark cloth and shreds of palm leaves; the framework whereon the heads are hung is made of hoops of rattan, one inside the other, so that these invaluable relics may be arranged in a thick symmetrical cluster. Among some tribes it is customary to place the skull of a rhinoceros in the centre of the group of human skulls. This animal is so ferocious and so hard to kill that it is deemed worthy of the honor. Along the roof, half across the open trap-door, is the board mentioned above, carved at its lower edge into hooks, on which visitors hang their parangs while they sit to talk or feast with the Chief. The man with his feet resting upon the edge of the fireplace is the brother of Aban Avit, and will probably succeed to the Chiefship; his word even now seems to carry great weight in all councils. At the time of taking the photograph the house was filled with guests,—a party of peace from the Baram River, on their way to the head-waters of the Tinjar to give and take pledges of friendly relationship, and to pay off and collect indemnities for the raids and slaughterings of their fathers and grandfathers.

VERANDA OF ABAN DENG’S HOUSE ON THE APOH.

THE TROPHY-SKULLS ARE HUNG FROM A DECORATED BEAM, EXTENDING ALMOST THE WHOLE LENGTH OF THE VERANDA. IN FRONT OF THE CHIEF’S DOOR SEVERAL SKULLS ARE TIED TOGETHER ON A FRAMEWORK OF RATTAN; THESE ARE POSSIBLY HIS PRIVATE COLLECTION.

A WAR EXPEDITION

About a year and a half before my first visit to Borneo, a Chinese trader, in the upper Tinjar River, had been killed solely for the sake of his head. Killing is by no means uncommon in Borneo; but this was a murder so cold-blooded, and the victim, moreover, a Chinaman, so unprepared for the game of head-hunting, that an unusual effort was made to find and punish the murderer. Although the head, just after it was cut off, had been hung up in the veranda of a house, and although the river-bank in front had been enlivened with a ‘Death-post,’ whereto portions of the victim had been attached, by way of public notice that a head had just been taken, the perpetrator of the deed showed, however, a guilty reluctance in claiming any glory, or even in making himself known; furthermore, not a member of that household, nor of any household on the Tinjar River, would give the slightest clue to the identity of the murderer. All the Chiefs, hitherto trusted, told endless lies about the crime, and with such success that they believed that they had at last baffled and befooled the ‘Prenta,’ the Government.

One day, about two years after the murder, a Malay trader, who had been up among the Tinjar people for many months, and was perhaps feeling a little sore over his poor bargains, let fall to Dr. Hose, the English Resident of the Baram district, some hints that again set in motion the wheels of justice and soon fastened the guilt of that murder on Tinggi, a dweller in the house of Tama Talip. The culprit was at once summoned to appear for trial at the Baram Fort, but his people hid him and resolutely defied the Government; consequently, a reward was offered for his capture alive, or for his head, if dead. Nevertheless, the Tinjar people continued to conceal and protect Tinggi, even after an influential Chief had been deposed by the Government for his duplicity in the matter, and, possibly, for the transparent quality of the lies he manufactured. There remained, therefore, nothing to be done but to appoint an entire stranger, a native from another river, to lead an expedition against the Lerons, the tribe that was protecting Tinggi. The man thus appointed was Tama Bulan, a Kenyah, and the most influential Chief in the Baram district, who accepted the appointment and gathered a force to ascend the Tinjar. Among his followers was Juman, a Kayan Chief and the lucky and sole possessor of a gun. Tama Bulan had been strictly commanded to take Tinggi, and no one else but Tinggi; on no account was he to suffer his Kayan or Kenyah followers to kill innocent people. Juman, with a small party ascended the Tinjar, to a point opposite the house of the Lerons. Tinggi, the murderer, emerged unattended from the house, entered a light canoe, and was crossing the river, apparently to surrender himself, when, at the last moment, he seemed to change his mind, and resolved to attempt an escape. In an instant, taking advantage of the swift current, he was dashing past Juman’s camp. The details of his death I had, as follows, from Juman himself: ‘Tinggi came down the river, Tuan, lying flat in his canoe until he was just opposite to me and my men; then he stood up, straight, brandishing his spear and his parang, and shouting defiance to us all. But,’ continued Juman, his eyes glowing with excitement, ‘I was all ready, Tuan; I raised this “snappang”[8] of mine, that the Government gave me; it was loaded full of nails; and I shot that insect, Tinggi, right here,—through the breast. Over he fell backward in his boat; he kept on waving his arms; I paddled fast after him in a canoe; I got along side of him; I caught hold of his head; I pulled it over to the edge of the boat; with two chops of my parang, like that and like that, off it came.’

This head was the first Juman had ever taken, and measureless was his pride in displaying the tattooing, to which he was thereby entitled, on the back of one of his hands; the other hand was to be similarly decorated as soon as the harvesting was over. Tinggi’s head he was allowed to hang from the roof of his veranda, opposite his door, in his house at Bowang Takun. Although this slaying of Tinggi was retributive justice, yet according to Borneo sentiment, it was a causa belli, and when I arrived at the Baram River, on a second visit to Borneo, about three months after these events, there were already reports of retaliating expeditions led by Tinggi’s brother, Kilup, in which the Tinjar people generally joined, against the peaceful dwellers on the Baram; women had been frightened from the rice-clearings by the traces of recent camp-fires, and of fresh footprints in the adjacent jungle, and doubtless would have been attacked, and killed, and decapitated, had not their husbands mounted guard each day, clad in war-coat and war-cap, and fully armed with spear, parang, and shield. Reports of new disturbances and threatened outrage came by every canoe from up the river that halted at the Baram Bazaar, until finally Dr. Hose determined to crush out this portentous feud betimes before it reached greater and, possibly, unmanageable proportions.

BORNEAN WAR COSTUME.

THE FEATHERS OF THE HORN-BILL ON THE WAR-CLOAK, AND THE TUFTS OF HUMAN HAIR ON THE SHIELD, WHICH THE WARRIOR HOLDS, ARE THE BADGES OF A SUCCESSFUL HEAD-HUNTER.

The whole Kayan population of the river was, moreover, somewhat in a commotion, owing to the accidental death of Oyang Luhat, one of its influential Chiefs. The control of three or four hundred people had thus fallen to his eldest son, Abun, and the large household were beginning to fret under the tedious restraints of the prolonged mourning; these restraints could be removed only by adding to the household collection a beneficent fresh head or two; consequently, under a new and vigorous young leader there was imminent danger of an extensive and formidable raid upon all the Tinjar people. Furthermore, it happened to be just at the beginning of the rainy season, when there was nothing to be done but to wait for the rice, already planted, to sprout and grow. Even in highly civilized communities, Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do, so, too, in Borneo what can be more natural than that days of idleness should prompt a mischievous use of spear and parang?

His Excellency, Rajah Brooke, (this wise and beneficent ruler,) has, of course, made every possible effort to eradicate the custom of head-hunting in Sarawak, but in a country without roads, and where news travels no faster than the river’s sluggish current, swift retribution for any outrage is impossible; and, with the small force of Englishmen who act as his Residents, it is almost inconceivably difficult, in districts isolated by well-nigh impenetrable jungle, to follow up and arrest any offender, much more a head-hunter, whom the natives themselves, holding head-hunting to be a most praiseworthy virtue, screen to the best of their ability.

Where the decapitated victim has relatives or near and dear friends, there the Rajah’s officers may possibly obtain some aid; but even under these favorable conditions, the information is reluctantly given, unless the hope is held out of a participation in the punishment or the retaliation.

In such circumstances, it is remarkable and redounds greatly to the efficiency of the Sarawak government, that exceedingly few murderers escape detection and punishment, even should it take years to trace them. The punishment is not always a death sentence; it may be a heavy fine. The veneration with which the practice of head-hunting is regarded by the tribes of the central high-lands, and the fact that they have been taught by their fathers and grandfathers that it is a religious duty, cannot but influence the Rajah and his Residents to incline to leniency in their judicial sentences on these people whenever there has been provocation, albeit slight, for the commission of the deed. Where a whole household of more than a hundred men has made an unprovoked raid upon an unsuspecting neighbor, the Rajah, on several occasions, has wisely allowed the injured tribe to make, as a kind of ‘wild justice,’ a retaliating raid upon the aggressors; but the expedition has been always under the direction of one of his Residents, who makes sure that only the guilty are attacked,—if unrestrained, the natives would be driven by excitement to kill all who cross their path, whether friend or foe.

To resume the story of the troublous times on the Baram. It was decided by the Government to quiet the disturbances at the very outset by administering a severe lesson to those turbulent natives on the Tinjar who still resented the legal slaying of the murderer, Tinggi; accordingly, a war expedition was planned, which should be the means of intimidating the seditious tribe, without, it was ardently hoped, the shedding of any blood, and, withal, of such an imposing character that the mere demonstration might, of itself, lead even to a lasting peace.

COUNCIL OF WAR, DURING A MARCH TO THE HOUSE OF AN ENEMY.

Dr. Hose decided, first of all, to investigate the truth of the rumours concerning the marauding Lerons. With this end in view, he decided to set out at once for the house of the young Chief, Abun, just mentioned, about one hundred and twenty miles up the Baram, where, if the rumours proved correct, his forces could be mustered.

We arrived after dark at Long Lama (‘Long’ meaning the mouth of a river, and ‘Lama’ being the name of a stream at whose junction with the Baram Abun’s house is situated). The river’s bank, sloping gradually in low, irregular terraces of sandy mud up to the house, about a hundred and fifty yards from the shore, was dotted in all directions with little fires, whereon the natives were cooking venison. A deer had been killed in the clearings, and, although the flesh is one of the greatest of delicacies, it must never be cooked in the house; the timidity of the deer will be infused into the household. By inhaling its spirit, liberated by fire, young men assimilate its timidity and become cowards in battle,—therefore the flesh is cooked in the open air, and the timid spirit at once makes its way again to the jungle. Several of the natives, when they recognized us, deserted their flesh-pots and came down to meet us, carrying fire-brands, which they waved vigorously to keep them blazing and give us light. Of course, all knew that a visit from the Resident meant something of importance, but, according to Kayan etiquette, the purpose must not be broached until we were settled in the veranda. Escorted by these torch-bearers we picked our way past the fires up the soggy, muddy bank, walked warily on the pathway of slippery logs, and so to the notched log whereby the veranda is gained.

The immense long-house, looking on its high, multitudinous piles like a gigantic centipede, stretched far away to the right and to the left into the darkness under rustling cocoanut palms; mongrel dogs barked and yapped round our heels, and from beneath the house snorting pigs rushed hither and thither in all directions. The house seemed deserted; the restrictions of mourning had banished all mirth, music, and song; the only signs of life along its whole length were three or four dim fires flickering on the clay hearths; hardly a sound was to be heard in it. With as much dignity as can be assumed when crawling on all fours up an almost perpendicular, and slippery, and notched pole, we gained the veranda, where the young Chief greeted us cordially, and ceremoniously conducted us to the clay hearth, the place of honor, in front of his own door. Fresh wood to replenish the fire was brought, and several small tin kerosene lamps, made by Chinese at the Bazaar, and without glass chimneys, were placed here and there, on the floor, and on the beams. It was not advisable, even had it been etiquette, to divulge at once the purpose of our visit, or even to allude to the Tinjar people; so dropping cross-legged about the fire, we accepted the proffered bead-work box of coarse Kayan tobacco and banana-leaf wrappers, and joined the encircling and rapidly increasing group, in a social cigarette. The talk drifted up-river and down-river, discussing crops of rice and the promise of the abundance of rattan, or of gutta, or of camphor yet to be gathered in the jungle. Occasional puffs of hot air were wafted in under the eaves, bringing with them the combined scent of the fires on the bank, of mud, and of damp chips from the logs which beneath the house were being fashioned into canoes. The brief twilight of the tropics was gone, the night was already as black as ink, although it was barely a half hour after sunset, and the insects had not yet begun the incessant din of their nocturnal medley.

Gradually, Dr. Hose led up the conversation to the killing of Tinggi and to the retaliation of the Lerons. At once eyes flashed, and every man was eager to set forth his account of the outrages; some asserted that women and children working in the rice-fields had been murdered; others maintained that certain rattan-cutters had caught sight of a large force of Tinjar people, in the jungle close by Long Lama; again, others said that the Tinjar marauders numbered hundreds, while others contended that there were, at most, but a dozen or so. Finally, it turned out that no one present had actually seen a single enemy, and the substance of the stories was so flimsy that the purpose of the expedition threatened to come to naught, when suddenly our ears caught the rhythmical and rapid thump of paddles, followed by the grating sound of the beaching of canoes. Flickering torches struggled up the bank toward the house, and, as though by telepathy, it flashed upon every one that Juman himself was at hand.

A CHIEF AND TWO SLAVES IN WAR COSTUME.

THE SLAVES ARE MAKING READY THE POISONED DARTS FOR THEIR BLOW-PIPES. IN THEIR HAMPERS ARE THE SLEEPING-MATS FOR THE CHIEF AND THEIR COOKING POTS.

Presently, sure enough, in came the hero of the hour, with fifteen or twenty followers. All took their places amid the squatting group, as unconcernedly as if their minds were as free of care, as their bodies of clothes. Juman seated himself beside us on the low platform. Again, we had to comply with the inviolable rules of Bornean propriety, and converse on any subject under heaven, save on the sole object of the visit; but this time it did not take so long to beat about the bush. After a few decorous minutes, Juman, jumping to his feet, poured forth to the assembly a harrowing account of the horrid dangers to which his household was exposed every hour of the day and night from this crowd of skulking, murderous Lerons! He spoke in Kayan, a language of soft, lingual, and prolonged vowel sounds, abruptly interspersed with short gutturals pronounced far back in the throat; and while relating his wrongs he stamped with his bare feet, turning first to this side, then to that, wildly waving his arms, snapping his fingers, and emphasising the close of each sentence by shouting ‘Bahh! bahh!’—a convenient exclamation to gain time for ideas; I fear it corresponded to the cough which afflicts our own after-dinner speakers. The telling point of the speech was that the camp of the enemy had been actually discovered close to Juman’s own fields, and, from the way that the jungle had been trodden down, the war-party must be in large numbers; much of the rice had been uprooted just as it was beginning to sprout, and many of their banana trees had been wantonly slashed to pieces. There were men here with Juman,—he called them forth and bade them tell their stories,—who had actually seen the encampment of the enemy, and the hundreds of footprints on the bank of the stream where they had rested. Juman was clearly an orator, and swayed at will the emotions of the assembly; volleys of grunts marked approval of his eager words; cigarettes burned quick and fast under excited puffing.

When Juman dropped on his haunches, there followed an ominous silence,—the hush before a storm. Dr. Hose at once perceived that the native blood was deeply stirred, and that these reports about the Lerons, who had no right to be in this part of the country at all, were probably correct, and would infallibly lead to an indiscriminate war. The thirst of the people for vengeance must not be absolutely thwarted, but judiciously controlled. Accordingly, he at once addressed them very earnestly, approving of their just indignation, and fearlessly telling them that the reason why their expeditions so often failed was because they lost so much time in consulting Omen Birds, that the enemy had time to prepare themselves or to decamp. Now was the hour when the lives of their wives and children depended upon instant action, and he impressively concluded by saying:—

‘This time do not ask advice from birds, get ready to-night at once, and we’ll all start at dawn to-morrow and chase these thieves and cowards back to their river! or else many fresh heads will hang in the houses on the Baram! But remember, that though the Government is with you in this fight, it makes war on the guilty, and on no one but the guilty. Go, therefore! Send messengers without delay, up-river and down, to summon all Kayan fighters to arms! And to be ready to join us to-morrow before the birds wake up!’

For several seconds every man sat motionless with dilated eyes and open mouth, hardly realising the joyful news. Then with one wild shout all bounded to their feet, and the whole house from end to end was staring wide awake and fairly quivering with life! Canoes were hastily launched in the darkness and dispatched up and down the black river, to bear the swift news to friendly houses miles away. The slamming of doors was incessant, dusty and long unused spears, shields, war-coats, caps, were eagerly brought from sleeping-rooms into the veranda, for inspection, or for repairs, or for fresh decorations. Clay lamps with damar-gum sizzling, sputtering, and smoking, were lit everywhere. Crouched about one lamp was a group of young men warming fresh ‘Ipoh’ (arrow poison), and smearing it on the tips of the darts for their blow-pipes. Around another, was gathered a group busily cutting new darts and shaping the pith butts to fit tightly in the bore of the blow-pipe. Others sharpened their spears and parangs, rearranging the dangling charms, which they smeared with the blood of chickens, while murmuring exhortations to them to protect the bearer from all harm and help the parang to deal death at a single blow. All the women, too, and the girls, joined in the hurry-scurry, and stitched, on the backs of war-coats, horn-bill feathers, or big butterflies embroidered in black and yellow beads. Many a love-knot was tied, that night, and fastened on parang, war-coat, and shield, and I am quite sure that some young hearts beat high with hopes of presenting, as the fairest of bridal gifts, what no female Kayan heart could possibly resist,—a lovely, fresh, human head. But, perhaps, I was too sentimental, and imputed romantic aspirations to those dusky breasts which entertained no such lodgers. For as I sat there passively watching this strange scene, so dramatic and unreal to me, and so earnest and real to the actors, I saw a girl with serious mien furtively thrust into a young warrior’s hand a strip of bead-work of her own making, wherewith to ornament the scabbard of his parang. I am sorry to say that, so far from responding to any tender sentiment, the young fellow looked decidedly sheepish, and not a little puzzled by the gift, and, alas! I could not detect that he even thanked her for it. Half an hour later I saw him wandering about, dangling the precious love-token aimlessly in his hand. I concluded that she had better throw him over; such ardour as his, never leads to where glory waits.

1. WOODEN FORM ON WHICH THE PITH BUTTS OF THE DARTS USED IN A BLOW-PIPE ARE SHAPED. THE PIECE OF PITH IS FASTENED ON THE POINT AT THE END, AND CUT TO THE PROPER CONE SHAPE. THE BASE OF THE CONE IS GAUGED BY THE WOODEN FORM, WHICH IS THE EXACT SIZE OF THE BORE OF THE BLOW-PIPE.

2. PALATE WHEREON ARROW POISON IS MIXED.

KAYAN WAR-COAT OF GOAT’S SKIN.

THE WARRIOR’S HEAD IS INSERTED THROUGH THE OPENING, AND THE PART DECORATED WITH THE FEATHERS OF A HORN-BILL PROTECTS HIS BACK, WHILE THE SHORT FLAP, WEIGHTED WITH THE PEARL SHELL, HANGS OVER HIS CHEST. ONLY THOSE WHO HAVE TAKEN HEADS ARE ENTITLED TO WEAR THE HORN-BILL FEATHERS, WHICH ARE ALWAYS TRIMMED TO POINTS WHEN USED TO DECORATE WAR-COATS. THE PEARL SHELL IS PLACED UPON THE COAT BECAUSE FROM THIS SHELL THE SPIRIT OF A WARRIOR, SLAIN IN BATTLE, MUST MAKE THE BOAT WHICH IS TO CARRY IT ACROSS THE RIVER TO THE HAPPY LAND OF THE DEAD. THE ORNAMENT OF BEAD-WORK. SHAPED LIKE A BUTTERFLY, JUST BELOW THE OPENING FOR THE HEAD, IS THE FEMININE CONTRIBUTION TOWARD THE DECORATION OF THE WAR-COAT.

Hearing vigorous stamping and loud shouting in the room of the young Chief, Abun, I entered unbidden. In the middle of the room, which was unusually large, stood an old warrior decked out in war-coat and cap, and brandishing a spear in one hand and a shield in the other; around him in a circle sat eight or ten young men watching breathlessly his every movement.

It was difficult to repress a smile at his antics; but the intense earnestness and wrapt attention of his pupils were absolute; he was instructing the novices how to lunge, guard, and parry with spear and shield. With a shrill shout and a lofty caper he dashed at an imaginary foe, warded off the attack with his shield, and, crouching low behind it, gave imaginary crippling jabs with his spear, emitting loud grunts the while, and hopping from right to left at each thrust; these thrusts were evidently fatal to the phantom foe, for, dropping his spear, the hoary instructor drew his parang, and with one chop, followed by sawing, severed an imaginary head from its body. His final explosive grunt, expressed as plain as words: ‘There it is! off at last! simple as kiss your hand!’ Again, he backed and sidled to show the motions when an enemy attacks in the rear; or, again, he showed how to creep stealthily, and at the same time to keep the body thoroughly covered by the shield, which, considering that this protecting article is four feet long by eighteen inches wide, cannot be called a difficult problem. Of course, the enemy was always stupid and completely deceived by the baldest feints, and inevitably fell an easy prey. But the open-eyed and open-mouthed youngsters drank in the instruction in gulps. Their instructor could not be called a handsome old man, his nose was a flattened aquiline, his lips thin and pushed far forward like a frog’s; his hands were, of course, tattooed, for his knowledge of warfare had been gained in many a battle, and his contribution to the household collection of heads was large; his hair was cropped short, (probably out of respect for the late Chief,) and stood up in gray bristles all over his head; his muscular development, however, was fine for a man of his years, and his litheness and agility were remarkable.

The alcove where I sat, watching this military drill, was the sleeping platform of the old widowed mother of the Chief; her mats had been already spread for the night, before this war excitement had begun. She sat beside me, speaking earnestly and bravely to her three sons, Abun, Madong, and Batu, squatting in front of her, each busily engaged, while listening to her, in selecting from their store the best darts for their blow-pipes, and replacing with new butts any old ones which were dry or cracked. ‘Be brave, sons of mine,’ she said, in earnest tones, ‘and remember your father, Oyang Luhat, the bravest of the brave, the friend of the Rajah, and one who obeyed every command of the Government. Bring back, I implore you, an enemy’s head, that your fearless father’s grave may be honoured with a fragment of it. Obey the orders of the Tuan Resident; if he forbids you to kill, then come back empty handed rather than disobey the Prenta. If you are killed, of course I shall wail and lament for you; but I am old, and shall meet you soon again with your father in Long Julán, where all brave warriors go who die in battle or by accident. And you, Batu, [the youngest, about eighteen years old,] be not headstrong, but follow your brothers and take their advice in everything.’

A WAR-CANOE, OR A RACING-CANOE, MADE FROM A SINGLE LOG.

IT IS ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FEET LONG AND HOLDS QUITE EASILY A HUNDRED MEN.

Her words were so simple and direct, and, withal, uttered in that soft, flowing language which I had learned to like so well, that, I confess, it never entered my mind at the time that her personal appearance was far from prepossessing. I saw in her only a modern instance of the Spartan mother, and quite forgot her few and blackened teeth, and her slit ear-lobes, enormously elongated by her mourning ear-rings of heavy wood. She sat on the floor half leaning back against the wall, with only a strip of blue cotton cloth (not immaculate) around her waist, and covering as far as the knee her thin, wrinkled, and tattooed legs, while she was addressing her three boys, of whom she was very proud. Her eyes, dimmed from age and from the daily glare of the sun, rested first on one, then on another, but most frequently on the youngest, Batu, whose marriage was to take place as soon as the tattooing on the legs of his bride was finished. Evidently her mother’s heart feared lest this high prize of his enamoured hopes, coupled with his youth, might spur him on to hazard more danger than his brothers. The ardour of the hour was contagious, and I saw (honesty bids me acknowledge) nothing unnatural or unmotherly in these prayers to her sons to bring home a freshly severed head, to hang in consecrated repose above the domestic hearth or on an honoured father’s grave.