Chapter VI: Part 6

The effect on the dancers themselves was marked; demure as were their motions, their excitement was great. One of them suddenly ceased and, leaning against the wall, declared that she was exhausted with the strain. Although the movements of the dance had been slow and gentle, she was undeniably almost in an ecstatic trance, with eyes half closed and breathing labored.

Very different were the Kayan dances which followed; the men vied with each other in wild leaps and shouts, springing high in the air and coming down on their knees, all the while battling with imaginary foes; slashing with their parang and waving their shield in rhythmical time to the drone of the kaluri.

Our hand-clapping by way of applause caused great laughter and astonishment, and the ever-present small boys imitated it in high glee. Their only fashion of showing approval or wonder is by a loud cluck with the tongue. Once on a time, when we happened to stop at a house which, during the selection of a rice-field, was under a ‘lali’ or _restriction_, (no stranger may then enter and no inmate leave it,) Dr. Hiller and myself were urgently requested to pace up and down in front of the house, after we had stripped ourselves to the waist, so that the inmates might have the privilege of seeing our Japanese tattooing. They had all gathered in a row behind the railing of the veranda, and as we passed along below, the succession of explosive clucks of unbounded admiration sounded like musketry in the distance. Eagerness to see our tattooing broke down for us many a barrier. Although the Borneans themselves are masters in the art, nevertheless they use but one colour, and could not believe that the variegated Japanese designs were not painted, instead of pricked in. Many a time this incredulity proved a sore trial, by subjecting us to vigorous attempts at rubbing off the colour with a dirty thumb, well moistened on the tongue. Here also at the Lelak house, at Tama Bulan’s urgent request, I stripped to the waist, and the sight of Hori Chiyo’s best handiwork on my back so inspired one elderly woman, that, after the chorus of clucks had subsided, she burst into song, which, being in the Lelak dialect, I was unable to understand, but was assured it was extremely complimentary.

The guest chambers in a Lelak house are boxes about five feet square, suspended from the roof, and to which access can be gained only by a ladder. Possibly, this is for the comfort of the guest; possibly, it is in order that he may not have too much liberty. We preferred, however, the floor of the veranda, but before morning I realized the error; three times was I awakened by an incubus of a dog curling himself up for sleep on my chest.

Late in the night, the whole house was aroused by the arrival of Juman and his adherents; he had read our letter and made the best time he could against the strong current. The expedition was now complete, and the following morning we abandoned the steamer and started off in canoes.

The Orang Tuah of the Lelaks maintained that my box-with-one-eye was better than all the Dayongs, and that of a surety I had effectively captured the evil Spirits; he was so much better that he insisted on going along with us. I must acknowledge I was none too well pleased with his determination; he was exceedingly feeble, and should he die the blame would be surely imputed to me.

Continuously along our route the numbers of the peace-makers were augmented by boat-loads from the houses that we passed, all anxious to join in the feasting which took place wherever we halted, and all wanted to be present at the final grand ratification in the house of Tama Aping Buling at the head-waters, where Kilup and Juman, bitter enemies, were to meet, and be reconciled.

Late in the afternoon during a terrific thunder-storm, we arrived at Tama Liri’s house, and although he is a Penghulu of importance, his house is a disgrace and he himself a troublesome thorn to the Sarawak Government. In the first place, there was no notched log whereby to cross the wide stretch of muddy bank; to get to the house we should have been compelled to wade through mud knee-deep, had not the Kayans and Kenyahs in our party devoted themselves energetically to showing the Berawans what could be done in the way of rapid work. In pelting sheets of rain and deafening peals of thunder they dragged forth a great fallen tree-trunk and cut notches in it. The Chief and his people, meanwhile, who ought to have been helping, sat at their ease up in the house and looked down unconcernedly. In the second place, Tama Liri’s house is built upon such ramshackle poles that they could not support the weight of boards, and, consequently, the flooring is of bamboo strips, and in places so weak that all were afraid that the whole flimsy structure would tumble about their ears. The Baram folk were by no means in a good temper when at last they gained the shelter of Tama Liri’s veranda. In the evening all the Chiefs took a malicious pleasure in telling their host what a miserable shanty he had instead of a house, and expressing the hope that by the time they revisited him he would have built a new one. In the midst of these vivacious observations, which did not seem, in the least, to disturb our stolid host, Tama Usong begged me to lend him my box of matches; on receiving it he passed it over to Tama Liri with the suave remark, ‘Here, Blood-brother, are some posts for your house; they are better than those you have, and you can buy more in the Bazaar, very cheap.’ All the Baram people, and even some of Tama Liri’s own followers, snorted and laughed at this stroke of wit, but the host adroitly diverted their thoughts by instantly expatiating on the pig, six spans long! which Aban Liah (not he himself, but his neighbor Aban Liah) was going to kill for the feast when we arrived at his house. Tama Liri added that it would have been better, of course, if it were eight spans long; this would have been the kind _he_ would kill were _he_ giving a feast. Tama Bulan was not in as good spirits as on the preceding evening. He was depressed by the illness of his nephew, Wan, who had been ailing ever since reaching the Baram Fort, and now, from exposure in the heavy rain during an attack of fever, was in the first stage of pneumonia and verging on delirium. Tama Bulan begged me to give him some medicine; but remembering the disagreeable time that I had in his own house, in consequence of the death of an inmate, I demurred, preferring to shift the responsibility on the Dayongs and the livers of pigs and entrails of chickens.

Tama Bulan assured me, however, that he had absolute confidence in my medicine, and always had, even at the time of Lueng’s death, when her brother, who thought we had poisoned her, wanted to kill Dr. Hiller and myself. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘it will be so inconvenient to have Wan die in the house of Tama Liri; of all men, he will be the very one to demand immense compensation for the ill-luck brought on his miserable old house.’ Thereupon, I did all in my power for the boy; but in the morning, when the time came to leave, he was only a very little better, and it would have been highly dangerous to move him down to the boats. With great regret we were obliged to leave behind the dear old Kenyah Chief to take care of his good-for-nothing nephew. We had depended upon Tama Bulan to make the peace-ceremonies go off smoothly, and in strict adherence to Borneo customs. Wan’s father, a half-brother of Tama Bulan, was continually making trouble between the Kenyahs and the Sarawak Government, until Dr. Hose one day obtained possession of an invaluable charm of his, consisting of a small misshapen hen’s egg, whereon he based all his good luck. Only by the ever-present threat that his egg would be broken by Dr. Hose at the least sign of treason on his part, can he be controlled and kept peaceable, even, I believe, to this hour. Owing to the sins of the father, I was not quite so compassionate as I might have been, for this handsome but arrogant youth, who was now the cause of our losing the assistance of Tama Bulan. I left my watch with the dutiful old uncle, and exact diagrams of the positions of its hands when the medicines were to be given. Our next stage was to be but a short one: if Wan were better on the following day, Tama Bulan could catch up with us; if he were worse, my advice was that he should be moved to the boats carefully and an attempt made to get him home. Tama Bulan said he would much rather have him die in the canoe than in Tama Liri’s house. Judging by the general lack of recuperative power in the Borneo people when they are seriously ill, and by the small probability that my instructions would be strictly obeyed, I thought Wan was doomed, and so expressed myself to Tama Bulan, with the hope, at the same time, that the medicine would be efficacious.

Joined by Tama Liri and a number of his adherents, we set out for the house of Aban Avit; Tama Bulan dolefully and regretfully bade us good-bye, wishing us ‘Salamat jalan’—_a lucky journey_.

Aban Avit, also a Berawan, proved to be as much a credit to the tribe as Tama Liri is a disgrace; his house is strongly built, well floored, well roofed with iron-wood shingles, decorated here and there with carvings, and, around doors and along partition walls, ornamented with borders of loops and circles and dots painted in black and white by the Chief’s own hand. (Elsewhere I have described the house with some minuteness.)

No longer under Tama Bulan’s influence, the other Kayan Chiefs began to behave in a foolish and stubborn manner.

Tama Usong flatly refused to come up to the house because he disliked Aban Avit, and sulked in his boat on the other side of the river, preferring to endure torrents of rain at night rather than forget old scores until the very hour of the grand ratification of peace and amity at Tama Aping Buling’s. His absence, however, was not felt; the house was full of strangers; an old, sad-faced Chief, named Laki Jok Orong, had arrived only the day before, from the Rejang, and was on his way to the Baram, whither he was escorting a middle-aged woman who three years previously had been abducted from her home, and ever since held captive in a Rejang River house. Curiously enough, Dr. Kükenthal, on a visit to the lower Baram, had happened to photograph this very woman before her abduction,[13] and had sent a copy of the portrait to her family. Having discovered the house wherein the woman was detained, some of her friends set out to obtain her release. By means of this photograph, which they took with them, they were enabled to establish her identity beyond dispute, and brought her away. The features in the photograph were still recognisable, even under a thick coating of finger-marks. The woman herself now had possession of it, and, proudly unwrapping it from its many coverings of dirty cotton cloth and dried palm leaves, passed it round the circle.

Laki Jok Orong had a sad tale to tell of the oppression of his people by one Owang Taha, a half-breed Malay, and a sub-Resident for the Government, in the upper Rejang River. When he once got fairly started, he kept up the screed in a whining, lugubrious monotone that droned on and on till his audience, by desertions and by new arrivals, was changed several times, and at last engaged in general conversation; but none the less, the droning plaint of the Rejang Chief still went on and on. The seven or eight long, straggling hairs which he suffered to grow on his lip, above the right corner of his mouth waggled and waved, and in his ears the ornaments, carved out of a horn-bill’s crest to represent tiger-cat’s teeth, alternately pointed up and down as he dolefully shook his head over the never-ending rehearsal of his wrongs. I retired to my dark-tent, developed a dozen or more negatives, packed away all my trays and chemicals, and then when I rejoined the circle around the fire in the veranda, still from the outer edge of darkness quavered Jok Orong’s voice as persistent as ever,—and as unheeded.

Early in the next forenoon, Tama Bulan and six of his best paddlers came swiftly up-stream to tell us that Wan was much better, but that they had decided to take him home with all speed. Of course, that Tama Bulan should turn round and immediately go back to Tama Liri’s was not for a moment to be thought of, and, although it was early in the day, jars of arrack were brought out, and the sullen Tama Usong and Juman, persuaded thereto by Tama Bulan, joined us in the veranda, and the unwearied Laki Jok Orong seized a fresh opportunity to indulge in the luxury of woe, and to begin, and continue the recital of innumerable wrongs. The etiquette in drinking toasts is the reverse of ours; with us, he who is toasted remains seated, generally with a sickly, self-conscious smile, while all the others rise and drink to him. In Borneo, however, the toast is the only one who rises and is the only one to drink, and he must leave no heel-taps; it is the company who remain seated, and break into a deafening humming and _oo-oo_-ing, which are kept up until the last drop is drained. Possibly, the custom arises from the fact that there are rarely cups enough to go round, and one sticky, begrimed, glass tumbler, or else a carved bamboo cup, (rarely used now-a-days,) must perforce pass from lip to lip. That there had been such things as bamboo drinking-cups, we discovered by mere accident from a song, commonly sung at these feasts, which runs:—‘I offer to you the glittering cup, I offer to you the bamboo cup.’ The words have a jingling rhythm:—

Akui mejee tebok klingee
Ara wi wi ará
Aku meju tebok bulu
Ara wi wi ará.

Never having seen in use, as cups, aught else but pressed-glass tumblers or cocoanut shells, we asked what was meant by ‘tebok bulu’ and, by way of answer, a rummage began among the old mats and baskets piled on the rafters; whereupon, several bamboo cups were found, coated with dust and soot. They were carved into a sort of lip like a pitcher on the upper edge, and on the sides were decorated with engraved scrolls, bands, and circles. Tama Bulan was delighted to see them, and said he remembered well when there was no other kind of cup than the tebok bulu. He insisted that one should be washed out immediately and put to use, inasmuch as arrack always tasted far better from the bamboo. To Jok Orong, being a guest from afar, was accorded the honor of the first drink, and the _oo-oo_-ing was so thunderous that in his nervousness most of the arrack trickled down where his shirt front might have been. Then came Tama Bulan’s turn, and without the wink of an eyelid he drained the cup, and then gave a cleanly wipe round his mouth with the long, dangling end of his waist-cloth. So the flowing bowl passed round; one after another the Chiefs were toasted and _oo-oo_-ed, and Jok Orong’s perpetual-motion tongue was again set free, but instead of recapitulating his endless wrongs, he now divulged, for the first time, the true object of his visit. Having first privately conferred with Tama Bulan and obtained the latter’s hearty approval of his purpose, he formally announced to the whole company that he was on his way to the Baram Fort to convey to Dr. Hose, whom he now unexpectedly met on the road, the earnest wishes of the people of the Batang Kayan River, in Dutch Borneo, to emigrate to the Baram district, and place themselves under the protecting Government of Rajah Brooke. It was the very thing that Dr. Hose had been hoping to hear for some time past. It was especially fortunate that Tama Bulan happened to be on hand, and could give his weighty assurances that the immigrants would meet with cordial welcome. As a tangible proof of the friendship of the Kayans and Kenyahs of the Baram, a large bundle of presents was made up for Jok Orong to carry back with him. Tama Bulan purchased at once from Aban Avit two large brass gongs as his contribution, (a really lavish present;) Aban Avit sent a highly prized clay jar; Tama Usong and Juman contributed parangs and spear-heads, and Dr. Hose sent a bolt of white cotton cloth, three bolts of Turkey red, a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and, with his usual happy tact, a bundle of candles; these, he explained to Jok Orong, were to light the footsteps of the new comers and guide them to a land of ease and plenty,—a gift and a message exactly in accord with their own sentimental symbolism; and six months later, when a large number of these Batang Kayan people did move over to the Baram, the Chiefs all came to Dr. Hose and laid these candles before him in the court-room of the Fort.

When the arrack was getting low and the lament of Jok Orong was beginning afresh, Tama Bulan arose to take his leave. All the people of the house, even the women and children, marched out in single file and took their places on the plank walk leading to the river-bank, and even on the notched log at the very edge of the water. As the brave old Kenyan Chief’s canoe swung out, all those who stood on the shore waved their large disc-like hats, shouting farewells and wishes for his safe journey home. He leaned far out from under the palm-leaf screen of his canoe, and with a broad smile, revealing a gleam of his shining black teeth, waved his hat and shouted success to the Great Peace-party; the swift current caught his boat, and it dashed out of sight round the turn of the river. There is unquestionably an unusual personal force in this middle-aged Kenyah Chief’s character; not a tribe that does not respect his name and speak of him with admiration mingled almost with reverence. In my book of photographs, which I carried about with me to overcome the objections of timid souls to having their portraits taken, Tama Bulan’s portrait soon became framed with a black margin of thumb-marks, and his features much dimmed by constant fingering,—the natives are never content simply to look at a portrait, but always insist on passing their hands over it; in landscapes, no matter how familiar the scene, they take no interest whatever. Tama Bulan’s influence cannot be attributed to fierce looks; his expression is, on the contrary, gentle and benign; nor is his presence commanding, but yet, when he once gives an order or pronounces judgement, there seems to be no thought of disobedience or of appeal. Certainly, he has one characteristic: keenness; we once asked him if he knew what was meant when, in talking English among ourselves, we said ‘T. B.’ (his initials); he at once replied, ‘I think, Tuan, you are, probably, talking about me.’ We were led to ask because we noticed several times that he looked up swiftly when these initials were uttered.

By the time that all the arrack had been quaffed, the promiscuous household of Aban Avit was somewhat demoralized; nevertheless, we picked out a party of eight or ten sober men to escort us to the top of an adjoining hill, whence we could get the bearings of several mountains which would give us cross-bearings when we reached the really hilly country. It was an exceedingly difficult ascent, although the hill was only five hundred feet high; so dense was the jungle with thorny palms, rattans, and the roots of ‘buttress trees,’ that we had to cut every step of our way to the top. When we reached the summit we were just as much closed in by trees as when we were at the foot. As a sight of the horizon was essential, there was no help for it but to sacrifice some of the grand old trees; so our men were set to work with their axes, and in a few minutes one after another of the venerable giants went toppling down the precipitous hillside, carrying smaller trees in their fall and making a crashing roar that reverberated from mountain to mountain like veritable peals of thunder. Then were disclosed views of the surrounding mountains through the open windows in the foliage, and we were enabled to take the bearings of Mt. Dulit, and Mt. Mulu, and the peaks of a low range of lime-stone hills that were to the south-westward near the coast.

The next day, during our toilsome paddling up-river, we overtook an old Chief named Jamma and his party, also on the way to Tama Aping Buling’s to participate in the Peace ceremonies.

Jamma had the reputation of having at all times a marvellously good opinion of himself, and on this occasion was travelling in grand state with gong-players in the bow of his boat discoursing that tinkling, staccato music, of which, it seems, he was an ardent admirer.

THE ORNAMENTS IN HIS EARS ARE CARVED OUT OF THE BEAK OF A HORN-BILL, IN IMITATION OF TIGER-CAT’S TEETH.]

The instrument known as the ‘Kromong’ is an importation from Brunei, the ancient capital of Borneo, and consists of a series of eleven small brass gongs laid on ropes of rice straw and struck with a wooden beater. The result is perfect in time but absolutely devoid of melody; it is merely running up and down the imperfect scale of gongs in sequence, or beginning at the deepest toned, or largest gong, with the left hand, the third in the series is struck with the right hand, then the second with the left and the fourth with the right, and so up the line of all the eleven gongs, the left hand following the right at an interval of one gong. At a distance, possibly at a very great distance, the sound wafted across the water is really not unpleasant, recalling the gurgling and tinkling of a woodland brook; but close at hand its jangling monotony is beyond words exasperating.

Jamma, to whom was due this running accompaniment, is the nephew of the redoubtable Aban Jau, who, in the wild days before Sir Charles Brooke became Rajah of the Baram district, was the ruler over all the people of the Tinjar. For years he defied the Sarawak Government, and with his numerous and formidable household of eight hundred people was the terror of the whole region. His house was over a quarter of a mile in length, and was well stocked with brass swivel-guns brought from Brunei. But he was finally overpowered by the Rajah’s trained Iban soldiers and forced to submit to the laws and the taxes of Sarawak. Mild and moderate as these were, they were too galling to Aban Jau, and he soon after migrated to the regions of ‘Bulun Matai,’—the Land of the Dead,—his household was scattered, and nothing now remains of his long-house except rows of decaying posts stretching far away into a thick, impenetrable overgrowth of palms, gigantic ferns, and tangled vines. To judge of the dead uncle by the living nephew, it cannot be said that the breed is improved; the nephew, Jamma, is a decidedly repulsive old fellow in spite of his musical strain. At the time I made his acquaintance he was sadly in need of a razor, or rather, of a pair of tweezers; a five days’ scraggly growth of grizzled bristles covered his chin and cheeks; to aid his failing eyes he wore a pair of huge, circular, brass-rimmed spectacles, evidently a bargain, purchased at random from a Chinese trader; their focus did not in the least comply with the formula of his eye-sight, and made him squinny up his eyes in a number of wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker. The eyes behind the glasses resembled those of an Orang Utan; the whites were a dirty, blood-shot brown, and the iris appeared to have overrun and left a stain around it. His eyebrows and eyelashes had been pulled out, and beneath the lower lids hung wrinkled and flabby bags of skin. His upper lip was long, and came down to a point in the middle, and his lower lip was thick and everted, exposing the pale, moist, inner surface. His nose was broad and flat, and the nostrils opened directly forward and apparently into the cavities of his skull. On his head a thin, unhealthy-looking crop of whitish hair stood up, like a scrubbing-brush, where it was not covered by the very dirty and faded blue and white jockey cap of canton flannel, which he wore with unmeasured pride and with a ‘peace in the consciousness of being well dressed,’ which all his ‘religion could not bestow.’ The stretched lobe of his right ear had given way, and one long end dangled down on his chest and whipped from side to side whenever he moved his head quickly. Long experience has taught me utterly to distrust personal appearance at first sight, but in Jamma’s case a prolonged acquaintance confirmed a belief that his intense ugliness had struck in.

The Peace-party was by this time assuming large proportions; constant additions were made to it from the houses along the river, and late in the afternoon, after a vigorous and inevitable outburst from Jamma’s gongs, we pulled up at the high sandy bank in front of the house of Tama Aping Pang. Here, beyond the region of mosquitoes, and while darkness was closing in, cooking fires were built along the shore.

After the evening meal was finished and universal benevolence was diffused by soothing cigarettes, all the Kayans went up into the house to assist Juman in the rite of ‘Usut’—that is, of obliterating a feud. The interchange of Usut is obligatory between the descendants of enemies whenever they first enter each other’s houses; they may have met many times on most friendly terms in the jungle or in the houses of neighbours, but they must not take shelter under one another’s roof until they have appeased the wrongs done by and against their ancestors. The simple rite of giving Usut for ancestral wrongs is expanded into the performance of Jawa when, in addition, the descendants have been themselves wrongdoers.

Up the notched log we all mounted to the veranda and seated ourselves in a circle on the floor. Juman and Tama Aping Pang, a short and squat little man, with a decidedly Mongolian face, sat cross-legged and facing each other. Juman began the ceremony by flinging down a roughly made iron spear-head into the centre of the circle; thereupon Jamma, still wearing his goggles and his blue and white jockey cap, arose to officiate. Upon the flat surface of the spear-head a young chicken was at once decapitated, then torn to pieces, and its warm blood smeared thickly over the point. The hideous Jamma thereupon proclaimed, in the guttural grunts of the Sibop language, that all enmity between the Houses of Tama Aping Pang and Juman was at an end, and hereafter neither of them could be reproached with having allowed the slaughter of their ancestors to go unavenged. Whereupon sundry beads and trinkets were exchanged more as a formality than on account of their value, and some blood from the spear-point having been rubbed either on the chest or arms of everyone present, including ourselves, Juman and all his clan at once hailed Tama Aping Pang and all his clan, as friends. No carousing followed, and the weary Kayans soon retired to the river-bank and to their canoes to sleep.

This house of Tama Aping Pang is famed for its manufacture of ‘Sumpits,’ or blow-pipes. All along on the partition wall of the veranda, I noticed that they were stacked in all stages of manufacture, from the rough-hewn and thick staves up to the drilled and polished tubes. The best Sumpits are made of a hard, close-grained, reddish wood of a tree called ‘Niagang.’ This is used not only on account of its hardness but also because it is exceedingly straight and has very few knots. A staff of wood about eight feet long is shaved down until it is about three and a half inches in diameter; it is then inserted in a hole in the floor of the house, and so secured that one end remains five or six inches above the floor; over it a man stands with a long, slender rod of iron flattened to a rough edge at one end; this edge an assistant keeps constantly true to the centre of the long staff, while the man raises and drops the drill perpendicularly. Gradually a bore of about a quarter of an inch in diameter is thus produced. It is an exceedingly slow process; it takes at least eight or nine hours to drill through the whole length of the staff. The bore is now smoothed, first, by means of fine sand or clay smeared on a slim rattan, which is pulled through it many times rapidly backward and forward. It is then ready for polishing with another piece of rattan ending in a loop or a cleft, wherein leaves, like the bamboo, rich in silica, are bound; it is thus polished until it shines almost as brilliantly as a gun-barrel. The staff is now trimmed down to the diameter of about an inch and a half at the mouth, and to an inch at the muzzle, and then scraped and smoothed with knives and shark-skin files. If the tube happen to be slightly sprung, the curve is overcome by a broad iron spear-head bound on at the muzzle; when the pipe is held horizontally the weight of the iron counteracts the curve.

Some of the more highly finished blow-pipes are furnished with a sight, called by the Kayans ‘Bitan,’ ingeniously made of a cowrie shell imbedded in gutta-percha near the muzzle, with the slit-like opening turned upward and parallel with the shaft; again, others have an iron sight, near the muzzle, bound on with rattan. I have never seen any carved ornamentation on a blow-pipe except a plate of bone inlaid with strips of lead, at the mouth-end. ‘Sumpitan’ is the Malay name for the weapon; the Kayans call it ‘Leput,’ and the Punans simply ‘Put;’ Ibans, who clip and elide Malay words, drop the ending _an_, and call it ‘Sumpit.’ All these names are, possibly, derived from an imitation of the sound when the dart is blown through the tube and the tongue closes the opening with a quick pat.

Before our departure next morning there was lively trading in the specialty of the house. The house itself was really a notable monument of industry and artistic taste; many of the projecting beam-ends were carved and the partition walls decorated with borders and frescoes in black and red. For a bolt of red cloth I bought the elaborately carved door of a dwelling-room, whereof the photograph is on the opposite page.

Our next destination was the house of the crafty and treacherous Aban Liah, once a respected Penghulu, but on account of his duplicity in connection with the murder of the Chinaman by Tinggi, (set forth in the preceding pages,) the Government had degraded him. His house was selected, nevertheless, as a rendezvous for the whole Peace-party before ascending the river to the house of Tama Aping Billing, just then the candidate for the Penghulu-ship of the upper Tinjar, and also for Aban Liah’s seat in the Council Negri.

THE TWO LITTLE FIGURES ABOVE THE DOOR WERE SAID TO REPRESENT WAWA MONKEYS. THE CARVING TO THE RIGHT OF THEM IS, I BELIEVE, THE CONVENTIONALIZED HEAD OF A PIG. BELOW THE DOOR THE SAME DESIGN IS REPEATED, BUT REVERSED AND DOUBLE.]

After the halt for luncheon, at mid-day, old Jamma courteously invited me into his boat, and in order to overcome my prejudice against him I accepted his invitation. He verily tried his best to make me comfortable; arranged mats and rolls of cloth for me to recline on; started up the gong-beater to his deafening and lugubrious work; told me with assiduous attention the names of the small tributary streams which we passed, and zealously pointed out one where some of his men had gone on a collecting trip for the ‘thing that smells,’—a circumlocution for camphor,—he was afraid to pronounce the name lest it bring bad luck to his collectors. That the river was pre-empted was manifest; across its mouth had been stretched a rope of rattan, and from it dangled wooden models of parangs, billiongs, (axes) and spears. These models indicated that the river was claimed by the camphor collectors; to disregard this warning exposed the offender to the malignity of all evil Spirits. The only way whereby such a taboo may be counteracted is to build a fire, and erect over it an arch of twigs and sticks cut at the ends and down the sides into curled shavings; when the fire burns up briskly, he who would break the taboo must carefully explain to the fire that he is a near friend to the claimants of the river, and entreat the flame and the smoke to convey his message of good-will both to them and to the Spirits of the jungle. After this ceremony he may, in perfect safety, pass under the rattan, and ascend the river.

In the course of this entertaining and instructive conversation, Jamma suddenly, and apparently for the first time, caught sight of my briar-wood pipe, and, apropos of nothing, exclaimed, ‘What a pity it is that the Tuan did not bring with him several pipes like the one he is now smoking.’ The mystery of his devotion to me was at once solved! Here was the secret of his hospitality; alack, I did not respond; blind to the palpable hint, I simply replied that it was indeed a pity, a great pity; I often liked to change my pipes, but that this one was so exceptionally sweet that I had brought no other. He had counted on my handing it over to him with alacrity, and at once his manner changed from ‘gay to grave, from lively to severe;’ the rest of the journey was passed in an obstinate silence, unbroken save by the banging of his brazen gongs.

Aban Liah began to show his evil disposition from the very moment we pulled up at his house; he insisted that Juman should never enter his house until Usut had been paid. This seemed designed to thwart the whole Peace-making; not only would much time be consumed in discussing the payment of Usut which was not due to Aban Liah, but furthermore the ceremony of Jawa and total settlement of Usut had been planned to take place in a day or two at Tama Aping Buling’s. Dr. Hose put a stop at once to all this nonsense by emphatically telling Aban Liah that Juman was now travelling with the Government,—that is, with Dr. Hose himself,—and as the Government intended to enter any house that was convenient, Juman should follow. I am thus particular in giving these details because of their tragic consequence to Aban Liah. In response, Aban Liah gave a grunt, and, muttering, shut himself up at once in his private room, where he sulked for half an hour, while the Kayans and Kenyahs were making themselves quite at home in his veranda. When they were all seated in groups, Dr. Hose went to the room and dragged forth the pouting, grumbling, obstinate old creature, and although the two men, Aban Liah and Juman, were perfectly well acquainted with each other, Dr. Hose made an elaborate ceremony of introducing them, as though they had never met before; this formal introduction really seemed to obliterate all previous hard feeling, and Aban Liah unbent as though graciously meeting a new acquaintance. Shortly afterward, our host cleared a space in his room for us, spread fresh mats, and put his fireplace at the disposal of our Chinese cook. When we all sat chatting in the veranda, Aban Liah seized the occasion to expatiate on the magnificent proportions of the pig that he was going to kill for us on the morrow, affirming that it was seven spans long (this was one span better than Tama Liri had held out to us), and very, _very_ fat! His arrack also was of an especially fine brand, and plenty of it, too, in jars dusty with age.

Suddenly, messengers hurried in to announce that the Lerons from the house of the Leppu Anans close by, and friends and relatives of Tinggi, were on their way down-river to go through the ceremony of Jawa with Juman and his clan.

A BERAWAN CHIEF, WHO, DURING THE PEACE-MAKING, DIED OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.]

The greatest excitement at once ensued; all jumped to their feet and began talking and gesticulating wildly. Dr. Hose, fearing that a real fight, instead of a sham one, might be the result, hurried up-river in a light canoe, to meet the approaching participators in the Jawa, and to restrain their zeal. These people, be it remembered, had vowed to kill Dr. Hose on sight, and had even made death-dealing images both of him and of Tama Bulan, as I have already mentioned. Dr. Hose’s absolute disregard of their bloodthirsty threats and machinations disarmed them completely; he boarded their canoe in the most friendly manner and accompanied them down-stream.

When they were opposite to Aban Liah’s house, the bravest in their party fired three or four blank shots from an old muzzle-loading gun. This salute Juman was bound to answer from the house. His gun was a breech-loader, but unfortunately so old, battered, and loose in its joints that a man at the stock stood in as much danger as a man at the muzzle. Juman’s apology for his reluctance to fire it off was—(literally translated) ‘Tuan, will you shoot off this snappang for me; I am afraid its engine has the fever.’ My assistant, Lewis Etzel, discharged it twice for him, and then made the hair of the Lerons stand on-end by discharging from his Winchester rifle six shots, in rapid succession. After this exchange of salutes, the Lerons disembarked and entered the house at the up-river end. After all were assembled in a dense crowd, panting with excitement, their eyes dilated and flashing, they paused for a second and then gave a wild yell, like a jeer of derision, and began stamping their feet on the rattling boards. It was truly deafening. Instantly Juman and his people were on their feet. There was a quick, frenzied dash, with yells and stamps, until they stood face to face. This was the instant that the sham, weaponless fight should have taken place, leaving black eyes and torn ears. For a moment, it seemed as though over-excitement would lead to a deeper tragedy. The reaction came unexpectedly from Juman, the chief actor in this dramatic show (which in sooth it really was). Juman, brave enough before a single man, Tinggi, was here overcome by an attack of—what shall I call it?—stage fright? The next moment we saw him wilt and ignominiously retreat from the affray. The wild hubbub subsided weakly. Criticisms of Juman’s conduct were at once loudly, freely, and universally expressed. But, unabashed, he stoutly maintained that he had fulfilled all that was required of him, and that now was the time for Usut. The Lerons had killed many of his ancestors in days of yore, and he demanded of them, as a salve for his wounded feelings, five ‘Tawaks’—(large bronze gongs made in Java) and five small gongs, (worth in all about three hundred Mexican dollars.) This considerable sum, the Lerons protested, was far too high a price to pay for wounds inflicted on Juman’s ancestors and his own feelings; finally, after much haggling and many excited gesticulations on both sides, a compromise was struck on one Tawak, one small gong, and a ‘Lukut sekála,’ one of those invaluable beads, prized above all others by Kayans, Kenyahs, and Ibans.

(I tried my best to solve the mysterious value of these beads, but in vain. They are by no means brilliant or showy; indeed, quite the contrary, they are rather dull and ugly; of about half an inch in diameter, and on the four quarters there is a little many-pointed star of dull yellow on a dark background. They look a good deal like old Venetian glass, but whence they originally came, or wherein consists their charm, the natives themselves could not or would not tell. Once on a time, some astute Chinese traders, counting on an assured fortune, sent a Lukut sekála to Germany, where it was copied with really marvellous fidelity. With these faultless imitations they were certain that they could deceive the natives, but the latter detected the counterfeit beads at once, and, although willing to purchase the forgeries, would pay but a pittance for them.)

By the terms of the Usut, whenever the Lerons should pay a return visit to Juman, he pledged himself to restore the Lukut sekála.

As soon as Juman’s Usut was finally settled with the Lerons, Aban Liah’s vaunted seven-span pig was brought forward for inspection and admiration. Tama Liri at once fell to measuring it off; when his last span reached the animal’s snout, he arose, and, gazing round on the circle and wagging his head with a beaming and triumphant smile, announced that after all the pig was barely _five_ spans long. The chorus of clucks of surprise with which this announcement was greeted did not, however, in the least disconcert the boastful and deceitful old host.

Jamma, still resplendent in his dirty blue and white jockey cap and prodigious goggles, hustled about in a most officious manner, directing the guests and members of the household where to sit, and what to do, always in a half-apologetic tone, as if the host, Aban Liah, should be pardoned for not exactly knowing what was proper. Tama Talip, the Chief of the Lerons, now that everything in the way of Usut had been paid and snugly stowed, took his seat among the Kayans and Kenyahs, and denounced Juman’s demands and rehearsed the deaths among his forebears due to Juman’s bloodthirsty family. Juman listened stolidly, evidently not a little pleased to hear how very brave his ancestors had been. The talk went round the circle, and Jok Orong began again to drone forth the endless tale of his woes. The dreary knowledge of what this implied proved too much for the patience of the white contingent of the Peace-party, and we all crept unobserved out of the circle, and, having found, on the banks of the river, an upturned canoe, reclined thereon, and lazily watched in the gloaming the gigantic fruit-bats, (‘flying foxes’ they are called,) which were now thickly visible in all quarters of the sky and all bending their flight in one direction, toward their nocturnal feeding-ground. They imparted an antediluvian appearance to the sombre scene, and we seemed to have travelled back into a remote geologic period, among the pterodactyls. Not even the golden rays of level sunlight gleaming forth from beneath lowering clouds on the horizon could dispel this solemnity. At our feet sluggishly glided the darkening river, emerging, and again lost, from under the dense jungle on its banks, whence here and there tall, slender, tufted palms rose into the silent air from the unbroken green massed about their feet. On the opposite bank, in the distance, abruptly towered Mount Dulit, whose purple peaks were glowing with the last rays of sunlight. And ‘all the air a solemn stillness’ held, save when at intervals the muffled murmur of Jok Orong’s woes reached us from the house behind, but did not mar the scene; it partook of the nature of eternity and infinity; we felt that _labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum_.

On the next day a great feast was held; as one of the most important, nay, most vital, of preliminaries, the slaughter of the pigs took place, and the inspection of their livers for favorable or unfavorable omens. The pigs were brought up with their four feet tied together, and laid in a row outside the circle of Chiefs and elders in the veranda. Tama Talip, the Chief of the Lerons as well as an adopted father of Tinggi, whom Juman had slain, begged Dr. Hose to talk to a pig before it was killed, and enjoin it to divulge by its liver whether or not the Government was right in ordering the death of Tinggi. Dr. Hose consented to harangue the swine, but with much shrewdness, warned the assemblage, in advance, that no matter what the victim’s liver might indicate, he had pursued the course that seemed right to him, and would do so again in spite of all the livers of a thousand pigs. He stood forth in the centre of the circle, where the pig was lying, and paused solemnly for all conversation to cease; in spite, however, of the gravity of his bearing, and the sacredness of the occasion, some of the light-headed rabble, outside the circle, kept up a gabbling, whereupon he shouted at them in a voice so loud and stern, that their teeth chattered, and old Jamma’s hair stood up stiffer than before. In the pin-drop silence that followed, he suddenly gave the unsuspecting swine a vigorous kick to enforce attention, whereto, by an aggrieved squeal, the animal responded that it was all ears. His harangue was then addressed, partly to the pig and partly to the Lerons, almost in the following words:—‘Lerons, it is not one of our customs to ask from a pig what is in the hearts of men, but you people of up-river have faith in this custom and believe that a pig knows your feelings, [cries of ‘Betúl! Betúl!’—True! True!] I will on this occasion adopt your custom and talk to this pig. You tell me that this pig understands Malay, so I will talk in that language, that all may understand, Kayans, Kenyahs, Sibops, Berawans, and Lerons. Know then, that it was neither Juman nor Tama Bulan who slew Tinggi and his brother Sidup, but I, the Government, did it, and none other. If you have any fault to find, find it with me. Remember that, you, Tama Talip, there! And now, O sacred pig, tell us who is in the wrong and who is in the right. [Here, the pig receives another and vigorous call upon its attention, and responds befittingly.] If men of the Tinjar kill people, I will order men from the Baram to find the murderers and slay them. If men of the Baram kill people, I will order Tinjar men to find the murderers and slay them. Let this declaration of mine sink into your livers, all you people from both rivers, and never forget it.’ With these concluding words, he stamped his foot so suddenly and so loudly, that the old men, already awed by the silence and the solemnity of the hour, jumped almost from the floor, and Jamma shook his goggles off. Immediately the cry arose,—‘Kill the pig instantly, that he may hear nothing else to influence him!’ The poor beast was then quickly seized and taken to one side, and its neck sawed through with a dull parang, and before its death-struggles were fully over, its warm liver was deposited in a wooden bowl, and passed round the assembly for close inspection. They all tried to look extremely wise and expressed their opinions in a grave undertone to their neighbors; an old man, with one eye and a faded green velvet smoking-cap, winked and blinked at it, and then pensively resumed the mastication of a betel nut. Jamma pawed and fingered the liver all over, but maintained an ominous silence. Tama Talip screwed his mouth up on one side with a foreboding expression, clasped his hands over his knees, and began rocking backward and forward. The atmosphere became charged with perplexity and deep anxiety. Evidently, the fateful liver was only possibly favorable, and certainly dubious. The gall-bladder extended down nearly to the edge of the liver, and the small lobe which lies beside it was thin and long; so far, these features meant long life and prosperity. The chief points, which involved perplexity not unmixed with deep dismay, were that the lobe which represented the Government, was small, hard, and firm, while its inner border was ominously like a cord set into the surrounding substance; and, worst of all, above the attachment of the gall-bladder was an unprecedented, deeply indented scar, as if some of the liver had actually melted away! Consternation began to deepen. It was a hazardous minute for the Government. But Dr. Hose rose to the occasion, and at once proclaimed to all the clear and manifest interpretation of the extraordinary message from the pig. He asserted that the liver most unmistakably revealed to them, by the hardness of its lobe, the strength and unswerving justice of the Government, and that it was most difficult to break, while at the same time, it was as clear as noon-day that the thick, cord-like border showed how firmly the Government was united to the best interests of the people. Then turning to the scar above the gall-bladder, he made their very souls quiver and their flesh creep, by declaring that it unquestionably foretold the speedy and inevitable death of some very important Chief! (A little wholesome terror is a happy solvent in governing these people.) Several of the Chiefs present would have turned pale, if they could, at this frightful, terrifying revelation, but possibly they consoled themselves with the thought, hitherto unacknowledged by their self-conceit, that perhaps they were not so very, very important after all.

No one dared raise a dissenting voice to Dr. Hose’s lucid and manifest interpretation. A good instance, by the way, of one of the sources of his influence over them; he always contrives to turn to the Government’s account their superstitions and fears.