Chapter III: Part 3

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.

(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.

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!

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?

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.

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:—