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.
Aban Liah, our host, was the most apprehensive of all present. He well
knew that he had once been all-important in his tribe, and that he
had been unfaithful and treacherous to the Government; wherefore, the
better to conceal his deadly fear, and revive his courage, he had his
large jars of arrack brought out, and ostentatiously cut the dusty stiff
rattans which bound down the covers. The first drink was tendered to the
interminable Jok Orong, the guest from the Rejang, to whom all desired
to show friendship and promise protection to his people should they move
into the Baram district. He gulped down the drink quickly, but not so
quickly that the crowd had not time enough to stamp and shout in the
customary manner so mightily that the house most alarmingly trembled,
creaked, and swayed, until caution prompted us to secure safe positions
over good, strong beams; no accident happened, however, although a
tremendous uproar accompanied the quaffing by each Chief. Before the
second round of drinks, Dr. Hose insisted that they should deliver
their speeches and protestations of peace while their brains were still
unclouded, and as a preliminary the officious Jamma killed a fowl over a
bowl of water, and then with a brush of wood cut into a tuft of shavings
at one end spattered the blood and water over the audience. Then, still
holding the blood-smeared brush in his hand, he launched into a vehement
harangue, proclaiming this to be the very greatest of all Peace-makings
that had ever been known on the banks of the Tinjar, and that the pig’s
liver had shown them clearly and truly the strength and benefit of the
Government. When he had nearly shaken off his absurd goggles and his
jockey cap had assumed a jaunty air on the back of his head, he handed
the bloodied brush over to Juman, who at once jumped to his feet, and
in the Kayan language began to tell in a truly sensible way how he and
Tama Bulan had been commanded by the Government to bring Tinggi to
justice. He then deliberately narrated all the details of the killing,
(which must have been pleasant to the ears of Tama Talip, the adopted
father of Tinggi,) but gradually he worked himself up to a high pitch
of excitement, beating the air with his arms, see-sawing backward and
forward, and emphasising the close of each sentence by shouting ‘Bahh!
Bahh!’ He asserted that he was but the servant of the Government when he
killed Tinggi, and so staunch was his loyalty that, should the Government
command him to kill his dear friend Tama Usong, he would hold it to
be his duty to obey. His excitement soon over-mastered him, and when
he began to indulge in bravado, and offer to engage any one member of
Tinggi’s family in single combat, we deemed it high time to pull him down
into his seat, and then plied him with congratulations, just as though he
had fully rounded off his speech and finished all he wanted to say.
[Illustration: LIAN AVIT, A LEPPU ANNAN, WITH TIPANG, HIS WIFE, WHO IS
STANDING, AND HER TWO SISTERS.
THE WOODEN FIGURES BEHIND THEM HAVE BEEN PLACED NEAR THE PATHWAY LEADING
TO THE HOUSE, TO FRIGHTEN AWAY EVIL SPIRITS. THESE FIGURES ARE NOT
WORSHIPPED AS IDOLS, NOR ARE OFFERINGS OR SACRIFICES MADE TO THEM,
BUT THEY ARE REGARDED TO A CERTAIN EXTENT WITH REVERENCE. INASMUCH AS
TO TOUCH THEM OR TREAT THEM DISRESPECTFULLY ENDANGERS THE OFFENDER TO
TERRIBLE DREAMS AT NIGHT AND TO BEING SEIZED BY GHOSTLY HANDS, WHICH WILL
LEAVE LASTING SCARS.]
While he was on his feet, drinks had been passing around quietly and
some of the older men, whose heads were none too strong, began to feel
alcoholic effects. Old Aban Anyi, a devoted follower of Tama Usong, and a
hero of many battles, who once told me with pride that he had killed many
men, any quantity of women, and no end of children, hearing Juman boast
that he would kill Tama Usong if he were so ordered by the Government,
tried to get on his feet to challenge such braggart talk, but Tama Usong
himself grabbed him forcibly by the back of his waist-cloth and thumped
him down to his seat again, where he sat mumbling and protesting until
soothed and silenced with another drink. The bloody ‘_pla_,’ or wooden
brush, was next passed to Aban Liah, but his speech was weak and very
apologetic throughout; he asserted that the Government had treated him
badly by degrading him just because he did not tell the whereabouts of
the murderers, Tinggi and Sidup; indeed, he never knew who the murderers
were. Now the fact was that we knew, and all his hearers knew, that he
had lied egregiously and persistently about the murderers, and had even
concealed them in his own house. All this had been fully proved after the
murderers had been killed. It was the sufficing cause of his loss of the
Penghulu-ship.
Tama Usong’s turn came next to declare his good will to the people of
the Tinjar, and before he began, a large cup of arrack was thrust upon
him. The contents of the jars had become, by this time, nearly exhausted;
consequently this cupfull had been dipped up from the dregs, and Tama
Usong gulped into his mouth several large pasty lumps of fermented
rice. In the embarrassment caused by holding the pla (which seems to be
essential to public speaking) he blew the kernels of rice accidentally,
but directly in his host’s face. The arrack was painfully present in his
rambling and incoherent speech, to which no one paid any attention. At
its conclusion all the Chiefs drank in turn from the same cup, and the
formal part of the programme of the meeting ended.
Having gathered about him a fresh and untried audience, Jok Orong started
in again with his endless, life-long tale of woe, which, we knew, only
too well, would last until the arrack was utterly exhausted as well as
his hearers; we, therefore, left them incontinently, preferring the
peace and quiet of the Leppu Anan house, a short distance up-river, to
the fingered feast of stewed fat pork with which Aban Liah was about to
regale his guests.
The Leppu Anans are a clan from the Rejang, which not long before had
been driven over to the Baram district by a threatened onslaught of the
Ibans, who by some underhand means had obtained permission from the
Government to attack them with a regularly organized force. Dr. Hose,
hearing that this expedition had started, and knowing that the permission
had been granted to the Ibans on false pretexts, and inasmuch as in
this matter of life and death there was no time to communicate with the
Government, instantly sent swift messengers to the homes of the Leppu
Anans, telling them to fly for their lives, and promising them protection
if they settled on the Tinjar. It was a terrible journey for the poor
innocent creatures, loaded down, as they were, with all their household
effects and retarded in their haste by the care for the women and
children. Many of them, I was told, were so exhausted that they actually
crawled and dragged themselves on all fours down the hills which
separate the Rejang and Tinjar valleys.
The Ibans, consequently, found the Leppu Anan houses deserted and
stripped of everything movable. Whereupon, not to be baulked of all
spoils whatever, they attacked some of the friendly houses, the abodes of
the very people who, on their journey up-river, had cheerily and kindly
wished them success in their head-hunting. To the Bornean a head is a
head, whether of friend or foe; so on this occasion the Ibans returned to
their homes laden with spoils of their friends and enriched with heads
which had not been on the shoulders of those against whom they had set
out.
The Leppu Anans, in their new house, although they still harboured the
small clan of Lerons who had vowed vengeance on Dr. Hose, nevertheless
regarded Dr. Hose as their preserver, and no trouble taken in his behalf
could be too great. They are quiet and gentle in their manners and very
clean in their persons and about the house. We noticed with much relief
that they did not throng about us, asking such inane questions the minute
that we had landed, as, ‘When did you arrive?’ or, when helping us to
disembark, ‘Did you come in a boat?’—questions which are really not at
all unusual even from the very men who have been paddling your boat all
day long. Possibly, true etiquette demands such questions among the
natives themselves, who, for some occult reason, always desire their
actual arrival and departure to pass unnoticed.
These Leppu Anans were intensely interested in my photographs, and
literally climbed on each other’s shoulders to see them. In their anxiety
to touch the page itself, they nearly crushed the lucky holder of the
book. The picture which excited their unstinted admiration is of two
Ibans bargaining for the sale of a highly prized Chinese jar; they read
the meaning of it at once, explaining it over and over to each other; but
opinion was divided as to the balance of trade; some thought the owner
was a fool to refuse the pile of silver dollars which the purchaser was
offering, while others contended that the man who offered so mean a sum
for so fine a jar must have been crazy. (When I showed the photograph to
the wife of the man who had posed for me as the owner, she was extremely
indignant, protesting that I had no right to represent Angas as such a
fool! No sensible man would ever refuse that pile of money for such a
common old jar. She felt actually defrauded of all that wealth, and I am
sure she looked on me as a thief.)
At noon the next day the Peace-party, which we had left to finish up
the ‘seven’ span pig at Aban Liah’s, came up-river, and we all set out
together on the last stage of the journey to Tama Aping Buling’s.
It was an exciting day’s travel; the rapids were extremely swift, and
the Kayans, Kenyahs, Sibops, Berawans, Leppu Anans, and Lerons became
inextricably intermingled in forcing their canoes past dangerous rocks
and through narrows where the water rushed with almost irresistible
power. Every man of the large assemblage was at the highest tension of
excitement in anticipation of the stirring ceremonies close at hand,
which after all, in the twinkling of an eye, by the merest accident, or
by some trivial flaw in etiquette amid so large a body of hostile clans,
might be converted to bloody battle.
When Tama Bulan was forced to leave us and turn back with his sick
nephew, he provided, with usual forethought, a small pig, which was to be
swiftly forwarded to Tama Aping Buling’s in advance of the Peace-party.
In punctillious observance of native customs on such exalted occasions
as the present, the pig must be sacrificed on the beach before the
Kayans and Kenyahs disembarked. We were positively assured by Aban Liah
on leaving his house, that the piglet had been sent on ahead the night
before to Tama Aping Buling’s house at Long Dapoi; wherefore, when the
Peace-party arrived, everything would be ceremoniously carried out.
Our boat, a little in advance of the others, was gliding smoothly on a
long stretch of quiet water just above turbulent rapids, when we were
met by some men in a canoe from Tama Aping Buling’s; a short excited
announcement from them revealed to us that all was not going rightly
up-river; accordingly, we changed to their lighter boat, and sped
up-stream, leaving our luggage and the Peace-party to follow as they
could. The men who poled the canoe could talk but very little of any
language but Sibop, so we hardly knew what was amiss until we arrived at
the house. On the beach, we were met by Tama Aping Buling himself, almost
in tears; before we could get fairly out of the boat, he squatted down,
and, in a voice of despair, said, ‘Oh, Tuan Prenta, what shall be done!
No pig has been sent to sacrifice when the Kayans arrive. There will
be war instead of peace.’ It was even so. That old traitor, Aban Liah,
had purposely kept back Tama Bulan’s pig in order that the Peace-making
should be a failure, and that his rival, Tama Aping Buling, should get
into trouble. Dr. Hose instantly turned and started down-stream to meet
the Kayans, and keep them down-river until Aban Liah should either
restore the pig or procure another and send it on ahead of them. Aban
Liah was serenely imperturbable when accused to his face of the theft of
the pig, and of his plot to create trouble; but eventually Dr. Hose’s
unsparing denunciation, combined with the sullen threats of the tired
Kayans, eager for the comfortable shelter of a house for the night,
forced him actually to leave the party, and paddle off down-river to buy
or borrow the indispensable little pig.
[Illustration: IBANS BARGAINING OVER THE SALE OF VALUABLE CHINESE JARS.
THE OFFER OF FIFTY MEXICAN DOLLARS IS TREATED WITH HAUGHTY REFUSAL. THE
TWO MEN POSED THEMSELVES, AFTER MY SUGGESTION, FOR THE SUBJECT OF THE
PICTURE.]
They told us afterward that at house after house he was rebuffed, and,
although there were plenty of pigs everywhere, not one could he borrow,
beg, or steal, so universally disliked was he for his mean, tricky ways.
Night came before he finally succeeded in procuring the sacrifice, so
that the wearied Kayans were forced to sleep in their canoes, or in huts
of boughs which they built on a pebbly island in midstream, and endure
a drenching deluge of rain, illumined by such blinding lightning and
deafening thunder as only the Tropics know.
The house built by Tama Aping Buling stands on the north bank of the
river, just opposite to the mouth of the Dapoi, a large tributary. It
is about two hundred feet from the river, on a high bank which slopes
gradually to a wide pebbly beach. The house was only recently finished
at that time, and had cost interminable labor; many of the piles whereon
it was built were at least twenty inches in diameter, and supported the
floor fully fifteen feet from the ground. The veranda was broad and well
floored with wide, hewn planks, and roofed with shingles of billian wood,
not nailed to the rafters, but tied on with strips of rattan. One end
of the house was not yet quite finished, and shingles only partially
covered it. This incomplete state was not, however, without its uses; it
supplied Tama Aping Buling, while showing his house to us, with a chance
to make a remark, which, hackneyed and threadbare as it is among them,
is always uttered apparently in the belief that it will be received with
all the applause of a novel and brilliant idea. With a wave of his hand
toward the roofless rafters, Tama Aping explained, ‘This end of the house
is occupied by Laki Langit and his children,’ which, interpreted, means,
‘Grandfather Sky and his children—the stars!’ We had heard the witticism
so often that it was hard to force a smile,—but we did. Let him among us,
who, in describing ‘full dress,’ has never called it ‘war-paint’ or ‘best
bib and tucker,’ cast the first reproach at the unsophisticated Borneans.
Early on the following morning the wee pig was sacrificed on the beach
and there left in its gore. Such a sacrifice, when made in ratification
of a compact, renders the flesh inedible to all participants in the
ceremony; hence the diminutive size of the pig. On the present occasion
Aban Liah’s enforced pig was so extremely small, that I saw a lean and
hungry dog seize it by the head after the sacrifice was over, and,
slinging the body over his back, make off toward some tall grass, where
he probably devoured the whole carcass at one meal,—possibly, at one gulp.
The sacrifice of the pig was certainly a beginning, but it did not seem
to expedite the other ceremonies to be performed in the veranda of the
house. The Kayans, never enthusiastic over this Peace-making, (which is
not a fraternisation, but only an agreement not to kill each other on
unprovoked raids,) were sulking in their huts on the karangans, under the
pretext of drying themselves. All the while Tama Aping Buling and his
clan, and the other Tinjar Chiefs and their clans, sat wearily waiting in
the veranda for the Kayans to appear. There were several false reports
that they were coming, and each time the host, Tama Aping, invariably
alleged that most important matters needed attention in his private
room, and as invariably had to be dragged, trembling, from his little
dark sleeping-box, where he was crouching, to attend to the reception of
his guests. One cause of Tama Aping’s conduct was dread lest it should
leak out that he had been largely instrumental in giving the Government
the information which eventually led to the detection of Tinggi and
his brother, Sidup, both of whom had been, in point of fact, at one
time inmates of his house; should this treachery become known, his own
people, even, would turn against him, and his life would not be worth a
black bead.
[Illustration: TAMA APING BULING’S HOUSE ON THE TINJAR.
THE SCENE OF THE NOTABLE PEACE-MAKING.]
The forenoon passed; the day wore on to afternoon,—still no Kayans; we
began to fear that they had turned back and had given up all idea of
peace-making.