On our return to Kuching, Bertram and I were anxious to pay a flying
visit to a place called Paku, where one of the Rajah’s magistrates
resides. The people in the neighbourhood are mostly Chinese, and near
by are antimony and quicksilver mines worked by the Borneo Company
Limited.
We left Kuching in one of the Government launches about eleven o’clock
in the morning, and after a few hours’ steaming came to a Chinese
settlement, called Sigobang, where the land on the banks becomes a
broad alluvial plain and where Chinese settlers grow plantations of
sugar, that beautiful cane with its emerald green leaves and golden
stems. Fresh sugar-cane is a pleasant thing to munch at in a desultory
way. You cut through a piece of the stem, slice it into tubes, peel
off its thick rind, and when it looks like a stick of white wood you
bite into it, suck its juice, and dispose of its filaments in the most
convenient way. The paths in the vicinity of towns or villages are
always strewn with the vestiges of sugar-cane eaters, who suck in the
juice and spit out the filaments as they go. As we steamed up river
we saw pepper vines, yams, pineapples, etc., also growing near the
banks, and Chinamen clad in short cotton drawers, holding umbrellas
over their heads, and using their other hand as they worked in their
gardens. Yellow dogs, about the size of fox terriers, rushed out from
Chinese houses and yelped at us from doorways; these were evidently
Dyak dogs, who are never known to bark. Bamboo wheels stood under open
sheds--primitive machines for extracting the sugar juice from the cane.
These Chinese houses appeared more substantial than were those of the
poorer Malays. They were built level with the ground, and their wooden
doors were ornamented with scarlet bands of paper over which were large
black Chinese characters. Ducks and geese were swimming about in the
river near these settlements.
These small villages being left behind us, the forests once more
encroached on the land. The river now became narrower, and rocky banks
replaced the mud. The banks were covered with ferns and bamboo grass,
the latter weed looking like green lace and shaking at the slightest
current of air. Black butterflies fluttered over the grass, and an
alligator bird, or bul-bul, was singing on the banks in the sunshine.
Clumps of bamboos grew here and there, and great trees hung over the
water, clinging to the banks, their branches entangled with parasites
and stag’s-horn ferns, whilst the reflection of lagerstremias covered
with purple spiked flowers, stained the running water.
[Illustration: AN ENCAMPMENT UP THE BATANG LUPAR RIVER
THE TUAN MUDA, MR. BAILEY AND THE AUTHOR WITH MALAY AND
DYAK CHIEFS]
We reached Busu, the landing-place for Paku, at six in the evening.
At this point the stream is about twenty yards wide. Malay houses,
devoid of orchards or gardens, stood on poles amongst the weeds on the
banks. On platforms of crazy planks, where Malays husk their paddy,
jutting out from these houses, dilapidated coxcombs planted in old
kerosene tins struggled to live in their uncongenial surroundings. A
path made of single bamboos, dovetailing into each other, led from
the cottages to the river. A man on the bank, shouldering a bamboo,
came out of one of these houses to fetch water from the river. He was
met with a storm of scornful remarks from our crew, as Malay men are
supposed to leave water-carrying to the women of their household. A
little farther on was the Borneo Company Ltd.’s wharf, whence the
antimony and quicksilver is shipped to Kuching and thence to Singapore
and Europe. A tramway starts from the landing-place, leading to the
mines some miles inland.
We found Mr. Awdry, one of the Rajah’s officers and a great friend
of ours, awaiting us at the Wharf. We then got into a horse-truck
kindly put at our disposal by the Manager of the Mines, furnished with
mattresses and pillows, and comfortably travelled over the four miles
separating us from the bungalow. Mrs. Awdry met us at the bottom of
the hill leading to her house. As we clambered down from the truck,
which was pretty high, a concourse of Chinamen, who had come to meet
us, started beating their gongs, blowing into instruments sounding
like bagpipes, and waving banners, whilst others set fire to piles
of crackers, hanging from iron tripods, all along the road. The
hill was steep and, as we headed the procession, the orchestra and
banner-bearers, in the exuberance of their welcome, followed closely at
our heels, so that we were pushed forward by our noisy welcomers, until
I found myself racing up the incline like a panting hare, with a crowd
of pursuers immediately behind me. The din was fearful, but the people
meant well, and, although short of breath from my exertions, I managed
to thank them for their kind reception as soon as I reached the top.
From the verandah of the house a great stretch of country could be
seen. There were curious-shaped hills of limestone sticking up singly
here and there, although, viewed from Kuching, they appear like a
chain of mountains. One of them, called Sebigi, stood out from the
plain like a great green thumb. Although forest fires are unusual in
Sarawak, for droughts are rare, the whole of one of these hills, called
Jambusan, was a mass of burnt trees with the limestone showing through
the charred stumps. No one knew how the fire had occurred, but it was
conjectured that the rubbing together of the bamboos in the wind during
the dry weather had caused them to ignite. With the exception of this
charred hillock, the house we were in seemed to be the centre of a sea
of green waves. Along the valleys were small Chinese gardens, these
people, as is well known, being excellent agriculturists. Here were
pumpkins, water melons, scarlet runners, sweet potatoes, maize, and a
kind of native spinach growing magnificently. There were small ponds
on which floated those beautiful pink and white lotuses, the Chinese
cultivating the flowers as food for their pigs. A hot spring bubbled up
somewhere in the flat ground near by, its temperature being about 100°
Fahrenheit. The Chinese and Dyaks of the district bathed in its waters
as a cure for rheumatism. English cattle were grazing here and there,
and the place looked prosperous and peaceful.
The day after our arrival at Paku an individual named Pa Baniak
(meaning Father of plenty) came to see me, accompanied by two members
of his tribe. He was a Land Dyak and his village was situated on
the steep slope of limestone mountains in the neighbourhood. He was
short and stout, and a few white bristles sprouted over his chin. He
wore Chinese drawers, a dirty white cotton jacket, and a dark blue
handkerchief was twisted round his head. He had wooden discs screwed
into the rims of his ears, which, he said, were necessary to his
comfort for two reasons: firstly, they made his hearing more acute, and
secondly, they pleased the crocodiles. He told us that although he and
his tribe were constantly fishing in the main river, he felt sure that
none of these monsters would attempt to eat any of them. In response
to my inquiry, he related the following story--not, however, before he
had risen, coughed, spat out of the verandah, taken hold of the tips of
my fingers, passed the back of his hand across his nostrils, and then
returned to his place on the floor:--
“Malays are not good people,” he said, “and before the first white
Rajah came to our country, they did many wicked things. In the time
of long ago, a Malay caught a crocodile; this was treacherous of him,
because he tied a dog to a wooden hook attached to a long piece of
rattan which he made fast to a tree, leaving its loose end floating on
the river. The dog howled and attracted a hungry crocodile, who swam
joyfully to the spot, and, in spite of the warnings of his friend, the
alligator bird, he snapped at the bait. He swallowed the dog and hook
at one gulp, when the hook fixed itself in his throat, as the Malay had
intended, and the beast could neither swallow the hook nor spit it up,
and therefore his jaw was prised open. The Malay, seeing the loose end
of the rattan floating down the river, paddled after it, but the beast
was too quick for him, and got away from the country near the sea to
the country of the Land Dyaks, more inland. A member of Pa Baniak’s
tribe, passing by in a canoe, noticed the crocodile’s open jaw and felt
sorry for him. The crocodile begged the man to put his arm down his
throat and wrench the hook away. Thinking it might be dangerous, the
Dyak did not much like the task, and inquired what the crocodile would
do for him in return. ‘I promise never to attack or eat any member of
your tribe,’ said the crocodile. The man thought this a fair offer,
and the compact was made, after which the man removed the hook. The
operation over, the crocodile thanked his deliverer, and told him to
warn all his people to thrust wooden discs in the cartilage of their
ears, so that crocodiles should not mistake them for members of some
other tribe.”
To prove the truth of this tale, Pa Baniak informed me that, only a
few days before our arrival at Paku, a young man of his tribe had been
seized by a crocodile as he was taking fruit from his orchard down
the river to the Kuching market. With a switch of its tail the animal
sent the canoe up in the air, and as its occupant, paddle in hand,
was falling into its formidable jaws, the beast noticed the wooden
discs, and finding that the man’s flesh did not taste nice, he threw
him on shore and went away snorting with disgust. Bertram and I made
ejaculations of approval at the end of this tale, and Pa Baniak was
mightily pleased at the effect he had produced.
Although four or five miles away, the trees on the top of Singghi
mountain stood out distinctly that afternoon in the lurid light of an
approaching thunderstorm. His thumbs pointing in the direction of the
mountain, Pa Baniak said, “Antus live up there, and my tribe has made
wooden images of men and women to keep them amused. If ever the trees
on the top of Singghi are cut down, leaving the antus without either
playground or shelter, they would roam amongst the trees in the plain
and tease the people living there.” We listened to Pa Baniak’s talk for
some little time, and he told us many things, as for instance, about
the terrible consequences of men eating the flesh of deer, which made
them cowards; of the importance of being burned instead of buried in
the earth, in order that one’s relations could tell by the direction
of the smoke whether or no the dead had started for Paradise. But at
length we became tired and allowed him to depart. He rose slowly,
grunted, scratched himself under his armpits, took a little brass bell
off the sirih basket hanging at his waist, and gave it to me. “It will
preserve you from lightning, snake bites, and antus,” he said. Then,
followed by his attendants, he made his way downstairs. Thunder was
growling in the distance, and drops of rain were falling as the trio
went out of the house, each opening Chinese umbrellas to keep the rain
off their naked bodies, for most Sarawak natives imagine that rain
falling on their skin brings on malaria. We watched them as they went
along the plain in single file; then the rain came down in torrents,
blotting them out from view.