One morning Bertram and I, accompanied by Mr. Frank Maxwell, Mr.
Awdry, and Dr. Langmore, started from Kuching in a steam launch on
an expedition to Munggo Babi, a Land Dyak settlement. Up the Sadong
River we passed Malay villages with palm-leaf houses erected on poles
and standing in the mud. A few ragged flags of red, white, blue, and
yellow, on long thin sticks, fluttered along the banks near Chinese
houses, where women and children set fire to bunches of crackers, for
they had somehow got wind of our journey. On the banks grew great,
sweet-smelling, white lilies, called by the natives “bungga bakong,”
but by European scientists _Crinum Northianum_, because they were first
made known to European botanists by Miss North’s pictures. They looked
like crowns of great white stars resting on green and glossy lance-like
leaves.
We slept in a Malay house at a village called Gading. The house was
made of palm leaves, and the poles supporting it stood on the mud: the
whole construction was lashed together by rattans, as no nail or peg
is ever used by the poorer Malays in building such humble dwellings.
Clean mats were laid upon the floor, and I noticed that one portion
of the roof was used as a storeroom, whilst scattered about the floor
were large water-jars and cooking-pans. At night, as I lay on a
mattress stretched on the floor, I heard the incoming tide gurgling,
as it were, under my pillow. Frogs, insects, nightbirds, and all sorts
of creatures, grotesque or beautiful, hooted, whistled, and coughed,
sounding like the shrill and rough jabbering of drunken men; and there
were hummings, moanings, murmurings--the cogitations, so to speak, of
spirits of the darkness and evil, all heard as distinctly by me as if
I were resting outside in the mud right amongst them. I thought of
crocodiles moving through the slime, until I felt terrified, and almost
welcomed the homely sensation of being bitten by a flea. Then morning
dawned, the sun came out, and with its joyous advent I felt that sense
of security we none of us can account for at the dawn of day.
But to return to our journey. We embarked on the launch early. The
river soon narrowed, and the banks were full of that beautiful shrub
with its enormous deeply-indented leaves, pale yellow flowers as large
as soup-plates, its clustered, bullet-shaped, carmine-coloured buds,
and its open pods revealing seeds of a ravishing coral colour. I am not
quite certain, but I think the plant must be a species of Wormia. Then
there were screw pines growing near the mud, from which strong fibre
can be obtained, their beautiful red fruits nestling in their roots,
reminding one of gigantic strawberries. I saw dark green small-leaved
shrubs starred over with waxy sweet-smelling blossoms, rather like
stephanotis, and mauve, yellow, and pink convolvuli throttled great
trees in the entanglement of their embrace. A large grey bird flew from
out the lilies, alighted on a piece of driftwood, and was borne down
the stream. We passed a place called Tana Mera (red earth) where at a
little distance from the bank is the grave of an exceedingly righteous
Malay gentleman whom the people called Datu Sumbang Kring. He lived
many years ago, but the influence of his holy life still endures, and
the people in the neighbourhood are never tired of relating how he
taught every one to be kind and good, and how he spread abroad the
precepts of that holy book, the Koran. I could not make out how long
ago this righteous life was lived, but, according to the people, it was
many years before the first Rajah Brooke came to Sarawak.
After passing Tana Mera, snags stuck up in all directions in the
bed of the river. Some Land Dyaks from Munggo Babi came to meet us,
bringing with them canoes in which we were to accomplish the last
stages of our journey. I noticed how different these Land Dyaks were
to Kayans, Malays, or Sea Dyaks. They were tall and slender with
well-shaped noses, arched eyebrows, more pronounced chins, and their
faces were oval and longer than were the faces of the other inhabitants
of Sarawak. Their colour, however, was the same, but instead of the
bright, laughing, bustling habits of the other people, they wore an
expression of profound melancholy.
A Malay Haji had come with them to meet us and to direct proceedings.
Our canoes had to be pushed through labyrinths of snags and other
impediments barring our progress. At one part of the journey the men
in our canoe had to cut down a snag before we could proceed further.
When this was accomplished, they began to yell at their success, but
the Haji remonstrated with them, and pointing to a tall Tapang tree
towering over the jungle near the banks told them that the swarm of
bees clinging to its branches would be angry at the noise, so that if
the crew did not stop yelling, he feared the insects might attack us.
He added, however, that the day being showery, we did not run the same
risks as though the day were fine.
[Illustration: BACHELOR HOUSE AT MUNGGO BABI TUAN MUDA’S
RESIDENCE DURING OUR VISIT]
Tapang trees rise to a height of over one hundred feet without a
branch. Their trunks are smooth and round, and swarms of bees often
hang in their branches. Dyaks climb them at night to obtain the wax.
The ascent is made by means of bamboo pegs driven into the trunk above
the climber’s head, so that the ascent is slow, and takes several hours
to accomplish. The bees are scared from their nests with a lighted
torch, after which the wax is taken with impunity. The wax is sold at
Kuching and forms one of the exports of the country. A great hindrance
to the Dyaks who go in search of this commodity is the little honey
bear that roams about the forests of Sarawak, for it is very fond of
stealing and eating the honey from these hives. Two or three specimens
of this animal are to be seen in the London Zoological Gardens.
Munggo Babi lies at the foot of a mountain two thousand feet high.
In order to reach the village we had to leave our canoes at the
landing-place and proceed up a path for three miles or so. We found
a crowd of young Dyaks drawn up on the banks to meet us, the elders
having arranged to receive us at the entrance of their village. These
young men wore waist-cloths of bright colours. The women and girls were
dressed in short petticoats with rows of silver dollars and silver
chains for waistbelts, and round their necks were rows of black,
yellow, and red beads. These women do not know how to weave their
petticoat stuffs, as do the Sea Dyak women, but buy them from wandering
Chinese traders, or obtain them on their visits to the capital. Most of
the young girls wore wire rings round the upper part of their arms and
also round their legs. These rings all being, apparently, of the same
size, impede the circulation and sometimes cause acute suffering, owing
to the way the wire sinks into the growing limb. Four Dyaks carried me
in a cane chair slung on poles nearly all the way, excepting where the
path grew steep, or the way became difficult, when I preferred to trust
to my own feet. I might have been a thing of feathers so easily did my
four carriers skip along, although my weight was a respectable one.
The road led through glades carpeted with various kinds of ferns, some
having a bright blue bloom on them as they grew in the shade. We passed
three or four round houses neatly thatched with pointed roofs, standing
on high ironwood posts round which were placed circular slabs of wood,
very large in diameter, as a protection against the rats, these being
the barns in which the paddy of the tribe was stored. These granaries
were surrounded by groves of bread-fruit, lancat, durians, mangosteens,
mangoes, and various other fruit trees. We crossed a stream by walking
over large sandstone boulders scattered in its bed, round which the
water rushed and foamed.
The elders met us at this spot. One of them was dressed in an old
military coat, which had belonged to the South Lancashire regiment.
His legs and thighs were bare, and a large piece of turkey twill was
twisted round his waist and fell in folds front and back. He held a
long slender twig from which floated a diminutive Sarawak flag looking
like the petals of a drooping flower. His black beard was well tended
and he seemed very proud of it. His hair, long enough to reach below
his waist, was tucked up in a chignon under a fillet made of calico
bound round his forehead like a crown. The other old men wore long
flowing robes of brightly coloured red or blue chintz, patterned over
with flowers and birds. One of them wore a large turban, although he
was not a Malay; another wore a red-and-yellow head-handkerchief, and
two very old, almost toothless, men wore jaunty smoking-caps stuck
at the side of their bald heads. These old men stood in a row behind
the leader in the military jacket, each holding long thin sticks with
a flag at the end, which they agitated gently when we appeared. The
oldest chief took hold of my hand and led me over a series of notched
poles and narrow trunks of trees, and across a deep muddy ditch leading
to the village. The village lay in a green basin, scooped out of the
side of a hill. Down a ravine on one side of the village, a little
torrent, fed by daily rain, made a refreshing and gurgling sound day
and night. Bamboo shoots led up the mountain-side to the uppermost
houses on the hill, whence the people obtained water for household
purposes, and where they also bathed many times a day.
When we arrived at the houses prepared for us, we climbed up slippery
poles with no rails to steady our ascent and where the notches were
extremely insignificant. These poles were some twenty feet high,
leading to verandahs of planks. My residence turned out to be the
head-house of the village and the building of ceremony. It consisted of
one large, round room, in which I had to bathe, dress, eat, and sleep,
whilst one part was portioned off for our Chinese cook to prepare our
food. Another house was prepared for the men of our party; this house
was called the “Bachelor House” because none but men were supposed to
use it. But to return to my quarters. Seen from outside, the house
looked like a large pigeon-cot, propped on high poles, and lashed
together with the fibre of the Gemuti palm.[15] It rocked and creaked
at the slightest provocation like a ship in a heavy sea. The walls were
made of planks, and small apertures served for windows. Screens of
dried palm leaves were placed in different parts of the room; one of
these recesses was my bedroom and another my bathroom, where a large
tub of water always stood ready for my use. The place screened off
for my reception-room had a wooden divan of thin planks all round it,
finished off with a wooden valance. Our hosts had spared no trouble to
make the place habitable, and had even stretched gold brocade across
the top of the room, thus forming an improvised ceiling, whilst the
posts were wreathed round with smilax and the fronds of betel-nut
palms. Just over my bed hung the trophies of the tribe. These were
nothing more or less than a large bundle of dried skulls. The Dyaks
imagined that the brocade had hidden these trophies from my searching
gaze, but I am sorry to say I could see through an aperture some of
the skulls which the tribe had taken in their battles of long ago,
when they rose up against the tyranny of the Brunei princes, or on the
occasion of the Chinese insurrection, which took place in the late
Rajah Brooke’s reign, when a good many Chinese heads were captured. I
noticed that one of the round objects was larger than the rest, and I
asked questions about it. “Oh,” said the chief contemptuously, “that
one is only the head of a Chinaman, for they always have larger heads
than we people of the country!”
At the commencement of our stay one or two little hitches were
experienced, but these were soon put right. Our Chinese cook gave
himself airs, and informed Mr. Awdry that he could not possibly cook
decent food in such a wilderness of discomfort. After a good deal of
talk between our kind hosts and the cook, a small outhouse was rigged
up for him and his saucepans.
From the window of my head-house I could see all the way down the
village. I noticed the houses were built in blocks, placed here and
there, some ten or twelve in a row, in the inequalities of the soil
by the side of the stream. The houses were, of course, propped up by
poles of different heights, and there were platforms made of split
bamboos lashed together by rattans running down the fronts of these
houses, behind which were covered verandahs. I was told that there was
a fireplace in each house, with shelves above it, where water, oil,
salt fish, jars, potted durians, etc., were stored. A raised platform
was invariably erected at the end of each room, used as a place to
sit on when receiving one’s friends, also as a sleeping-place when
strangers came to the village. The women looked picturesque with their
white shell armlets, brass rings, and silver girdles shining against
the dark background of the houses. I noticed that most of them parted
their hair, and that the children’s heads were not shaved. At sunset in
the wooden verandahs the girls of the village prepared food for their
pigs, made of paddy husks mixed with water. A special brew was poured
into smaller basins and kept for little pigs, which the girls caught
from under the houses and threw here and there on to the verandahs.
The girls then pushed the little pigs’ snouts into the food, whilst
with long poles they beat off the cocks and hens anxious to join in the
feast. In the evening the elders of the tribe rested under the shade of
a banyan tree conversing with one another, whilst pigs grunted under
the houses, cocks and hens strutted about the roofs, and dogs ran in
and out of doorways--a tiny speck of human and animal life surrounded
by gigantic backgrounds of mysterious and unexplored forests and
mountains.
These Land Dyaks are very hospitable, and, barring the time of my
afternoon siestas or when I retired for the night, my room in the
head-house was filled at all times of the day with the élite of the
Dyak tribe. Whenever the elders were seated on the wooden divan in
front of me, I was struck anew with the unlikeness of these people
to the rest of our Sarawak tribes. I could not help thinking they
resembled the Cingalese, for they had the same dreamy, soft, and
effeminate look.
The chief of the tribe, Mito, was anxious that I should bless his
house during my visit, so he gave a feast, to which he invited all
the inhabitants of Munggo Babi, as well as those of a neighbouring
village. The women came to fetch me from my airy abode, helping me down
the notched logs with the greatest care. Their movements were greatly
restricted by the tightness of the wire rings round their legs, which
prevented them from bending their knees comfortably. As we entered
the house, I saw the bones of pigs’ jaws hanging in festoons over the
doors leading into the inner room as trophies of the chase. The long
gallery was decorated with yellow and red cloths, and all the people
of the village were squatting in rows down each side. A seat covered
with yellow cloth was prepared for me, and the rest of our English
party were given raised chairs to sit on. Just in front of me, on the
floor, were round brass dishes filled with uncooked rice, and two eggs
were laid on the top of each dish. Between the dishes, about twenty in
number, were bamboos filled with cooked rice, tasting something like
the rice puddings of our childhood. The chief came to me with a small
basin, filled with water, into which he asked me to place one of my
gold rings, so that its goodness might enter into the water; he then
gave me a bead necklace to dip into the basin, after which I had to
go up and down the whole length of the gallery, holding the necklace
on high, and say, “I wish this house cold and plenty. I wish that the
paddy may be fruitful; that the wives of this village may have many
sons; that sickness may never enter it, and that its people may live
in peace and prosperity.” A basin of yellow rice was then handed to
me, when I had to go through the same ceremony and repeat the same
blessing. The contents of the brass dishes were then emptied into
baskets and given to me, together with a large box of eggs, which had
been left in front of my seat during the proceedings. The party now
began in earnest. We ate the rice out of the bamboos, partook of the
many cakes and fruits provided for us, and drank tumblers of cocoa-nut
milk.
Then came the dances, the gongs and instruments being hung in readiness
against the wall. The musicians, their arms over the top of the wooden
frames, held the gongs, and drummed at them with their fingers with
a will. Two women, with their arms completely hidden under masses of
brass rings and white shell armlets, crept forward and touched the
tips of my fingers. Then drooping their heads and extending their arms
they began to move about slowly. They put their feet close together
and shuffled and slid from one side of the room to the other, keeping
time to the gongs whilst the little bells tied to their ankles tinkled.
We were told that this was called the Hornbill’s dance. The women
were very small, slim, and well-made, with pretty expressive eyes,
and rather thinner lips than those of the other women of Sarawak, but
theirs were so stained with betel-nut juice that in the dim light their
mouths looked like large red wounds across their faces.
After the women had danced, two men wound in and out of the people
squatting on the floor, and stood before us. Under the folds of their
sarongs they wore a circle of plaited rattans, making them stand out
like crinolines. Their long hair was twisted up Cingalese fashion,
and stood out from the handkerchiefs wound round their heads. They
commenced the performance by flapping their arms and gliding about
without lifting their feet from the floor. They then advanced and
nearly touched one another, when they swiftly retreated, wheeled round
one another, their arms describing circles in the air. The sarongs over
their crinolines billowed and swayed with their every movement, and the
dance gave one the impression of sweeping lines and of space. It was
supposed to represent the flight of great hawks through the air, and
I thought it beautiful. The dancers were handsome men, with sleek and
gentle faces, and very arched eyebrows. All their movements were much
more languid than those of the Sea Dyaks.
When the dances were over we sat talking to the people, and I asked
a chief what he thought of our language. He said that English people
talking was like the song of birds, but the Chinese language was like
the hooting of antus. He then told us of a superstition about bamboos.
When people die, he said, their flesh goes into the bamboo and their
souls enter the bodies of unborn children, when they are born again
into the world.
The next morning we were all ready to start on our way back at 7.30,
but the people who were to carry our luggage down to the landing-place
wanted a good deal of rousing after their dissipation of the night
before. However, after severe reprimands from their chief and from
the village authorities, they came to assist us with our luggage. An
enormous crowd was required for the purpose, one man taking a saucepan,
another two plates, a third two bottles of beer, a fourth a handbag,
which he carried with both hands, until our luggage was divided among
one hundred people or so, walking in Indian file, and forming a
procession about half a mile long. A chair had been provided for me,
but as the road was slippery (it had been raining the night before) I
preferred walking the whole way back to the landing-place.
Before reaching the place where our canoes were awaiting us, one of the
chiefs, who had been an entertaining talker and had told us about the
bamboo superstition, suddenly darted into the forest on the edge of
the path, whence he reappeared with a branch of bamboo he had cut with
his parang. He showed me the red sap within the cane. “See there,” he
said; “this is the burying-place of some human being.”
I said good-bye to the chiefs and all the carriers, after which we got
into the boat. I carried the bit of bamboo home, and still preserve it
amongst my treasures from Sarawak.
We reached Kuching after twenty-four hours’ journey, and two days after
we embarked on the _Rajah Brooke_ for England.
It was a sad day for Bertram and I when we said good-bye to our Malay
friends at Kuching. Datu Isa and all her family, accompanied by nearly
all the Malay women of the town, came to the Astana to say good-bye.
As I stood watching them from the deck of the steamer, congregated as
they were near our landing-place, I felt a tightening at my heart, and
wondered how many years would elapse before I should see them again.
Bertram was really as much touched as I was at leaving them. The _Rajah
Brooke_ moved away, and slowly rounded the reach which hid the dear
people from sight. Many years have gone by since that day, and yet I
may say with truth that absence from my people has only increased my
love and affection for them, and should my hopes be realized of one
day returning to Sarawak, I am sure of finding there the very kindest
welcome from the best friends I have in the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] This Borassus Gemuti palm plays a great part in the
rural economy of the people in Sarawak. It flourishes
in the high upland of the interior, and is very rough
and wild-looking. It has a sap obtained from the petals
of its flowers, used as sugar by the natives, and out
of the liquid, which quickly ferments, is made an
intoxicating beverage. Between the trunk and the fronds is
a horsehair-like substance, used for cordage in shipping
throughout the Malayan Archipelago. Tinder can be obtained
from a fine cotton-like substance which the plant also
yields. Its strong, stiff spines are made into pens, used
by the people who write on paper; and a great many of the
primitive tribes of the interior make their arrows from
these prickly points. I believe that the pith of the trunk
furnishes a kind of sago. The seeds are enveloped by a
poisonous juice to which the Dutch people give the name of
“hell water.”