Late in the afternoon, we landed at the house of Tama Balan Deng, a Sibop Chief, who received us kindly, and most hospitably gave up to us his own room, wherein throughout every minute of the entire night we were the objects of awestruck curiosity to his whole household, the larger part of whom had never before seen a white man; they sat immovably huddled together at one side of the room, and were the last objects that we saw on going to sleep, and when we awoke at dawn they were noiselessly creeping away.

Early in the day, to our surprise, Tama Aping Buling arrived in his canoe, in a state of painful excitement over Jamma’s conduct of the day before, whose antics were now explained. As soon as we had left, the old rascal, tired of being a corpse, fell into a violent rage with the universe, and had stormed down to the beach, and there had cursed with his awful Tiger skin cap every bit of timber in the house, together with all its inmates, big and little, old and young, and all the Kayans, root and branch, who had been in it, and ended up with the white men who had half-killed him. The house, as I said above, had just been built, at a cost of infinite labor and great expense; but after such a blood-curdling curse had been launched at it, to Tama Aping Buling’s superstitious mind, the domicile was for ever banned and ruined. The object of the poor fellow’s hurried visit was to ask Dr. Hose if he did not think it best that the whole structure should be immediately destroyed; it took much serious argument from Dr. Hose to dissuade the disconsolate Tama Aping from the determination to empty his house of all movables and then set fire to it.

This account of Jamma’s malevolence did not exhaust Tama Aping’s budget. He brought the latest news of Aban Liah, whom we had last seen stricken down by the dreadful omen in the pig’s liver. The most skilful Dayongs had been summoned to keep the soul of the old Berawan Chief from wholly deserting his body, and, at last reports, they had grave doubts as to their success in finding whither it had temporarily flown, unless several additional parang blades and three or four more bolts of cloth were given to them, wherewith they could bribe the Spirits who were luring far away the soul of Aban Liah; they were sorely afraid that, in spite of all their exertions, the soul would evade them and slip off to Bulun Matai. We despatched the necessary spiritual bribes, and then continued our journey to the home of the Punans.

Four days afterward, when we left the Dapoi and again turned into the Tinjar, we stopped at the scene of the Great Peace making, and there we learned the end of Aban Liah’s tragic story. The fate foretold so clearly by the liver of the Government’s albino pig had been fulfilled. The conscience-stricken soul of the faithless Aban Liah had, indeed, departed to the Fields of the Dead. From the moment that he saw that ulcerous liver, and realized its plain indication to himself he sickened, became delirious, and within forty-eight hours was dead!

There happened to be in one of the boats of our party an old woman, a distant relative of Aban Liah, and when the news of his death was first shouted to us from a boat which we met on the river, this old creature withdrew a short distance from the bank, and, squatting down on the sand, proceeded to emit a solo of heart-rending wails for the dead, rehearsing his good qualities in a jerky and descending chromatic scale, beginning at high C and ending when her breath gave out; then, after a deep inspiration, the wailing strain was resumed. All the while she was glancing around to see the effect it had upon us, and also to see what was going on up and down the river while she was busy in sorrowing for the defunct; she knew, quite as well as we, what a thorough-paced old rascal he was, and how far better it was for all his household that he was dead and out of the way. When she had reeled off a due amount of profound sorrow, she re-embarked, and was as chatty and gay as possible until we reached the dead Chief’s house; there it behooved her to roar again for appearance’s sake. We went up to the house of mourning to pay our respects to the household and be witness to their grief. At the hour of our arrival, there happened to be a lull in the wailing, but the appearance of visitors of such august importance at once demanded a resumption, not only of gong-beating, but also of the recitation of the estimable, noble character of the departed. The obtrusive old Jamma was again to the fore, all animosity forgotten in his eagerness to display his extreme grief; out of respect for the dead he had discarded his jockey cap and goggles. Several other Chiefs from neighbouring houses and ourselves were led to places of honor in front of the bier, whereon lay Aban Liah, sealed up in a coffin hewn out of Durian wood. The bier was draped with some cotton cloth, which we recognized as that which we had sent as a bribe to the Spirits, and on posts at the four corners were hung the Chief’s most valuable beads, his parang, shield, and spear, and a number of musical instruments; it was expected that he would hold a high position among the minstrels and warriors in Bulun Matai. As soon as the chief men had conducted us to our places, they squatted beside us, and, covering their faces with their hands to hide the scalding tears that did not flow, they began to moan and groan in a style which was, perhaps, quite as symbolical to them of true sorrow as black crape and nodding plumes are to us.

At this moment, the women of the dead man’s immediate family issued from his private room, clad in high-pointed yellow hoods of bark-cloth, which flowing down enveloped them from head to foot; they gathered about the head of the coffin, and wailed to the accompaniment of several deep-toned gongs. This same rite had been repeated for every visitor who had come to the Chief’s house since his death; they were in good practice. All members of the household were in their dirtiest and most worn-out habiliments; every ornament had been discarded; girdles of beads had been replaced by belts of twisted rattan, and weights made of pebbles wrapped in bark-cloth had been substituted for metal ear-rings; many of the men and some of the women had smeared themselves with soot from the cooking-pots, and no one had bathed in the river since the demise of the Chief, four or five days before. They were certainly repulsive in appearance. This wailing lasted but a scant five minutes, and then the women retired, and the men withdrew their hands from their eyes; of course, not a tear had been shed. With the elasticity of youth,—for they are all mere children,—they were at once interested in hearing of the expedition we were about to make to the summit of a mountain near by, and were laughing and joking over the Ghosts and Sprites that we were sure to meet in that mysterious moss-jungle continually shrouded in mists.

It is the custom among the Berawans to keep a corpse in the house for several months, varying the length of time in accordance with the rank or wealth of the deceased; sometimes the body may have to remain unburied until after the harvest. On the third or fourth day after death, the body is squeezed into a large jar, which has been carefully cut apart at its largest diameter, so that the body does not have to be forced through the narrow neck. It is in the lower half that the corpse is placed in a cramped, squatting position; the upper half is then fitted on tightly, and the crack sealed up with resinous gum. The jar is then placed in a corner of the veranda, and a pipe of hollow bamboo is inserted to drain off to the ground below the fluids resulting from decomposition. It occasionally happens that gases accumulate inside the jar, and cannot escape through the tube, owing to a stoppage, and then an explosion follows.

The Berawans believe that shortly after death the spirits of the dead return from Bulun Matai, to see that their relatives and friends are displaying the due amount of grief by performing the proper ceremonies. Should a spirit find that it has been neglected and forgotten, it curses the culprits, and they become blind, deaf, or lame. If all has been done to show befitting grief and respect,—if the mourners have been on a raid and secured a nice head wherewith to decorate the grave or the household hearth,—then the spirit retires to the nether world, never again to return.

In former days, on the death of any influential Chief, if his people were either too lazy or too cowardly to go head-hunting, a male or female slave was purchased and sacrificed in honor of the dead. From near and far, friends were invited to take part in the high ceremony. When the poor wretch of a slave was thrust into a cage of bamboo and rattan, he knew perfectly well the death by torture to which he was destined. In this cage he was confined for a week or more, until all the guests had assembled and a feast was prepared. On the appointed day, after every one had feasted and a blood-thirsty instinct had been stimulated to a high pitch by arrack, each one in turn thrust a spear into the slave. No one was allowed to give a fatal thrust until every one to the last man had felt the delight of drawing blood from living, human flesh. We were told by the Berawans that the slaves often survived six or seven hundred wounds, until death from loss of blood set them free. The corpse of the victim was then taken to the grave of the Chief, and the head cut off and placed on a pole overhanging the grave. Frequently, some of the guests worked themselves into such a blood-thirsty frenzy that they bit pieces from the body, and were vehemently applauded when they swallowed the raw morsel at a gulp.

It is, probably, in conformity with the same idea of a head-hunt in honor of the memory of the deceased, that the tribe of Malanaus, on their return from a burial, engage in a mock battle with those who remained behind to guard the house, and throw at them mud and imitation javelins made of light pith.

The body of Aban Liah, although a Berawan, was not placed in a jar, but, as I have said, in a coffin, and would be kept in the house, so they told us, for three months, until the end of the harvest. The people darkly hinted at the absolute necessity of their obtaining, at that time, a fresh human head. But Dr. Hose warned them of the sure consequences following every violation of the solemn compact and rites of peace which they had just concluded.

We left them in their grief, and set out on our trip to the summit of Mt. Dulit, one of the lofty range that forms the watershed between the Rejang and the Baram Rivers. When we turned into the little stream that flows down the side of the mountain, we noticed lying on one of the banks the huge, stately Durian tree, (worth a livelihood to a whole household on account of its much-prized fruit,) which had been already cut down just to make a monumental support for the coffin of the good-for-nothing old Aban Liah. The giant pole was to be elaborately carved and painted, and, when the Chief’s body was ready to be placed in position, this huge trunk would be erected near the bank of the river, a little below his house.

Whatever might have been its origin, it is not now easy to determine what emotion it is which prompts the Borneans to decorate elaborately the depositories of their dead; at first glance, it seems as if it must be affectionate remembrance and a devotion to the habitation of the soul even after the soul has left it. But, certainly among the Borneans, demonstrative affection is, I should say, an exceedingly rare trait; their lives are almost as purely individual and selfish as are the examples Nature sets before them at every turn in the jungle. During the time that a child is still nursing at the mother’s breast, there is that instinctive, protective parental affection observable in all mating animals; but after the child is weaned and is able to toddle, it is allowed to ramble pretty much where it will, and to take its educational bumps and tumbles without parental worry. Mother Nature provides the only clothes it wears, and, after her own healing, scarifying fashion, darns and patches the rents and tears that they may receive. Among the young boys and girls there is a sort of playmate affection, whenever self-sacrifice is not necessary, and where the one who plans the game or sport always expects to be and is the principal player. Between adults, be they the nearest of kin or be they even lovers, I think I am safe in saying that there is no such thing as unselfish love; a youth would never think of resigning a comfortable place in a boat to his father, or to his mother, or to his sister, or even to his sweetheart. When a man comes back from a long, and perhaps dangerous, expedition, he does not fall into the arms of his family amid tears of joy and welcome; but he walks up the notched log and stalks along the public veranda, looking neither to the right nor to the left until he deposits his burden opposite his own door, and there he sits down, lights a cigarette, and tries to act and look as if he had just come in from the rice-field after a day’s work.[14] There is not a greeting of any kind whatsoever exchanged on either side; but after a while, and little by little, an admiring group of men and boys gather round, and slowly he unbends, telling scraps of news about friends or foes in the country whence he is come, until at last he is haranguing the people and acting ‘Sir Oracle’ in the centre of a circle of gaping mouths and unwinking eyes. It is the same were he about to start off on an expedition; no kerchiefs are waved to him nor do eyes stream with tears as his canoe pushes off from the shore; he goes down to the boat with his parcels in just the same matter-of-fact manner as if he were only going to cross the river for fire-wood. I have seen Bornean mothers, fathers, and sweethearts, part from those who ought to have been dear to them, and who were about to set out on distant expeditions of a peaceful nature, or on long war expeditions of a dangerous nature, but I remember only one solitary instance where there were any tears or the slightest show of reluctance at parting; that one instance was the parting of a sister from a brother who had come over on a visit to the house into which she had married quite recently. The woman in this case did really show a downright love for her snaggle-toothed and hideous brother; she hung upon his neck, sobbing and wailing, trying her best to hold him back, and pleading with him not to go; he patted her on the shoulder, seemed very self-conscious and exceedingly bored; finally, extricating himself rather rudely from her arms, he stalked toward the notched log and descended, looking straight in front of him. Possibly it was, on the woman’s part, more homesickness than love for her brother. From the Arctics to the Tropics, be it ever so humdrum, there’s no place like home.

Among certain tribes, the body of a Chief swathed in cloths is placed within the upper end of a tree trunk hollowed out for the purpose, and a large slab of wood cut from a ‘buttress tree’ is fastened on top. The photograph, on the opposite page, is that of the grave of a Chief’s wife, and I am sure that in its erection and ornamentation no jot of affection was felt by the husband, Temangang Lawi, than whom no more heartless old head-hunter, and slayer of women and children, exists in Borneo. His only idea in spending so much time and money on the grave of his wife was his own glorification. The white spots on the column are china bowls and saucers stuck on with damar gum; the flags and streamers on top are strips of white and red cloth, possibly to keep off birds of prey; possibly a remnant of the Mongolian idea that anything moving and fluttering in the wind attracts or distracts the attention of the Spirits.

Again, other tribes enclose their dead in coffins which are placed in miniature houses on the top of high poles, sometimes on single poles, again on two or even four poles. These little houses are decorated with open-work carving along the ridge-pole and down the angles of the roof, and with painting on the sides. Not infrequently small wooden figures of men are placed standing on the roof or climbing up the poles; possibly, these are effigies of the slaves which in former times were sacrificed at the burial.

Natural surroundings and the habitations of the living have, of course, a great influence on the methods of disposing of the dead. In mountainous, stony districts, the primitive form of burial is apt to be in cairns or in caves; in lowlands, where land is swampy, burial in trees, out of the way of beasts of prey, is adopted. In those districts of Borneo where the jungle is so dense that it is well-nigh impossible to dig a grave through the impenetrable, interlocking roots of trees, a burial on poles follows of necessity. Where the river-banks are constantly changing with every freshet, burial in such soft soil would not be permanent. I think, therefore, that it is more than likely that burial on high pedestals was, in the first instance, a result of natural surroundings, and the elaborate decorations are for the glorification of the living, and not for the dead. In Borneo, there are no carnivorous animals to dig up bodies, but it is by no means unknown that men exceedingly anxious to win admiration as head-hunters obtain from graves the coveted prize, be it of friend or of foe; therefore, the more inaccessible the body, the less is the likelihood that the market for heads will become over-stocked. In the Naga Hills of Eastern Assam, where the natives live in communities much like the Borneans, some of the tribes bury their dead in the village streets; others dig graves just outside the door of the house, or, when the body is perhaps that of a young unmarried girl or a child, the grave is made even inside the door. There was I acknowledge, much pathos in the explanation once given to me by a Naga, whose child was buried inside his house, that if his little girl were buried out in the jungle or under the open sky, she would be ‘very much frightened at night.’ The simple and unostentatious mounds made by the Nagas over their dead, bear more evidence, I think, of their affection than do the gaudily decorated tombs erected by the tribes of Borneo, and yet in their daily lives the Nagas are not one whit more demonstrative than the Borneans.

When, after two days of hard climbing through virgin jungle, we reached the topmost peak of Dulit, which is almost exactly five thousand feet high, dense clouds shut off our view of the valley below, but the last rays of the sun were slanting through endless aisles and marvellous recesses of emerald moss, and from far below, and beneath the clouds, came the dull booming of a deep-toned tawak from the house of the dead Aban Liah, announcing fresh mourners at his coffin.

The great Peace-party had at least brought peace to that scheming, turbulent old soul, whose body now rests in the valley of the Tinjar.

On the opposite page is a photograph taken on the summit of Mt. Dulit. The heavy drapery which covers every tree and branch, almost every leaf, is a sphagnous moss, breast-high and many feet in thickness. I beseech the reader to summon to his memory the most vivid, emerald green he has ever beheld; and then intensify it by a cloudless, tropical sun, at high noon; and then, in addition to this, let every burnished leaflet glow and sparkle with myriads of iridescent drops fed by the warm, heavy mists which constantly sweep over the mountain.

No words can describe the endless shades of ‘greenth’ which are revealed in the vistas formed by overhanging masses, where here and there the rays of the sun pierce the cavernous recesses; of which, most assuredly, this is the first photograph that has ever been taken.