One day, during my second visit to Borneo, I was sitting in the veranda of a native’s house on the Tinjar River, chatting and gossiping with my host and his household, when I noticed in the group a man whose face was very familiar to me and closely associated with some incident or other in the year before; I looked at him for a minute, and then asked if he were not the man who had so effectively helped us when we were unable to find men to paddle our canoe down the river from the house of deceitful old Laki La. He modestly replied that he was one of the men; whereupon I reiterated my gratitude to him; but, unfortunately, his name, once so familiar to me, had quite escaped my memory, and, apologizing for my forgetfulness, I asked him what it was. His countenance fell; he looked much embarrassed for a moment, and then nudging the man sitting next to him looked from him to me. His neighbor took the hint, and at once told me the name, which was one I had never before heard; I concluded, therefore, that either he or I had mistaken the incident. A little while afterward I happened to meet the man again when he was alone, and being so sure in my recollection of his face, asked him if that were really his name which had been told to me; he assured me that it was, but even then I doubted, and insisted that it was not the name by which I had known him a year ago. ‘You are quite right, Tuan,’ he replied, ‘but since you were here I have been exceedingly sick—so sick that the evil Spirits were trying to make my soul wander away from my body [and here his voice dropped to a whisper]; so I changed my name; now they will not know where to find me.’ He looked furtively on all sides, as if afraid that the trick would be overheard by the Spirits; it was only after much persuasion and repeated assurances that the Spirits could never harm him through a white man that I induced him to tell me his former name, which he did in a timid whisper close to my ear. This incident, trifling in itself, is valuable, I think, in that it adds another to the list of instances recorded in Dr. J. G. Frazer’s valuable The Golden Bough (vol. i., pp. 404-420), where the utterance of a personal name is fraught with an unknown and deadly peril. To speculate on the source of this mysterious dread is tempting enough,—especially since in theorizing about the beliefs prevalent in the youth of the world there is no one who can contradict. As to its antiquity there can be no doubt; and that it is well nigh universal, the records of folk-lore are full of proof. It is sufficient here and now to note its existence among the Kayans and Kenyahs in the interior of Borneo, where, moreover, this unwillingness to utter the name of a person extends to inanimate objects. When they have planned a Tuba fishing, nothing will induce them to utter the word for fish. A Kayan, Kenyah, or Punan never thinks of saying that he is going to search for camphor, but that he is going to look for the ‘thing that smells,’ and even this he says in a whisper, for fear the camphor crystals deep in their secret, native home might hear and elude him after he had all the trouble of chopping down the tree.

These superstitions connected with the utterance of a name are deeply rooted among the Borneans, but the interdiction on the speaking of names of relatives is not so extended as it is among some other primitive people, notably the Kaffir women of South Africa, who may not speak a word, or even a word containing a syllable, resembling their husband’s name or the names of any of his male relatives, but must use paraphrases which do not contain the interdicted syllables.[3] Among the Kayans and Kenyahs, as far as I know, the restriction on the utterance of names of relatives extends only to the fathers-in-law of a married couple, whose names must not be mentioned by either the husband or the wife. Again, it is most ill-omened for a son to mention his dead father’s name; and, of course, neither man nor woman dare pronounce their own name; this is a downright courting of all conceivable disasters and diseases. It is quite possible that this unwillingness to mention their own name leads them to adopt a substitution, which for every-day use sufficiently designates them. Thus, when a child is born the parents substitute for their own names the name of the child prefixed by ‘Tama,’—father of,—or ‘Tina,’—mother of,—a highly ingenious device; the combination thus formed is really no name at all; it is merely a designation. On the same principle, when wife or husband dies the survivor is designated as ‘Aban,’—widower,—or ‘Bállo,’—widow,—of such a one. The simple-hearted folk evidently believe the Spirits to be the very strictest of constructionists, and that they pay no attention to anything but the name itself, pure and uncombined; to a substitution they pay no heed.

One might suppose that under such circumstances it would be rather more convenient, certainly far less hazardous, to have no name at all. But without a name there would be no existence,—how could a nameless thing be admitted to ‘Apo Legan,’ or Heaven? The receiving of a name is really the starting-point of life; and the bestowal of a name by the parents is probably the most serious of parental duties, and to be performed with ceremonies proportioned to their rank. So essential is the ceremony of naming that in the enumeration of a family an unnamed child is not counted; and should a child die before the ceremony of naming, a Kayan or Kenyah mother would mourn for it no more deeply than had it been stillborn. This is true even when an unnamed child lives to be nearly a year old.

Children of the labouring classes are named at the completion of what the father considers a successful harvest of rice; and the day is set for the ceremony when the phase of the moon is deemed auspicious; the rest of the household, with the exception of the few friends who assist, is undisturbed. When, however, the son of a Chief is to be named, and thereby admitted into the circle of kindred or into humanity, the occasion is made a holiday, and a feast-day for the whole community, and friendly households far and near for miles around are summoned to attend. It was on such an occasion as this, that we, Dr. Hiller and myself, had the rare fortune to be the visitors of Tama Bulan, the most influential Chief in the Baram District of Sarawak.

We had but recently come to Borneo when we first met Tama Bulan at the Baram Fort, whither he had come to attend a peacemaking and ratification of friendship with certain Ibans who had recently moved into the district, and also to barter at the Bazaar the rattans, raw gutta-percha, and camphor that his people had collected. We were much impressed with the sedate dignity of this inland Chief and the quiet demeanor of his people, and greatly desired to become more thoroughly acquainted with them. As he was sitting cross-legged on the veranda of Dr. Hose’s bungalow and discussing the affairs of the up-river people, he mentioned with pride that as soon as he reached home there were to be great feastings and ceremonies over the naming of his only son. Here was the chance of a life-time could we but induce him to let us be present during these ceremonies. We were totally unacquainted with Tama Bulan’s language,—the Kenyah,—or even with Malay, the Lingua Franca throughout Borneo and the greater part of the adjacent islands,—but what of that? Sign language is all sufficient at a pinch, and, furthermore, a vocabulary of a hundred and fifty to two hundred words is soon acquired, and, in simple Polynesian dialects, will prove adequate for all ordinary purposes. I doubt if any Caucasian has ever witnessed these ceremonies as observed by the Kenyahs; at any rate, as far as I know, they have never been recorded; accordingly, we strenuously urged Dr. Hose to obtain for us an invitation. When he, finally, with much tact, told the Kenyah Chief how anxious we were to return with him and pay him a visit in his home, the proposal was listened to with unusual gravity. Tama Bulan’s keen black eyes studied us very carefully from head to foot; evidently he was weighing the chances of possible accidents either to us or to his people. At last he broke silence, and, having in mind the dangerous rapids in the river, his first question was, ‘Can the Tuans [gentlemen] swim?’ When assured that we were adepts in that art, he deliberated again for a while, and then asked, ‘How can we get along without talking? the Tuans cannot speak my language, nor can I speak theirs.’ This objection was put aside by Dr. Hose, who flatteringly rejoined, ‘Ah, Tama Bulan does not know the power of the white man as well as I thought he did. The Tuans are so clever that in two days they will be able to speak your language as well as you do yourself; everything is easy to a white man.’ Whereat Tama Bulan smiled broadly, and, after another searching gaze, consented to let us return with him,—provided the government would not hold him responsible for any accidents. And so it was agreed, and the matter settled. But for some time my conscience did not acquit me of the conviction that we had forced ourselves unwarrantably on an unwilling host; however, I solaced myself with the cheering reflection that we could amply recompense him at the close of our visit.

Tama Bulan is a Chief of the Kenyah tribe, and his home is between three and four hundred miles in the interior of the island, on the Pata River, a tributary of the Baram. His house is one of the largest and best built in that large district, and is, moreover, conducted on rigid principles of Kenyah morality. Of course, in such a community theft is unknown, where every one knows every article of property belonging to the others. Thieving being thus eliminated, one of the strictest rules in Tama Bulan’s house is that no woman, young or old, shall frequent the veranda after nightfall; young girls must remain in their family apartments, and if they have sweethearts they must entertain these sweethearts there, and not sit sentimentally with them in convenient dark corners, whereof there is no lack in a veranda. Another of Tama Bulan’s rules is wisely sanitary, namely, that no rice may be hulled in the veranda; the dust arising from the chaff is not only irritating to the nostrils, but is also apt to produce an itching rash on the skins of young children and infants. To each family is apportioned a small shed at the back of the house for the threshing and hulling of the rice; and where, moreover, the workers are to a certain degree secluded, and not liable to distraction and idleness as they would be in a veranda.

Tama Bulan himself is one of the best types of a Bornean Chief. Although only about five or six years ago he was a passionate head-hunter (and is still, I believe, in his heart of heart, having been carefully and religiously brought up by his parents), he is now a genuinely loyal and highly valuable subject to Rajah Brooke, and has been made a member of the ‘Council Negri,’ a legislative body composed of the Rajah, of the English Resident Officers of the first class, of several of the most influential Malays in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, and of three or four of the most trustworthy and intelligent of the native Chiefs. This Council Negri, one of the admirable devices of that wise legislator, Rajah Brooke, meets once a year to discuss what might be termed national affairs, and to lay before the Rajah all complaints or suggestions.

Our host, with whom we became eventually intimately acquainted, and of whom I became very fond, (his staunch friendship on one occasion saved our lives,) was a man of about forty-five, well built, but not muscular in appearance, about five feet six inches tall, his face broad, cheek bones somewhat high, eyes wide apart, lips thin, and mouth large but well shaped; his smile is ready, kind, and benignant, and his laugh reveals two rows of polished, regular, and highly blackened teeth. In his general expression there is not the least suggestion of what we are pleased to term a savage; his demeanor was quiet, unobtrusive, and dignified, and his voice soft and subdued. In obedience to fashion (to whose behests every son of Adam is a slave) his ear-lobes are pierced, and by means of heavy copper rings, inserted in early infancy, are so elongated that they almost touch his shoulder. The upper part of each ear is also perforated, so as to permit the insertion of a tiger-cat’s tooth; this ornament is, however, inserted only for full dress; in every-day life a plug of wood about half an inch in diameter is substituted. These ‘looped and windowed’ ears serve, in the lack of clothing, as pockets, and are extremely convenient receptacles of cigarettes, or even of boxes of matches. His head is shaved in a straight line extending horizontally from one temple to another, but his straight, black hair is allowed to grow long at the back. I describe Tama Bulan thus somewhat at length because he is a typical and pure-blooded Kenyah.

The skin of the Kenyahs and Kayans is not yellow, but somewhat darker than a Chinaman’s; they have none of the characteristics of the thick-lipped African negro, nor have they the bushy, krinkly hair of the Papuans; nor the almond eyes, or the stretched inner canthus of the Mongolians.

On ordinary occasions, they wear nothing but a loin-cloth, made either of bark fibre of native manufacture, or of red, white, or black cotton cloth, bought from Chinese traders in the Bazaar (the Malay name for a trading-post). On their heads they wear a close-fitting, pointed cap made of thin strips of rattan, (or ‘rotan’ as they call it,) or of bamboo woven into a pretty chequered pattern of black and yellow; when exposed to the sun they often exchange this skull cap for a broad, flat disc made of palm leaves and tied to the head.

In order that we might not burden Tama Bulan and his canoes with our heavy luggage of several boxes of tinned provisions, cooking utensils, and not a few articles for judicious presents, such as tobacco, bolts of cheap cotton cloth, and a quantity of steel bars, wherefrom the natives forge parangs and spear-heads, Dr. Hose kindly lent his large dug-out, which afforded comfortable quarters for ourselves and also (a pleasant arrangement) for our host, the Chief. The dug-out was about sixty feet long and five feet wide amidship, made of a single log, but deepened considerably by the addition of planks bound along the sides with rattan and caulked, thus giving about six inches of additional freeboard. The party consisted of eight canoes, bearing Tama Bulan’s followers, and as they swung into view after their start from the Bazaar, a short distance below Dr. Hose’s bungalow, which stands on a high and steep bluff, they shouted to us and loudly rapped their paddles on the sides of the canoes, by way of urging us to hurry down to the bank, so great was their impatience to be fairly started on the homeward voyage. We had divided the central third of the canoe into two compartments, separated from each other by our luggage, sleeping mats, mosquito curtains, etc.; in the forward division we took up our quarters, reserving the aft division for Tama Bulan, who seemed to fill and overflow it with his shields, parangs, large sun-hats, bundles and baskets packed with cheap cloths, Malay sarongs, heavy copper ear-rings, pressed glass bowls, and beads of every description,—all commissions executed for his household and received in exchange for jungle products. Where, or how he managed to sleep I cannot imagine,—but he was the Chief, and uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. As for us, we were really comfortable with rubber blankets and thick rugs spread over the flooring of bamboo strips which rested on the thwarts amidship, except that after awhile, as sitting cross-legged became misery, we longed for a chance to dangle our legs. Overhead was a roof of ‘kajangs’—a thin thatch of palm leaves—to protect us from the sun and rain. As soon as the canoe was all packed, and our Chinese cook and two Malay servants were properly ensconced in other canoes, and it took a deal of excited shouting and innumerable shiftings before this was accomplished to the satisfaction of the crew of each canoe, the word was given, and with a few powerful strokes from the paddles which sent the spray dashing and the water eddying all about us, we were round the turn of the river and had bid adieu to even such comfort and civilization as the Baram Bazaar affords, and had fairly started on this journey to the far interior of Borneo, with its untold possibilities, at the mercy of unknown natives, of whose very language we knew not a word.

Until the central high-lands of Borneo are reached, the river scenery is utterly uninteresting and monotonous; near the coast, where the river water is still brackish, the banks are lined with the feathery Nipa palm with fronds like stiff ferns, often forty feet high. These palms have no stalk, but start in a cluster close to the ground or just at the surface of the water, and grow so close together as to make an almost impenetrable wall. At first they appear beyond measure beautiful, with their polished, glancing leaves, quivering and wavering with every breath of air; and the gleam of the dark maroon mid-rib of the leaves swaying slowly with the motion adds a flickering light to the deep shadows, suggestive of mystery through the illimitable aisles beneath the over-arching fronds. But a closer acquaintance reveals the realm of crocodiles and snakes, not to mention the unromantic mosquito, diminutive in size but mighty to annoy. [Once on a time, in the salad days of my Borneo life, I tried to take a photograph in the depth of a Nipa swamp, but indeed, the torment of the myriads of rapacious and voracious mosquitoes which attacked me while making the necessary exposure was absolutely intolerable. When I threw the focussing cloth over my head I entrapped unwittingly so many mosquitoes that I could hardly see to focus; in one minute they had stung me on the lips, cheeks, eyelids, within the nostrils, and on the ears. I am not a coward, but I really could not face, literally, the overwhelming onslaught for the two minutes which, on account of the dim light, were necessary for the exposure; the poor wretch of an Iban who was with me, clad only in his loin-cloth, actually cried and moaned with the suffering; my negative turned out to have been under-exposed because both of us had been over-exposed.] After twenty or thirty miles of this unbroken wall of Nipa palms the charm diminishes, until at last all beauty is lost in satiety and the sight becomes infinitely tedious. It is, by the way, from these Nipa palms thus growing in brackish water that the natives obtain salt; the ashes of the stalks, leaves, and roots are soaked in water, which, when the water is evaporated, yields a very dirty looking salt, much preferred, however, by the natives to that which can be bought in the Bazaar. Where the Nipa palms end wild sugar-cane begins, and its gray-green, grassy stalks become quite as monotonous as the Nipa; it is not until the low muddy banks of the river change, first to sandy and then to pebbly beaches, that the real beauty of the river begins.

Notwithstanding the exciting novelty of our situation I cannot say that that first day passed quickly, or that it was full of interest; a day is a long time when it is spent hour after hour in gliding along a wall of unvarying green. Tama Bulan’s last purchase at the Bazaar was a Chinese tea ‘cosy’—a little cylindrical basket lined with felt, holding a small teapot closely fitted and keeping the tea hot for a long time. Every five minutes, as it seemed, we heard the click of the hasp; then the creak of the cover as the teapot was lifted out; then a loud and prolonged sucking sound as Tama Bulan luxuriously drained with infinite gusto a diminutive cup of tea. I am quite sure that the teapot was so often replenished from the river that it yielded, finally, nothing but tepid and muddy water,—but ah! the charm of drinking from a china teapot and quaffing with an ecstatic gurgle! The old Chief often peered through a little crevice in the pile of luggage between us, and then he would chuckle and give vent to a flow of words which bubbled out so fluently between his broad smile and his blackened teeth that they seemed to stumble over themselves and end off in fit of coughing. We smiled, nodded, mumbled, and pretended to understand it all,—even the cough.

Toward dusk of the first day we halted at a sloping sand-bank, enclosed on three sides by a dense hedge of wild sugar-cane, full of mysterious rustlings and sighings, and stretching far over the low ground to the beginning of the jungle. The other boats of our party were already tied up to the shore, and the brown-skinned men in their scarlet waist-cloths were bustling about collecting fire-wood and building cranes whereon to hang their little kettles of rice. A row of fires was soon started, and the short twilight of the tropics deepened into dark; the dancing fires cast giant shadows on the gray-green leaves of the wild sugar-cane, and lit up the intent faces of the natives and their glistening eyes and brass-studded teeth as they squatted about the fires or stirred the bubbling pots. When the meal was ended and they were smoking long cigarettes of Java tobacco rolled in the dried leaf of the wild banana, the moon rose and the embers of the fires were scattered. To become more at home with our hosts and fellow travellers we entered into their games and contests in broad jumping, high jumping, and tugs of war. Alas for me, I was indiscreet enough to turn a handspring for them, and also walk on my hands, feats that apparently were perfectly new to them; ever after I was introduced by Tama Bulan to his friends with the laudatory remark that I could walk on my hands and turn over; whereupon, be it on muddy bank or hard floor, I was incontinently obliged to repeat the performance.

When the Chief retired to his boat it was the signal for the general breaking up of the pastime. Grass mats were brought from the boats and spread on the sand, whereon the men threw themselves, and, in the soft light of the tropical moon, we were all soon lulled to sleep by the constant drone and chirp of nocturnal insects.

Early the next morning we awoke and saw, by the light of the setting moon, the men shaking out their mats and making preparations for starting off. We were soon under way once more, and between waking and sleeping we were conscious of the rhythmical click of the paddles and of an occasional command of ‘Mishai! Mishai!’ from Tama Bulan to the rowers to wield their paddles stronger and faster.

It is not worth while to give in detail all the long fifteen days of our journey up the river, or of our visits to the various houses on our way; as may be readily inferred, there were many hours, monotonous, weary, and at times perplexing; three men died of the grippe,—which seems to have penetrated this most remote corner of the world, and was at that time fairly epidemic on the Baram. Unfortunately for us, these deaths were attributed to our presence; a council was held, and we were, in consequence, requested to return; but we protested our innocence, asseverated our friendship, and having already come so far begged to be allowed to go on, and finally allayed their fears and gained their consent. We distributed tobacco and medicine freely, and held numerous clinics in our boat and on the river-banks, for the treatment of a troublesome inflammation of the eyes, probably due to the depilation of eyelashes, added to constant bathing in the muddy, turbid river. At one time the rains descended and the floods came, and for five mortal days we were tied up to the bank of the river, unable to advance on account of the irresistible current and of the immense logs and trees that were constantly brought down by the stream. During this enforced inactivity we became better and better acquainted with our companions; we learned their names and a generous smattering of their language,—an easy task; we powdered many and many a wound and abrasion with iodoform, whereof the color and smell delighted them, and brought us greatly into favor. From the boys who accompanied the party, and who acted as general ‘slaveys,’ we picked up most of our familiarity with the language; they were always ready to talk unconstrainedly with us, and we amused ourselves while amusing them. One little fellow in particular we never grew tired of watching; his actions were as quick and inquisitive as those of a monkey, with the added revelation of a shrewd intelligence. I blush to confess that we taught him the bad manners of putting his thumb to his nose and wiggling his fingers whenever his elders told him to do anything for them; the outraged indignation with which this perfectly novel and insulting gesture was received, and the sly winks little Adom gave us over his shoulder, at every repetition, were truly delightful. One day we painted him from head to foot, with water colors, in stripes of blue, green, yellow, and black, to his joyous delight; and although he was greeted with outbursts of laughter by the whole party, he was, nevertheless, exceedingly reluctant to wash off his decoration. Lishun was another of our particular ‘pals,’ and a sturdier, braver little fellow it would be hard to find; he was certainly not over eight or nine years old, but on many occasions he saved our canoe from being swept back round a sharp turn of the river where the current ran at headlong speed. Just as the men were losing all hold with their poles and the bow of the canoe was inevitably swinging out toward the middle of the river, Lishun, with a rattan rope attached to the bow, in one hand, would plunge into the swirl of water, and, disappearing for a breathless moment, would emerge among the roots and branches on the river-bank, with a shout of laughter from pure enjoyment, and there make fast his rope, while the polers with a fresh hold brought the bow of the canoe to the right direction. Why his little limbs were not torn to pieces and his body battered against the rocks in that seething, whirling water is to be explained, I suppose, only by the fact that water was almost as much his element as the earth or air. Then there were Terluat, a solemn little fellow, who preferred listening to talking; Apoi, a fat and greasy lumpkin with an inane giggle if you did but look at him; Deng, about sixteen years old, as clean-limbed and symmetrical an example of adolescence as can be imagined; and Gau, an ugly little monkey-faced boy, but as bright as a new penny and an expert in cat’s-cradle. Blari, Tama Bulan’s nephew, and Tama Talun, the Chief’s right-hand man and a kind of ‘master of ceremonies,’ were our particular friends among the men, apart from the Chief, Tama Bulan, himself.

During the weary days of waiting for the floods to subside, we used the youngsters to teach us their language, and never missed the opportunity of having them in our boat, where we could make the idle moments pass in showing them a collection of illustrated papers that we had brought with us. One evening, after they had been giving us a concert of their own music, we tried what effect some of our songs would have on them. Somewhat to my surprise, such melodies as ‘The Suwanee River’ and ‘The Old Kentucky Home’ possessed not the smallest charm for them; they evidently thought our style of singing exceedingly amusing,—perhaps it was; and they made no attempt to restrain their laughter. Afterward we heard them trying to imitate it by merely a continuous rise and fall of voice in a high key. One song, however, did appeal to them as more like their own; this was ‘Three Old Crows Sat on a Stone’ with the refrain of ‘Jimmy Magee Magaw;’ frequent repetitions were called for; and finally they caught the air and adapted words of their own to it, with a refrain of ‘Balli Boin Akán,’ a phrase wherewith the Dayongs, or priests, address pigs that are about to be sacrificed.

At the end of five days, during which the freshet acquired daily and nightly new strength from heavy thunder-showers, the Omen Birds, the guides and guardians of these people, were harangued and alternately cajoled and threatened. At one time a fruitless attempt was made to deceive them. The whole party disembarked, and, donning their spears and parangs, made a wide circuit in the jungle, so as to make the birds believe that the canoes were not going home, but were on an ordinary hunting expedition. Once Tama Bulan, while sitting in our canoe, shook his fist at a bird perched on a bough near by, and upbraided it for not causing the rain to cease. When he observed our interest in his proceedings his face broke into an embarrassed smile, and he poked me in the ribs, and said, chuckling, ‘Tuan does not believe in the birds, does he? He thinks Tama Bulan is crazy.’ I assured him that when in Borneo the white man was as much under the protection of the birds as were the natives themselves, which was equivocal, but gratifying to his belief. On another occasion both Dr. Hiller and myself were sprinkled with water from a stick cut into shavings at one end and held on the blade of a parang. Had the skies immediately cleared, it would have afforded such irrefragable proof of our league with evil Spirits that I know not what would have been our fate. But at last the waters fell, and, finally, we reached the mouth of the Pata River, the large tributary whereon Tama Bulan lives; and then after three days of hard boating over rapids which necessitated our disembarking twice and carrying our boat and all our baggage overland for a short distance, we arrived within one turn of the river from Tama Bulan’s house. Here a halt for final purification was made. An arch of boughs about five feet high was erected on the beach, and beneath it a fire was kindled, and then Tama Bulan, holding a young chicken, which he waved and brushed over every portion of the arch, invoked all evil Spirits which had been accompanying us, and forbade them to follow us further through the fire. The fowl was then killed, its blood smeared all over the archway and sprinkled in the fire; then, led by Tama Bulan, the whole party filed under the arch, and as they stepped over the fire each one spat in it vociferously and immediately took his place in the boats.[4] A half hour more brought us to the huge log which serves as a landing along the shore below the house of Tama Bulan.

Tama Bulan did all in his power to show us that we were welcome, and assigned to us an immense slab of Tapang wood about eight feet square and suspended about three feet above the floor by beams from the roof; hereon we could spread our mats at night and keep our possessions out of the reach of the hungry mongrel dogs that pervaded the veranda. As soon as we were thus properly shelved, and had our things stowed away comfortably, our host came and requested us to visit him in his private apartment and meet his family. With much pride he conducted us into the presence of his daughter, Bulan, who had gathered about her a bevy of her intimate girl friends, all busily engaged in making cigarettes; she received us with quiet dignity, but, owing to our lack of proficiency in Malay, I must acknowledge that the conversation could not be termed particularly brilliant. However, we did our best to be entertaining; Dr. Hiller and myself displayed the elaborate Japanese tattooing on our arms, and I sprung by hand, at her father’s instigation, into Bulan’s good graces. She was about seventeen or eighteen years old, with a strong resemblance to her father, and mild, gentle eyes which she slowly opened and shut with demure solemnity; her teeth were, of course, blackened; her hair was parted in the middle, and brought down low in glossy black waves over her forehead and held in place by a fillet of plaited rattan; her eyebrows and eyelashes had been either shaved or depilated. The one ineradicable blemish in her beauty is her left ear; over-ambitious parents had suspended therein too heavy weights when she was young, and one beautiful ear-lobe had given away; to be sure, it had been patched and reunited, but the patch was undeniable, and an ugly lump the result. Alas! even three hundred miles in the heart of Borneo il faut souffrir pour être belle. I showed her some of the pictures of American men and women in the Magazines we had with us; she was much amused at the small waists of the women, which I was obliged to tell her were effected by steel bands laced tightly about them. This was incomprehensible to her, and the torture which she inferred excited her sympathy. In every picture where neither beard nor moustache marked the sex I had to tell her which were men and which were women; she could see no difference in the faces, and the dress and coiffure had no meaning to her.

We were next shown the little son and heir who was to be the centre of the coming festivities; he was the whitest Bornean baby that I ever saw, his skin was what might be called a dark-cream color. Infant as he was,—not yet a year old,—he evinced the utmost terror at the sight of us, and emitted such bawls that he had to be carried away quickly. His ears, even at that early age, had been slit, and were already quite elongated with large bunches of pewter rings, which were, in fact, his sole article of dress. It always seemed strange to see babies in arms carried about without a rag of clothing on them; long clothes are so indissolubly associated in our minds with infancy that there seemed to be something monstrous and discordant in a tender little baby continually stark naked. This baby, in spite of its bad temper, was, however, the idol of the household; nephews, nieces, friends, and slaves of its parents were all proud to be allowed to carry it about the veranda, in its sling hung with charms.

While we were away on a five days’ visit to another Chief on the Apoh River, Tama Bulan most hospitably caused to be constructed for us in the veranda, nearly opposite his apartment, a little room partitioned off by matting and a wall of bamboo rods, wherein, as he explained, we should be free from the annoyance of children and dogs; but even while he was speaking a row of little, beady eyes peering at us through the cracks between the bamboos made me sympathize with the feelings of the freaks at a circus when the small boy lifts the flaps of the tent.

On the day of our arrival, the only indication of the approaching festivities were hundreds of bunches of bananas, suspended everywhere from the roof; but when we returned from the Apoh River, preparations were already in full swing for the Naming, and we contributed freely from our store of tobacco for the manufacture of cigarettes. Bulan’s room was the centre of this industry, and the workers, all women and girls, occupied every inch of the floor, squatting in groups round baskets piled high with the stringy weed. While some prepared the dried banana leaves, others rolled the cigarettes; some rolled them on their thighs, others on polished boards held in their laps. It was a merry gathering, with a constant buzz of gossip, and now and then loud bursts of innocent laughter that bespake the vacant mind. The holiday had already begun, and during the days devoted to the ceremonies there is no work in the rice-fields, consequently the house was full of young people who would be, at other times, hard at work out of doors. The small boy was, of course, ubiquitous,—as, on similar busy occasions, he is in civilized countries; and little Adom seemed to be everywhere at every instant, upsetting baskets of tobacco, purloining rolls of banana leaf, dropping chips and rubbish from rafters above on the heads of the workers beneath, and at every turn in everybody’s way; nevertheless he was treated with uniform forbearance, and only occasional playful sallies from the girls kept him from downright hindering them in their work. Kindliness and hilarity ruled the hour.

As fast as the cigarettes were made they were strung on a thread and hung, a dangling fringe, on a framework of rattans about six feet long, representing a horn-bill with his wings outspread. The head was carved of wood and painted, so that it had a most life-like appearance, and in addition it was ornamented with several strips of bead-work cloth draped around it and enveloping the neck; its tail was composed of real feathers with the broad black band. The cigarettes were hung almost as closely as feathers all over the body, wings, and tail,—indeed, there must have been a thousand affixed to it. When the last cigarette was hung in place, and it took far into the night before the whole was finished, the huge bird was suspended from a rafter beyond the reach of pilfering hands, until the proper time for distribution.

In deciding the exact date for the important ceremony of naming the son of a Chief, the phase of the moon is of vital importance. According to the Kenyah calendar, the moon passes through twelve phases, whereof only two or three are really auspicious; and when some are in the ascendant they prognosticate even downright ill luck to all who are then named. These phases are as follows (‘bulan,’ meaning moon): (1) ‘Bulan musit,’ the birth of the moon; (2) ‘Bulan anak,’ the moon has a child; (3) ‘Bulan dyipu boin,’ the pig’s tooth moon; (4) ‘Bulan bakwong,’ the bird’s-bill moon; (5) ‘Bulan petak,’ moon of sickness; (6) ‘Bulan batak-palan,’ the fish moon, moderately good, but not auspicious for building houses; (7) ‘Bulan salap jiit’ and (8) ‘Bulan salap bioh,’ the big and the little belly-moons; both good moons; the ‘Salap bioh’ is the best for naming children. (9) ‘Bulan loong-payong jiit,’ moon of the small payong fruit; (10) ‘Bulan loong-payong bioh,’ moon of the big payong fruit; these two phases are auspicious for almost any undertaking. (11) ‘Bulan blasong jiit,’ moon of the small pearl shell (the shell often attached to the front of a war-coat); this is also an auspicious phase. (12) ‘Bulan blasong bioh,’ moon of the big pearl shell,—i.e., full moon; this is considered not a very favorable phase. A child born under it goes to extremes. It is either very intelligent or else an idiot. Fighting and trouble are most apt to occur during the full moon.

The usual age at which a child is named is at about the end of the first year or at the beginning of the second. Up to this time all the children, especially those of a Chief, are under a ‘lali,’ a word signifying a restriction, and used in the same sense as taboo. As long as this lali is in force the child must not be bathed in the river, but in the private apartment of its parents; it must not be carried even down the ladder from the house to the ground; even to mention its future name is so ill-omened as to be prohibitory; it is known only by the indefinite appellation ‘Angat’ if a boy, and ‘Endun’ if a girl,—Angat means literally a little worm; what Endun means, if it have a separate meaning, I do not know. On the present occasion, the moon was in the phase of Salap bioh, the big-bellied moon,—that is, gibbous.

Numerous guests now began to arrive to participate in the ceremonies; they came so quietly, and so little commotion followed their arrival, that we were hardly aware of their presence until we noticed the large groups outside of Tama Bulan’s door.

On the morning of the appointed day, alternate blows on two large gongs gave notice that the ceremony was about to begin. We filed into the Chief’s room with the others, and, passing through the narrow and dark little entry with its very ramshackle floor, we found the family and the guests sitting cross-legged about a large mat in the middle of the room. In the centre of this mat was a heap about a foot high of white husked rice; at one side of this heap sat the proud mother, holding the pale little son and heir. When we were all seated, the gongs redoubled and trebled their din, to drown all sounds of evil portent while the rites take place.

It is the first duty of the Dayong, or priestess, (on this occasion Tama Bulan’s first wife, the mother of Bulan,) to drive away all evil Spirits which may be perchance still lurking near the child. Old age is seldom, if ever, beautiful in Borneo, and as old Tina Bulan stood up to officiate, with her straggly hanks of swarthy hair, her blackened snags of teeth, her shrivelled, bony arms and corded neck, she looked the supreme incarnation of a witch, straight from the ‘pit of Acheron.’ But ugliness, as well as beauty, is only skin deep; and we learned to know this Tina Bulan as a dear old soul, as kind and good-natured as mortal can be.

She held by its legs a young chicken, which, with excited gesticulations, she waved above and about the little stark-naked, bawling baby, struggling in its mother’s lap, and as she waved she dipped water from a bowl, and, sprinkling it upon the fowl, exhorted it, as follows:

Which, somewhat freely translated, means, ‘Drive away, O hallowed fowl, and hallowed Isit [omen bird], all sickness and evil Spirits that surround us! Render harmless all bad dreams! One! two! three! four! Away, all evil demons, here, there, and everywhere!’

As she counted ja! dua! talu! pat! she waved her hands violently and threateningly, as if fairly pushing the evil Spirits from her. Trembling with excitement, she then dropped cross-legged close to the heap of snow-white rice, and with a bamboo joint measured out eight portions; out of these, she made a separate pile at one side. Eight measures of rice are the portion for the child of a Chief, half that number suffices ordinary children. The rice, thus measured, is for the god, Penylong, the guardian of all souls, and for his wife, Perbungan; the spiritual essence alone of the grains goes to the gods; the ceremony over, the rice may be eaten by mortals. In the middle of this lesser pile of rice she planted a small sprig of a tree, called the tree of life, ‘Kayu urip;’ with this symbol in front of her, she carefully picked out from the pile eight full, well-shaped grains; wrapping them in a strip of bark-fibre, and holding the strip close above the child’s head, she tied a knot in it enclosing and holding fast the grains. (This strip thus knotted is called ‘Tebuku urip.’) Eight times was this repeated, and all the while the brazen gongs kept up their hideous, deafening din; now and then, when the wearied performers stopped for a moment to change hands, the vigorous and well-sustained bawling of the noble infant filled the gap. Once I caught sight of little Adom sliding stealthily down from his perch on the rack for bamboo water-bottles, whence he had been enjoying his wonted bird’s eye view of the whole performance, and, seizing the arm of a tired gong-beater, his little dust-begrimed face all contorted with earnestness, helped him to beat louder.

Every time that Tina Bulan enclosed in a knot the eight grains of rice, she murmured: ‘May your soul live long, and, by the omens of this knotted cord of life, may you live to a venerable old age!’[5]

If each grain of rice mean a year of life, the reckoning does not fall far short of the Biblical three score and ten.

When the ceremony was completed of the Tebuku urip (where ‘urip’ means of life), the ‘Kayu urip’ (the tree of life) was placed in a joint of bamboo, wherein also the tebuku itself was stored. The bamboo joint is assigned only to a man-child; out of bamboo are made tobacco-boxes, and quivers for the poisoned darts of the blow-pipe. Such things are carried only by men, never by women.