One evening, an hour before sunset, at the time when in every direction, the angular outlines of the huge fruit-bats, with bodies as large as a cat, are silhouetted against the sky, as they make an unswerving and majestic flight toward their nocturnal feeding-grounds, we halted our dug-out canoes at the muddy sloping bank in front of the house of Aban Avit, an influential Chief on the Tinjar River.

We were uninvited, and, as far as we knew, unexpected, but the host, upon whom we were thus unceremoniously forcing ourselves, advanced to meet us, as we ascended the unsteady, plank walk, raised on piles, leading to his house, and, with a warmth unusual among an undemonstrative people, welcomed us with a smile that revealed every one of his thirty-two coal-black teeth. We were, to be sure, old friends, having stopped at his house on our way up-river; but, as he had afterward heard that we were going to make the ascent of Mount Dulit, where all varieties of evil Spirits and dragons have their haunts, he said he had really never expected to see us again; and had we not returned just when we did, he, good soul, had planned to go with a party of his bravest men in search of us; but here we were again safe and sound, none the worse for the dreadful journey, and not one of us marked with the scar of ‘Gum Toh,’ a ghost’s-clutch,—a cutaneous tumor, to which these dark-skinned people are subject, well known to us as a Keloid of Addison, but which the Borneans aver is due to the clutch of a ghost’s hand. As soon as we were within the veranda of the house, Aban Avit insisted that his own private room should be resigned to us; accordingly, his manifold possessions were moved to one side, and clean rattan mats spread upon the floor; his fireplace, heaped with dry wood, was put at the disposal of our Chinese cook, and several long bamboo water-jars were brought from the river so that there should be no delay in the preparation of our evening meal. Ah, the hospitality of a head-hunter!

When all our numerous boxes and bundles had been brought up from the boats, we wandered inquisitively about the long-house, asking endless questions of our host and of his brother; and, as they both spoke Malay fluently, our conversation drifted into all sorts of channels. Aban Avit is a widower, as the Aban in his name declares, and Avit was the name of his wife. The Kayans, and allied tribes, adopt names to suit the varying events of their lives. Thus, a widower always takes his dead wife’s name prefixed by Aban; a father bears the name of his first-born child prefixed by Tama, or Ma, meaning father, as long as the child lives; should the child die, Tama is changed to Oyang. For instance, Tama Bulan means the father of Bulan. Oyang Batu means he who is bereft of his son Batu. Bulan is a girl’s name, meaning Moon; Batu is a boy’s name, and means Stone, equivalent to our Peter. If Bulan, the daughter of Tama Bulan, should have a son named Madang, Tama Bulan, whose original name was Wang, would then adopt the grandfather’s title of Laki, and be known as Laki Madang.

Our host [whose photograph is given on the opposite page] was one of the best types of the inland tribes.

Throughout his house, on partition walls and on rafters, there was scroll-work in black and white paint, the black lines evidently made with a finger and the dots of white with a thumb. On the wall of his private room, just above his sleeping-place, were two much conventionalised and interlaced figures with arms and legs like long tendrils. These figures, Aban Avit explained, represented ‘Wawa’ monkeys (the Gibbon Ape), animals held sacred by his family for certainly three generations, and never killed by any member of the household; he regarded them as his best of friends, and that day was sure to be lucky when they crossed his path in the jungle, or when their musical, almost bird-like, call was heard near the house.

This hereditary veneration of an animal suggests a trace of totemism, otherwise rare in Borneo. Aban Avit, in telling us about his veneration for the Wawa, cast down his eyes and spoke in a voice so low we could hardly hear him, as if the very breathing of a name so sacred were profanation. He told us the painting was the work of his own hands.

From this private apartment, which even at high noon was dark, but as soon as the sun had set was verily as dark as the proverbial pocket, we made our way to the veranda, where daylight still lingered; here again we noticed our host’s love of decoration; the rack whereon visitors as soon as they enter the veranda, hang their parangs, instead of being a customary row of pegs or merely crotched sticks, was a board, whereof the lower edge, as it hung horizontally from the rafters, about half way up the slant of the roof, had been carved by the Chief himself into graceful double-headed hooks and loops, so that the belts attached to the parangs could be easily hung on them and the weapons would be out of the way, yet conveniently at hand. It is an unequivocal insult for a guest to enter a friendly veranda with his parang about his waist; etiquette demands that it be unfastened before stepping into the house; it should be then laid aside or hung on the rack while the owner is engaged in friendly gossip. The house was new at the time of our visit, in fact, it was not yet wholly finished; at the up-river end, five or six huge piles had been planted for its further extension; these posts, about fifteen feet out of the ground and eighteen inches in diameter, were likewise carved, but with grotesque devil-faces, from whose grinning mouths tusks like the wild boar’s protruded, below them snakes, and spiral curves representing the recurved protuberance on the beak and head of the Horn-bill,—the war-bird of all the Kayan and Kenyah tribes. Here and there, of course, conventionalised figures of the Wawa were to be detected. It seems an inviolable rule with all Bornean decoration that the representation of any living thing must be hinted at so grotesquely, that it takes a subtle imagination to discern what it really represents; possibly, this is due to the idea, so widely scattered throughout the far East, that to make a life-like image of any animal involves a risk of danger to the maker,—a danger which may be vague or otherwise as chance may interpret it,—and of which we see an intimation, possibly, in the second commandment of the Decalogue.

When twilight suddenly deepened into night and blazing brands were brought to replenish the fire on the hearth opposite the Chief’s door, we squatted round about it, not for warmth, but for the cheer of its flicker, and because,—well, does a pipe ever taste as good as when lit by an ember?

Aban Avit sat beside us, and while we were filling our pipes he produced from the bamboo box, hanging at his side, some tobacco and some of that beautifully delicate dried leaf of the wild banana cut from the heart of the plant, before the leaf is unfurled; in unskilled hands it tears like wet tissue-paper, but in Aban Avit’s a tapering, symmetrical cigarette, eight inches long, was skilfully rolled on his thigh. A circle of small boys squatted around us, their bright, little eyes watching our every movement as intently as we stare at the actions of some strange animal in a Zoölogical Garden. If we struck a match, or sneezed, or buttoned our coats, or wiped our faces with a handkerchief, dilated eyes and open mouths attended the action with wrapt interest. A few men sat near their Chief, and now and then murmured comments to one another in their native tongue, which we did not fully understand, but could guess from the direction of their eyes, that we were the subject of their conversation. The evening duties of the household were not, however, interrupted on our account; men with bundles of dried fire-wood on their shoulders, women staggering under a load of bamboo joints filled with water, and stacked in hampers on their backs, were constantly passing by us, treading heavily, and making the loose boards of the floor clatter and rattle as they plodded their weary way to their apartments. For a time there was almost a constant succession of canoes coming to the landing-place, bringing back the workers from the rice-clearings. The women all bending under full hampers, some with fresh, uncurled fern-fronds, and the sprouts of a variety of large Canna, which they stew with rice to add variety to their diet; some with bundles of the young banana leaf, whereof to make cigarette-wrappers, and others with wild tapioca and wild yams. Each one carried her own light paddle in one hand, and a large round and flat sun-hat in the other. None of them glanced to right or left, but made her way direct to her family room, and like a ghost faded into the darkness through the small doorway. After them followed the men, dangling their parangs in one hand and trailing their blow-pipes and spears in the other. They, too, looked fixedly ahead, until they had hung up their parang and stuck their spear perpendicularly into a rafter so that the shaft should be kept straight; this done, they joined the group round the fire, or went down to the river to bathe. At the far end of the house some young fellows were playing mournful tunes on a Kaluri, and its organ-like notes were wafted fitfully down to us; now and then a baby’s wail chimed in, and then was quieted by the mother’s crooning lullaby. Beneath the house, the contented grunting of pigs and the clucking of chickens denoted that these omen-givers had returned from their foraging in the jungle, and had sought the shelter of home for the night.

Thus we sat as twilight faded in Aban Avit’s veranda,—in the home of these people, whereof every detail made up their familiar, common-place life, the only life from cradle to grave that they had ever known or would know, while we by their side were aliens from a world twelve thousand miles away, from a country that they had never heard of, and of a race which many of them had never seen before. We were in the very heart of the Bornean jungle, guests, in the house of a barbarous ‘savage’ and bloodthirsty ‘head-hunter,’—but, these terms, when applied at that moment to our host, what misnomers! Could contrast be more emphatic than the perfect peacefulness of our surroundings, and the thought that a man as benignant and hospitable as Aban Avit should cherish as his highest aim in life to add every year to that cluster of human heads hanging from the rafters just above us, and gently swaying in the heat ascending from the flames? Is it conceivable that this gentle-hearted man, and his circle of good-humored friends, could take pride and pleasure in recognising and rehearsing the slashes and gashes borne by each head? The long gash there, on the left side of that skull, showing through the piece of old casting-net, was made by Tama Lohong’s parang, the very one with carved wooden handle that he carries to this day. The owner of the next skull was fishing when he fell a victim to a stealthy thrust from Apoi’s spear. This small one is that of a young girl who tried to escape from the rear of a house when they burned out those Madangs, way over near the Rejang River. Thus they can enumerate them all, chief and slave, man, woman, girl, and boy. It all seemed so at variance with Aban Avit’s genial, courteous hospitality, that I wondered if it were possible to look at these skulls through his eyes, and to sympathise with his thrill of pride and exultation in them. I waited until Aban Avit had his cigarette fairly rolled and lit, and then, trying not to appear in the least antagonistic, lest I should fail to elicit his genuine feelings, I asked, ‘O Sabilah, [Blood-brother] why is it that all you people of Kalamantan kill each other and hang up these heads? In the land I come from such a thing is never known; I fear that it would be ill-spoken of there, indeed perhaps, thought quite horrible. What does Aban Avit think of it?’ He turned to me in utter, absolute surprise, at first with eyes half-closed, as doubting that he heard aright, and letting the smoke curl slowly out of his mouth for a moment, he then replied, with unwonted vehemence:—‘No, Tuan! No! the custom is not horrible. It is an ancient custom, a good, beneficent custom, bequeathed to us by our fathers and our fathers’ fathers; it brings us blessings, plentiful harvests, and keeps off sickness, and pains. Those who were once our enemies, hereby become our guardians, our friends, our benefactors.’ ‘But,’ I interrupted, ‘how does Aban Avit know that these dried heads do all this? Don’t you make it an excuse just because you like to shed blood and to kill?’ ‘Ah, Tuan, you white men had no great Chief, like Tokong, to show you what was right; haven’t you ever heard the story of Tokong and his people? He was Rajah of the Sibops and the father of all the Kayans, and lived long, long, long ago.’ I was not acquainted with the story of Tokong, so I begged him to relate it; then, squatting on the floor with his forearms lightly resting on his knees, and his hands dangling in front of him, he meditatively relit his cigarette, and, gazing lovingly up at the cluster of skulls, began:—

‘It was in the old, old days, long before the Government came here, (by the Government, I mean our Tuan Rajah Brooke,) it happened that on a time the descendant of the heaven-born Katirah Murai, Tokong, and his men of the Sibop tribe were on an expedition down-river to punish a household of thieves who had stolen their crop of rice the year before, and had chased Tokong’s women and children from the jungle-clearings. It was the time of year when the fields had just been planted, and before the rice had sprouted; so Tokong took out his warriors to teach these thieves that this year there should be no more stealing. When they had gone down-river to the great bamboo clump where they had to cross through the jungle, they drew their canoes up to the bank, and, with Tokong leading, started on their stealthy march. When the eye of day looked straight down at them over their heads, they rested on the bank of a small stream which ran round that great rock, (perhaps, Tuan, you have seen it,)—we call it “Batu Kusieng,”—near the head-waters of the Belaga and Tinjar Rivers. They had cooked, and eaten, and had drawn out the pegs of wood whereon their rice-pots rested, and Rajah Tokong was slipping his head through his war-coat and girding on his parang, when he heard, coming from under the great rock, a squeaking, croaking voice, uttering, “Wong kokók teta Batók.”[7] He paused, and, turning round to listen to the voice, saw a large frog with its young ones about it sitting just under the edge of the rock. “Greetings to you, Kop,” [Frog] said the Rajah. “What is the meaning of your croaking?” and Kop replied, “Alas, what fools you Sibops are! You go out to battle and kill men, but you take back with you to ornament your shields only their hair; whereas, did you but know it, if you took the whole head you would have blessings beyond words. Insooth, you heavy-livered people know not how to take a head. Look here, and I’ll show you.” Thus spoke Kop, and straightway seized one of his little ones, and with one stroke of his parang cut off its head. Tokong was exceedingly angry at the impudence and the cruelty of the frog, and, paying no further attention to it, ordered his men to advance at once. But some of the older men among them could not help thinking that perhaps Kop spoke the truth, and that night, while they sat round the fire, holding a council of war over the attack on the enemy’s house, close at hand, they urged Tokong to allow them to follow the frog’s advice. At first, Tokong, still very angry because Kop had called the Sibops “fools” and “heavy-livered,” refused; but finally, seeing that many of his best men were in favor of it, he granted their request. Next morning, when the sky began to turn gray and the birds in the trees were just waking up, the Sibops noiselessly carried armfuls of bark and grass, and placed them beneath the thieves’ house, and set fire to them, and the flames ran quickly everywhere. Out rushed the men and women, some jumping into the flames, others trying to slide down the house-posts; but all were met with slashes and stabs from the swords and spears of Tokong’s men. Many were killed that day, and the heads of three were cut off and carried away by Tokong’s party, who retreated at once, and, almost before they knew it, were at the landing-place on the river. To their great amazement, they found their boats all ready and launched! No sooner were they seated than the boats began to move off, of their own accord, right up-stream in the direction of home. It was a miracle! The current of the stream changed and ran up hill, as it does at flood-tide at the mouth of a river. They almost immediately reached the landing-place close to their house, and were overjoyed to see that the crops planted only fifteen days before had not only sprouted, but had grown, had ripened, and were almost ready for the harvest. In great astonishment they hurried through the clearings, and up to their house. There, they found still greater wonders! those who were ill when the party set out were now well, the lame walked and the blind saw! Rajah Tokong and all his people were convinced on the spot that it was because they had followed Kop’s advice, and they vowed a vow that ever afterward the heads of their enemies should be cut off and hung up in their houses. This is the story of Rajah Tokong, Tuan. We all follow his good example. These heads above us have brought me all the blessings I have ever had; I would not have them taken from my home for all the silver in the country.’

He turned to appeal to his people sitting near, and they, as many as understood Malay, nodded their heads, glancing from him to us, and murmuring ‘Betúl, betúl!’ [’Tis true, ’tis true] He paused to get an ember out of the glowing heap of ashes to light his cigarette again, which had become much crumpled during the narration of Rajah Tokong’s first head-hunt, and after he had it once more in shape, I asked him if he would not regard it as somewhat of an inconvenience if his own head were to be cut off, just to bring blessings to an enemy’s house. ‘Tuan,’ he replied, ‘I do not want to become dead any more than I want to move from where I am; if my head were cut off, my second self would go to Bulun Matai, [the Fields of the Dead,] where beyond a doubt I should be happy; the Dayongs tell us, and surely they know, that those who have been brave and have taken heads, as I have, will be respected in that other world and will have plenty of riches. When I die my friends will beat the gongs loud and shout out my name, so that those who are already in Bulun Matai, will know that I am coming, and meet me when I cross over the stream on Bintang Sikópa [the great log.] I shall be glad enough to see them. But I don’t want to go to-day, nor to-morrow.’ His faith seemed immovable, but I could not resist the temptation of suggesting a doubt, so I asked him what if the Dayongs were wrong, and there were no Bulun Matai, and that when he stopped breathing he really died and knew no more. He answered me almost with scorn for such a doubt. ‘Tuan, nothing really dies, it changes from one thing to another. The Dayongs must be right, for they have been to the Fields of the Dead and come back to tell us all about it.’ ‘Don’t you feel sorry,’ I asked, ‘for those that you kill? It hurts badly to be cut by a parang; you don’t like it, and those whom you cut down dislike it as much as you do; they are no more anxious to go to Apo Leggan or Long Julán [Regions in Bulun Matai] than you are.’ ‘Ah, Tuan,’ he replied, with the suggestion of a patronizing chuckle in his voice, ‘you feel just as I did, when I was a little boy and had never seen blood. But I outgrew such feelings, as every one should. My father, a very great warrior, and known and feared by the people of many, many rivers, wanted his sons to be as brave and fearless as he was himself. So one day he dragged out into the jungle old Bállo Lahíng, [widow of Lahíng,] and tied her fast to a tree by rattans on her wrists and ankles. She was a slave-woman, captured when she was a young girl, by his grandfather over in the Batang Kayan country, and, at the time I speak of, she was very old, and weak, and very thin, and couldn’t do any work because she was nearly blind. My father told my brother yonder and me, and one or two other boys, all of us, little fellows then, (I remember, my ears were still sore from having these holes for tiger-cat’s teeth cut in them,) well,—he told us we must go out with spears and learn to stick them in something alive, and not to be afraid to see blood, nor to hear screams,—then I felt just as you do. Besides, I was really very fond of old Bállo Lahíng; she it was who tied on my first chawat [waist-cloth] for me, I remembered it well, for she laughed a great deal at me, and then I saw how few teeth she had, and she often used to sing me to sleep with that song about “Tama Poyong with a twisted leg.” I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her, and sending her away off to Long Julán, so I flatly refused to take a spear with me. But my father said I must; there was no harm in it; that it was right, and I must take one; he pulled me by the arm, and I had to follow. Then I was afraid she might see me, so I sneaked round behind the tree and just pricked her with the point of the iron, then she guessed what my father had tied her there for, and screamed as loud as she could, “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t!” over and over again, and very fast; I pricked her a little harder the next time to hear what she would say, but she only kept on shrieking the same words. Then one of the other boys, smaller even than I, ran his spear right through her thigh, like this, and the old people laughed and said that was good; and the blood ran down all over the wrinkles on her knees; and then I wanted to make it run just in the same way, so I pushed and pushed my spear hard into her; and after that, I never thought whether it was Bállo Lahíng or not, I just watched the blood; and we all ran round her piercing her here and piercing there until she sank right down on the ground with her hands in the rattan loops above her head, which tumbled over to one side, and no more blood came out of her. Then my father praised us all loudly, and me in particular, and said we had been good boys and had done well! How could I feel at all sorry then for the old thing? I thought only that I had obeyed my father and that I was a great warrior and could wear horn-bill’s feathers, and tiger-cat’s teeth. That’s the way to become a Man; a baby is afraid of blood, Tuan. My father was right. No man can be brave who doesn’t love to see his spear draw blood.’

I responded with many nods, drew furiously at my pipe, and fell silent. Aban Avit believed that he had made a convert.

Aban Avit’s faith in a future life was invincible, and thoroughly characteristic of the Oriental mind, which accepts that faith with an assurance which should put to the blush an Occidental Agnostic. To be sure, to attain the Oriental Paradise does not depend upon the adherence in this life to that morality which distinguishes good and bad actions. It is noteworthy, that in several of these Oriental languages there is no word to express ‘sin.’ A cruel and vindictive man is to be shunned merely because his actions are disagreeable or inconvenient to those about him. But when he dies, and can then cause no more trouble, his memory is as cherished as a Saint’s, and those who knew him will give him the customary amount of profuse wailing, and believe that his spirit passes as surely to the same ‘heaven’ as the kindest and gentlest of them all.

How greatly the faith of the Borneans in eternal life is indebted to their surroundings can be realized perhaps only by one who has lived in that boundless jungle, where, on every hand, Nature is in her wildest, most exuberant, most lavish mood; where life dies and is renewed in an hour. Is it any wonder that the Jungle people, with this eternal loss and eternal gain ever present, think no more of cutting down a human fellow-creature than of chopping down a tree or of plucking a gaudy flower? The jungle is an ever-present ocular proof that life follows life. Here beneath our cold skies we are every year reminded of decay and death in the withering grass, the falling leaves, and the bare branches of winter; the long waiting for Spring bids us look forward to a future away from this scene of death. In the jungle there is no death, the leaves fall while they are still green, and in a night, lo! new ones take their place; an ancient tree falls, but the mighty trunk does not lie arid and stiff to be slowly covered with pale leathery lichens; hardly has it touched the ground before it is covered with a translucent shroud of tender green, which seems but a renewal and continuation of its own life; and before the burning sun shining through the gap can scorch the delicate orchids, the gap is closed by a new eager growth and a young tree springs from the earth upturned by the broken roots. Can any dweller amid such scenes believe otherwise than that death is but an exchange of life?

Of what can be called a religion the Borneans have little; they are, to a certain extent, idolaters, and their projects are banned or blest by omens drawn from certain birds and animals, but mainly by auguries interpreted from the livers of sacrificed swine and from fowls; wherein they are no more barbarous than the ancient Romans. But the one custom, to which they all cling with a tenacity born of what is to them its proved efficacy, is the taking of human heads. Can they not recount indisputable proof after proof, drawn from their own veritable experience, that these precious influences over the domestic hearth bring the very purest of blessings, and health, and wealth to the whole household?

Be it borne in mind that an enemy’s head is not like the scalp of our American Indians, a mere trophy; it is an object of heartfelt veneration, an earnest of blessing to the whole community. Such is the round of life among them that a pretext for a head-hunt is readily found; the solemn ceremony of putting off the mourning for a dead Chief suggests it; or when a harvest is completed; or when a Chief takes a new wife, etc. In all these ceremonies the acquisition of new heads is of prime importance, and those, too, who did not participate in the hunt, and even very young boys, may share in the glory of this acquisition, if they will merely put on war-clothes, and before the heads are taken up into the house strike a blow at them with a parang. [The ceremonies attending head-hunts I give elsewhere.] Water sprinkled from the palm leaves, wherein the heads have been wrapped, purifies women after periods of mourning, and they may once more wear their ornaments, and bathe in the river, and the men may thereafter shave their temples. When finally hung up in the house, the heads have lost all semblance to life, and are mere blackened skulls, not exactly ornamental, it must be admitted, but by no means as repulsive as might be at first supposed.

Among the Kayans it is most strictly forbidden for any one, except the very aged, to touch these heads. Sickness, possibly death, follows a disregard of this rule; but the aged, who are at any rate on the brink of the grave, may fearlessly handle them. At a harvest festival, it is an Iban custom to take the old skulls down, and women then carry them, together with the new ones, in their dances; rice is thrust between the jaws, and arrack poured over them, that they also, to the extent of their limited capacity, may share in the feast.

[This account of Aban Avit’s conversation is more or less composite; the words which I have put into his mouth are not solely his, but there is none of them that I have not heard emphatically expressed by other natives; I have merely made one man the mouth-piece of several. The story of the sacrifice of the old woman for the moral and physical training of the boys, I have endeavored to give as I heard it.]

In the accompanying view of the veranda of Aban Avit’s house, the skulls may be seen hanging in a cluster over the fireplace around which the people are grouped. For this photograph a trap-door in the roof had to be raised to admit light. Draped over the skulls, here and there, are pieces of bark cloth and shreds of palm leaves; the framework whereon the heads are hung is made of hoops of rattan, one inside the other, so that these invaluable relics may be arranged in a thick symmetrical cluster. Among some tribes it is customary to place the skull of a rhinoceros in the centre of the group of human skulls. This animal is so ferocious and so hard to kill that it is deemed worthy of the honor. Along the roof, half across the open trap-door, is the board mentioned above, carved at its lower edge into hooks, on which visitors hang their parangs while they sit to talk or feast with the Chief. The man with his feet resting upon the edge of the fireplace is the brother of Aban Avit, and will probably succeed to the Chiefship; his word even now seems to carry great weight in all councils. At the time of taking the photograph the house was filled with guests,—a party of peace from the Baram River, on their way to the head-waters of the Tinjar to give and take pledges of friendly relationship, and to pay off and collect indemnities for the raids and slaughterings of their fathers and grandfathers.