William Henry Furness

“ The women catch the excitement of the fierce, desperate paddling; they stand up to the work, their jet-black hair streams over their shoulders, their tawny bodies sway with the boat as they dash from their paddles the ‘tender, curving lines of creamy spray.’ The men shout in triumph or laugh in defeat; and even the old crones cackle and urge on the youths to the sport. The scene is idyllic; there is nothing to revolt, everything to charm. Careless, untamed life amid a tropical jungle is to be seen at its very fairest on one of these Tuba-fishings among the Kenyahs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Then daylight gradually creeps in and a door slams with a bang at the far end of the house, where the poorer and hard-working people live; a woman with a bundle of bamboo water-vessels slung on her back hurries along to the stairway down to the river. She looks just the same as when she went to sleep. Her dress is the same and her hair is in a disordered tangle, and as she walks her feet come down heavily on the warped planks and make them rattle, no doubt to wake the lazy men, who sleep on and let the women make the fire and get the water while they snooze. ”

“ The plumpest and largest are always cooked and eaten on the spot by the keen-set fishermen, who revel, even to gorging, in the dainty change from their monotonous daily fare of boiled rice and dried salted fish.
With canoes, and hampers, and bodies filled, as the low descending sun sends shafts of amber light down the long reaches of the river, the fishers again embark, and lazily dip their paddles in the glowing water as the current drifts them on their homeward way. The red-letter day is over, but the joy of it remains for ever in the laughing gossip round the evening hearth. ”

“ Here, clearings extend over low undulating hills, and at this season of the year the rice was already six inches tall, and its tender emerald green was unspeakably refreshing after the dark foliage of the jungle. Twice we passed groups of men and women busily weeding the fields; but, poor wretches, as if their toil were not enough, they must all needs be clad in heavy war-cloaks; they had heard, so they said, that there was an enormous head-hunting army on the way from the Baram, and they were in hourly terror of being attacked and killed. ”

“ On, on, they glided until the three foremost canoes touched the bank; then Abun alighted and unloosed the skull, still in its coverings of palm leaves, from the bow of his boat. In order to watch the ceremony more narrowly, I left the veranda as the boats neared the beach, and I shall not soon forget Abun’s solemn, absorbed demeanour. I could not catch his eye, and, unlike his usual self, he took not the smallest notice of my presence, nor did any of the others. Every face wore the wrapt expression of a profoundly religious rite. ”

“ During the rainy season, the husbands and lovers seem to have little to do but sit in the veranda, lounging against the railing at the open space under the eaves, whence they can observe the river and its incidents, and watch the smoke from their long cigarettes curl and drift among the fronds of tall cocoanut palms that sway and rustle on a level with their faces. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was an exciting day’s travel; the rapids were extremely swift, and the Kayans, Kenyahs, Sibops, Berawans, Leppu Anans, and Lerons became inextricably intermingled in forcing their canoes past dangerous rocks and through narrows where the water rushed with almost irresistible power. Every man of the large assemblage was at the highest tension of excitement in anticipation of the stirring ceremonies close at hand, which after all, in the twinkling of an eye, by the merest accident, or by some trivial flaw in etiquette amid so large a body of hostile clans, might be converted to bloody battle. ”

“ The swish and tinkle of the water as it rushes over the rapids above and below the deep pools which the fish frequent, and the musical calls of the Wawa monkeys, alone break the stillness, until the arrival of the merry, happy party of fishers from a Kenyah long-house. The women are bedecked in their finery of gay head-gear and [186] bright bead-work necklaces. The young, unmarried damsels prove to be the life of the party, and are endlessly chaffing their lovers; the sidelong glances from beneath palm-leaf hats are as arch and coquettish as any ever cast from behind a spangled fan. ”

“ EARLY TRAINING OF A HEAD-HUNTER
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. ”

“ The brilliant colours of the war-coats flashed brighter every minute as the sun rose higher, and lit up the framework of the wondrous pageant;—the cloudless blue sky over-head, the myriad spangled ripples of the glistening river beneath the dark masses of heavy foliage, suggesting, yet hiding, the ever-mysterious jungle, the hushed, awe-stricken group of women and children, awaiting the warriors’ return, and over all, the silence of earth and sky, broken only by the modulated cadences of that impressive harmony. ”

“ By this time there is quite a procession of women going down to bathe and get the cooking water from the river, and there is a slamming of doors and a few wails from the children. Then the men who have been sleeping on the raised platform along the open space below the eaves, unroll themselves from their shroud-like coverings of cotton cloth, once white, and a little hum of conversation springs up, possibly a comparison of dreams, the interpretation of which, as in all uneducated classes, has a great bearing on their daily life. ”

“ Festival songs and war-dances, with kaluri accompaniment, followed. When the jars of Borak were drained to the dregs, one by one the exhausted warriors crept to bed, saturated with the serene joy of duty done, glory gained, and honour paid to their departed Chief.
Even after all these ceremonies and the feast, the house is not utterly free from taboo: for ten days no work may be done in the clearings, nor may the men go for rattans or any jungle product. ”

“ While to scenery, it is distance,—and photography,—which lends enchantment, it is, on the contrary, propinquity which, in my experience, lends to the Borneo Head-Hunters and to their Home-life, a charm which cannot be wholly dispelled even by the skulls hanging from the rafters of their houses. ”

“ 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 ”

“ They have never a thought of the morrow; no cares; no responsibilities; no possessions; no enemies, for they desire nothing that other people have, not even clothes; money is dross; and home is where they rest their blow-pipes and hang up their parangs. Night can never find them homeless; home is wherever the setting sun finds them; does rain threaten, a few poles and a few leaves make a house; let the night be clear, and a soft bed of leaves in a nook between the great flat roots of a Tapang tree is luxury itself ”

“ 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 ”

“ It often happens that the weights in the ears are increased injudiciously, and the thin band of skin gives way; it may be that the loop catches on a twig in the jungle or on some projection in the house, and, in a minute, all the long years of suffering have been in vain; immaculate beauty is for ever gone. ”

“ In spite of the darkness of these rooms, there is, nevertheless, more industry in them than is ever found in the veranda; the women are really the workers of the community, and seem never to sit absolutely idle gossiping, as do the men; when the harvesting is finished and there is no more work out of doors, they employ their time in making mats and baskets of rattan strips, in stringing beads into ornaments for war-coats, in weaving cloth for feast-day garments, and in fashioning large, round, flat hats for the next season’s work in the rice-fields. ”

“ Afternoon deepens into dusk, and the workers from the fields come home and trudge wearily up the bank and disappear through the little doorways. Small flickering lamps are lit here and there, and the fire on the hearth disseminates a cheery glow and warms up the row of human skulls hanging in front of the Chief’s door. ”

“ Again, as on the first day, packages of salt, ginger-root, and bananas were passed around, and The Ceremony was over. Everything had gone off [43] to perfection, not an evil omen had marred its smooth success,—thanks to the gongs and the strength of dear little Lijow’s lungs; if his voice keeps its promise until manhood, he will make himself heard throughout Sarawak.
It now only remained to wrap up the precious strips of bamboo in a piece of banana leaf and place them in the bamboo joint along with the symbols of the first day’s rites. ”

“ For several seconds every man sat motionless with dilated eyes and open mouth, hardly realising the joyful news. Then with one wild shout all bounded to their feet, and the whole house from end to end was staring wide awake and fairly quivering with life! Canoes were hastily launched in the darkness and dispatched up and down the black river, to bear the swift news to friendly houses miles away. ”

“ These are the days when war expeditions are planned and resolutions made to add fresh heads to the row already hanging in front of the chief’s door, and thereby remove any taboo enforced by the death of relatives. The men seldom linger in the family rooms during the day, and the women, except when busy hulling the rice in the big wooden mortars, spend no time in the veranda. ”

“ Occasional puffs of hot air were wafted in under the eaves, bringing with them the combined scent of the fires on the bank, of mud, and of damp chips from the logs which beneath the house were being fashioned into canoes. The brief twilight of the tropics was gone, the night was already as black as ink, although it was barely a half hour after sunset, and the insects had not yet begun the incessant din of their nocturnal medley. ”

“ When the Dayong thinks the auspicious moment has arrived, and that the swine has caught the drift of the exhortation, and has obligingly modified the streakings of his liver, he plunges a knife in the animal’s throat, catches the spouting blood in a bowl, and, before life is extinct, rips open the paunch, and extracts the dripping liver, whereon, in characters legible only to the Dayong, the pig had inscribed an assured knowledge of the future. ”

“ In the days before the humanising influence of Rajah Brooke’s government had spread to the Kayans, and Kenyahs, and tribes living in the central highlands, it was a preliminary custom, in building a house, to thrust into the first excavation wherein the heavy, up-river, corner post was to rest, a young slave girl alive, and the mighty post was then planted on her body, crushing out her life as a propitiatory offering to the demons that they should not molest the dwelling. Happily, this custom has been abolished, and in houses now built, instead of a girl, a pig or a fowl has been substituted. ”

“ 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. ”