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tance of water; and I thought it safer to leave my cask of arrack securely placed in the fork
of a tree. To prevent the natives from drinking it, I let several of them see me put in a num-
ber of snakes and lizards; but I rather think this did not prevent them from tasting it. We
were accommodated here in the verandah of the large house, in which were several great
baskets of dried human heads, the trophies of past generations of head-hunters. Here also
there was a little mountain covered with fruit-trees, and there were some magnificent Durian
trees close by the house, the fruit of which was ripe; and as the Dyaks looked upon me as a
benefactor in killing the Mias which destroys a great deal of their fruit, they let us eat as
much as we liked, and we revelled in this emperor of fruits in its greatest perfection.
The very day after my arrival in this place, I was so fortunate as to shoot another adult
male of the small orang, the Mias-kassir of the Dyaks. It fell when dead, but caught in a fork
of the tree and remained fixed. As I was very anxious to get it, I tried to persuade two young
Dyaks who were with me to cut down the tree, which was tall, perfectly straight and
smooth-barked, and without a branch for fifty or sixty feet. To my surprise, they said they
would prefer climbing up it, but it would be a good deal of trouble, and, after a little talking
together, they said they would try. They first went to a clump of bamboo that stood near, and
cut down one of the largest stems. From this they chopped off a short piece, and splitting it,
made a couple of stout pegs, about a foot long, and sharp at one end. Then cutting a thick
piece of wood for a mallet, they drove one of the pegs into the tree and hung their weight
upon it. It held, and this seemed to satisfy them, for they immediately began making a
quantity of pegs of the same kind, while I looked on with great interest, wondering how they
could possibly ascend such a lofty tree by merely driving pegs in it, the failure of any one of
which at a good height would certainly cause their death. When about two dozen pegs were
made, one of them began cutting some very long and slender bamboo from another clump,
and also prepared some cord from the bark of a small tree. They now drove in a peg very
firmly at about three feet from the ground, and bringing one of the long bamboos, stood it
upright close to the tree, and bound it firmly to the two first pegs, by means of the bark cord,
and small notches near the head of each peg. One of the Dyaks now stood on the first peg
and drove in a third, about level with his face, to which he tied the bamboo in the same way,
and then mounted another step, standing on one foot, and holding by the bamboo at the peg
immediately above him, while he drove in the next one. In this manner he ascended about
twenty feet, when the upright bamboo becoming thin, another was handed up by his com-
panion, and this was joined on by tying both bamboos to three or four of the pegs. When
this was also nearly ended, a third was added, and shortly after, the lowest branches of the
tree were reached, along which the young Dyak scrambled, and soon sent the Mias tumbling
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