Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Early in the afternoon we reached the village of Borotói, and, though it would have been
easy to reach the next one before night, I was obliged to stay, as my men wanted to return
and others could not possibly go on with me without the preliminary talking. Besides, a
white man was too great a rarity to be allowed to escape them, and their wives would never
have forgiven them if, when they returned from the fields, they found that such a curiosity
had not been kept for them to see. On entering the house to which I was invited, a crowd of
sixty or seventy men, women, and children gathered round me, and I sat for half an hour
like some strange animal submitted for the first time to the gaze of an inquiring public.
Brass rings were here in the greatest profusion, many of the women having their arms com-
pletely covered with them, as well as their legs from the ankle to the knee. Round the waist
they wear a dozen or more coils of fine rattan stained red, to which the petticoat is attached.
Below this are generally a number of coils of brass wire, a girdle of small silver coins, and
sometimes a broad belt of brass ring armour. On their heads they wear a conical hat without
a crown, formed of variously coloured beads, kept in shape by rings of rattan, and forming a
fantastic but not unpicturesque head-dress.
Walking out to a small hill near the village, cultivated as a rice-field, I had a fine view of
the country, which was becoming quite hilly, and towards the south, mountainous. I took
bearings and sketches of all that was visible, an operation which caused much astonishment
to the Dyaks who accompanied me, and produced a request to exhibit the compass when I
returned. I was then surrounded by a larger crowd than before, and when I took my evening
meal in the midst of a circle of about a hundred spectators anxiously observing every move-
ment and criticising every mouthful, my thoughts involuntarily recurred to the lions at feed-
ing time. Like those noble animals, I too was used to it, and it did not affect my appetite.
The children here were more shy than at Tabókan, and I could not persuade them to play. I
therefore turned showman myself, and exhibited the shadow of a dog's head eating, which
pleased them so much that all the village in succession came out to see it. The 'rabbit on the
wall' does not do in Borneo, as there is no animal it resembles. The boys had tops shaped
something like whipping-tops, but spun with a string.
The next morning we proceeded as before, but the river had become so rapid and shallow
and the boats were all so small, that though I had nothing with me but a change of clothes, a
gun, and a few cooking utensils, two were required to take me on. The rock which appeared
here and there on the river-bank was an indurated clay-slate, sometimes crystalline, and
thrown up almost vertically. Right and left of us rose isolated limestone mountains, their
white precipices glistening in the sun and contrasting beautifully with the luxuriant vegeta-
tion that elsewhere clothed them. The river bed was a mass of pebbles, mostly pure white
