Evidently At A Previous Time Effort Had Been Made To Clear The Jungle And To Cultivate Bananas And Cassavas.

Among felled trees and the exuberance of a new growth of vegetation a few straggling bananas were observable, but all the big cassava plants had been uprooted and turned over by the wild pigs, tending to increase the dismal look of the place.

A lieutenant in charge of a patrouille had put up a rough pasang-grahan here, where our lieutenant and the soldiers took refuge, while I had the ground cleared near one end of it, and there placed my tent.

Not far off stood a magnificent tree with full, straight stem, towering in lonely solitude fifty metres above the overgrown clearing. In a straight line up its tall trunk wooden plugs had been driven in firmly about thirty centimetres apart. This is the way Dayaks, and Malays who have learned it from them, climb trees to get the honey and wax of the bees' nests suspended from the high branches. On the Barito, from the deck of the Otto, I had observed similar contrivances on still taller trees of the same kind called tapang, which are left standing when the jungle is cleared to make ladangs.

A few days later the rest of our party arrived and, having picked up six rubber gatherers, brought the remainder of the luggage from their camp. Some men were then sent to bring up the goods stored in the utan below, and on February 3 this was accomplished.

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