Later We Saw One Swimming Down The Current, Which The Penyahbongs Evidently Also Would Have Liked A Trial At Had We Not Already Passed The Place.

The river widened out again, the rocks on the sides disappeared, and deep pools were passed, though often the water ran very shallow, so the prahus were dragged along with difficulty.

Fish were plentiful, some astonishingly large. In leaping for something on the surface they made splashes as if a man had jumped into the water. On the last day, as the morning mist began to rise, our thirty odd men, eager to get home, poling the prahus with long sticks, made a picturesque sight. In early March, after a successful journey, we arrived at Tamaloe, having consumed only fourteen days from Bahandang because weather conditions had been favourable, with no overflow of the river and little rain. It was pleasant to know that the most laborious part of the expedition was over. I put up my tent under a large durian tree, which was then in bloom.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PENYAHBONGS, MEN OF THE WOODS - RHINOCEROS HUNTERS - CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PENYAHBONGS - EASY HOUSEKEEPING - DAILY LIFE - WOMAN'S LOT

The Penyahbongs until lately were nomadic people, roaming about in the nearby Muller mountains, subsisting on wild sago and the chase and cultivating some tobacco. They lived in bark huts on the ground or in trees. Some eight years previous to my visit they were induced by the government to form kampongs and adopt agricultural pursuits, and while most of them appear to be in the western division, two kampongs were formed east of the mountains, the Sabaoi and the Tamaloe, with less than seventy inhabitants altogether.

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