Through Central Borneo An Account Of Two Years' Travel In The Land Of The Head-Hunters Between The Years 1913 And 1917 By Carl Lumholtz
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Beautiful Mountain Ridge, About 1,200 Metres High, Through Which The River
Takes Its Course, Appears Toward The Southeast.
The population includes
fifty "doors" of Busangs, forty "doors" of Malays, and twenty of
Long-Glats.
Crocodiles are known to exist here, but do not pass the rapids
above. The kapala owned a herd of forty water-buffaloes, which forage for
themselves but are given salt when they come to the kampong. When driven
to Long Iram, they fetch eighty florins each. The gables of the kapala's
house were provided with the usual ornaments representing nagah, but
without the dog's mouth. He would willingly have told me tales of
folklore, but assured me he did not know any, and pronounced Malay
indistinctly, his mouth being constantly full of sirin (betel), so I found
it useless to take down a vocabulary from him.
Continuing our journey, we successfully engineered a rapid where a
Buginese trader two weeks previously had lost his life while trying to
pass in a prahu which was upset. Afterward we had a swift and beautiful
passage in a canyon through the mountain ridge between almost
perpendicular sides, where long rows of sago-palms were the main feature,
small cascades on either side adding to the picturesqueness. At the foot
of the rapids we made camp in order to enable me to visit a small
salt-water accumulation in the jungle a couple of kilometres farther down
the river. As we landed near the place, we saw over a hundred pigeons
leaving.
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