We Now Had To Send For Men To Lok Besar, Which Was Our Ultimate Goal, And The Following Day We Arrived There, Passing Through A Country Somewhat More Hilly Than Hitherto.

I put up my tent under some bananas, and felt comfortable to be by myself again, instead of sleeping in crowded pasang-grahans.

There was not even such accommodation here, but the kapala put most of his little house at our disposal, reserving only a small room and the kitchen for himself and family. The boiling-point thermometer showed an elevation of 270 metres.

I had a meeting with the blians, who knew nothing worth mentioning. Almost everything had been forgotten, even the language, still it is remarkable how primitive these people remain, and there is scarcely any mixture of Malay apparent in the type. For two or three days the kind-hearted, simple people gathered in numbers at the middle kampong of the three which bear the same name, Lok Besar, upper, middle, and lower. The Dayaks call the upper one Darat, which means headwaters.

One man had a skin formation which at a superficial glance might be taken for a tail. It was about the size of a man's thumb, felt a little hard inside, and could be moved either way. On the outside of each thigh, over the head of the femur, was a similar but smaller formation. Another man had an excrescence on each thigh, similarly located, but very regular in shape, forming half a globe; I saw a Dayak on the Mahakam with the same phenomenon.

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