She Next Exchanged Firebrands With A Man, And Both Struck At Each Other Repeatedly.

This same custom is used at funerals with the Ot-Danums on the Samba, and the explanation given in both tribes is that the mourners want to forget their grief.

After distributing pieces of chewing-tobacco to all present, which seemed to please them much, I left the entertaining scene. In the afternoon we arrived at a small kampong, Tevang Karangan, (tevang = inlet; karangan = a bank of coarse sand or pebbles) where Upper Katingans appeared for the first time. No Malays live here, but there is much intermixture with Ot-Danums. The people were without rice, and edible roots from the jungle were lying in the sun to dry. The cemetery was close at hand in the outskirts of the jungle, where little houses could be seen consisting simply of platforms on four poles with roofs of palm-leaf mats, each containing one, two, or three coffins. It is impossible to buy skulls from the Dayaks on account of their fear that the insult may be avenged by the ghost of the original owner, through the infliction of misfortunes of various kinds - illness, loss of crops, etc. According to their belief, punishment would not descend upon the stranger who abstracted a human bone from a coffin, but upon the natives who permitted the theft. Moreover, they believe they have a right to kill the intruder; the bone must be returned and a pig killed as a sacrifice to the wandering liao of the corpse.

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