Formerly, When Erecting A Funeral House For An Important Man, An Attendant In The Next Life Was Provided For Him By Placing A Slave, Alive, In The Hole Dug For One Of The Upright Posts, The End Of The Post Being Set Directly Over Him.

On the Samba I found myself in close proximity to regions widely spoken of elsewhere in Borneo as being inhabited by particularly wild people, called Ulu-Ots:

(Ulu = men; ot = at the headwaters). Their habitats are the mountainous regions in which originate the greatest rivers of Borneo, the Barito, the Kapuas (western), and the Mahakam, and the mountains farther west, from whence flow the Katingan, the Sampit, and the Pembuang, are also persistently assigned to these ferocious natives. They are usually believed to have short tails and to sleep in trees. Old Malays may still be found who tell of fights they had forty or more years ago with these wild men. The Kahayans say that the Ulu-Ots are cannibals, and have been known to force old men and women to climb trees and hang by their hands to the branches until sufficiently exhausted to be shaken down and killed. The flesh is roasted before being eaten. They know nothing of agriculture and to them salt and lombok are non-existent. Few of them survive. On the authority of missionaries there are some three hundred such savages at the headwaters of the Kahayan, who are described as very Mongolian in appearance, with oblique eyes and prominent cheekbones, and who sleep in trees.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 354 of 489
Words from 94273 to 94530 of 132281