He Was Enabled To Change His Business Into Cocoanut Plantations, Which To-Day Cover The Island.

According to report they dressed for dinner every day, to the end that they might not relinquish their hold upon the habits of civilised society.

Later I learned that when the war broke out the count immediately went to France to offer his services.

Lieutenant C.J. La Riviere came aboard in Samarinda, en route to Holland for a rest, after being in charge of the garrison at distant Long Nawang in Apo Kayan. There are 40 soldiers, 2 officers, and 1 doctor at that place, which is 600 metres above sea, in a mountainous country with much rain, and therefore quite cool. In a single month they had had one and a half metres of rain. Officers have been known to spend three months in going from Long Iram to Apo Kayan, travelling by prahu almost the whole distance. Usually the trip may be made in a couple of months or less. The river at last becomes only four metres broad, with very steep sides, and in one night, when it rains copiously, the water may rise five to six metres. Mail usually arrives three times a year, but when the lieutenant boarded the steamer he had not seen a newspaper for five months.

He expressed his opinion that the government would find it extremely difficult to stamp out head-hunting in Apo Kayan, with its 15,000 Dayaks, because the custom is founded in their religious conception. "Our ancestors have always taken heads," they say; "we also do it, and the spirits will then be satisfied. We have learned it from our ancestors, who want us to do it." "They often ask us," the lieutenant said: "When are you going to leave Long Nawang? When you are gone then we will again take up the head-hunting." These same Kenyahs are entrusted to go to Long Iram to bring provisions to the garrison. About eighty of them are sent, accompanied by only two soldiers, and after three months' absence the goods arrive safely at Long Nawang.

On board the steamer were also two Punan head-hunters from the interior who were being taken to Bandjermasin under the guard of two soldiers. They had been caught through the assistance of other Punans, and in prison the elder one had contracted the dry form of beri-beri. He was a pitiful sight, in the last stage of a disease not usually found among his compatriots, no longer able to walk, looking pale and emaciated and having lost the sight of his right eye. They had rather wild but not unpleasant faces, and were both tatued like the Kenyahs. Their hair had been cut short in the prison. I later took the anthropometric measurements of the young man, who was a fine specimen of the savage, with a splendid figure, beautifully formed hands and feet - his movements were elastic and easy.

As it had been found impossible to secure Dayaks in the Bulungan for my expedition to New Guinea, the resident courteously offered to get eighty men from the Mahakam River.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 53 of 253
Words from 27245 to 27770 of 132281