It Was A Lovely Place And Charmingly Fresh And Green.

The house, neatly built of palm-leaves, contained two rooms and a small kitchen, with floors of bamboo.

In the outer room was a table covered with a red cloth and a lamp hung above it, for the Malays love the accessories of civilisation. The kapala and the vaccinateur were there to receive us, and we were treated as if we were officials, two men sleeping in the house as guard. I was told there are no diseases here except mild cases of demum (malaria) and an itching disorder of the skin between the fingers.

On the fourth day from Martapura we arrived at the first Dayak habitation, Angkipi, where Bukits have a few small bamboo shanties consisting of one room each, which were the only indications of a kampong. The most prominent feature of the place was a house of worship, the so-called balei, a square bamboo structure, the roomy interior of which had in the centre a rectangular dancing-floor of bamboo sticks. A floor similarly constructed, but raised some twenty-five centimetres higher, covered about all the remaining space, and serves as temporary habitations for the people, many small stalls having been erected for the purpose. Our friend the vaccinateur was already busy inside the building, vaccinating some fifty Dayaks from the neighbouring hills and mountains who had responded to his call. When I entered, they showed timidity, but their fears were soon allayed, and I made myself at home on the raised floor, where I had a good camping-place.

Although these Bukits, among whom I travelled thereafter, are able to speak Malay, or Bandjer, the dialect of Bandjermasin, they have preserved more of their primitive characteristics than I expected. As I learned later, at Angkipi especially, and during a couple more days of travel, they were less affected by Malay influence than the Dayaks elsewhere on my route. The kampong exists only in name, not in fact, the people living in the hills in scattered groups of two or three houses. Rice is planted but once a year, and quite recently the cultivation of peanuts, which I had not before observed in Borneo, had been introduced through the Malays. Bukits never remain longer than two years at the same house, usually only half that time, making ladang near by, and the next year they move to a new house and have a new ladang. For their religious feasts they gather in the balei, just as the ancient Mexicans made temporary habitations in and near their temples, and as the Huichols and other Indians of Mexico do to-day.

The natives of Angkipi are stocky, crude people. Several had eyes set obliquely, a la Mongol, in a very pronounced manner, with the nose depressed at the base and the point slightly turned upward. Among the individuals measured, two young women were splendid specimens, but there were difficulties in regard to having them photographed, as they were all timid and anxious to go home to their mountains.

Next day, marching through a somewhat hilly country, we arrived at the kampong Mandin on the River Lahanin. Here was the residence of Ismail, to whose influence probably was due the recent conversion to Islam of several families. The pasang-grahan, though small, was clean and there was room for all. Thanks to the efforts of the vaccinateur, the Dayaks, who were very friendly, submitted to the novel experience of the camera and kept me busy the day that we remained there. A great number of women whom I photographed in a group, as soon as I gave the signal that it was all over, rushed with one impulse to the river to cleanse themselves from the evil effects of the operation.

As the Bukits are not very strong in carrying burdens, we needed fifty carriers, and Ismail having assisted in solving the problem, the march was continued through a country very much cut up into gulches and small hills. Time and again we crossed the Riham Kiwa, and went down and up gullies continually. At a small kampong, where I took my midday meal sitting under a banana-tree, the kapala came and in a friendly way presented me with a basket of bananas, for these Dayaks are very hospitable, offering, according to custom, rice and fruit to the stranger. He told me that nearly all the children were ill, also two adults, but nobody had died from a disease which was raging, evidently measles.

At Ado a harvest-festival was in progress in the balei, which, there, was of rectangular shape. Within I found quite elaborate preparations, among which was prominently displayed a wooden image of the great hornbill. There was also a tall, ornamental stand resembling a candelabrum, made of wood and decorated with a profusion of long, slightly twisted strips of leaves from the sugar-palm, which hung down to the floor. From here nine men returned to our last camping-place, where they had left a similar feast in order to serve me. The harvest-festival is called bluput, which means that the people fulfil their promise to antoh. It lasts from five to seven days, and consists mostly of dancing at night. Neighbouring kampongs are invited and the guests are given boiled rice, and sometimes babi, also young bamboo shoots, which are in great favour and are eaten as a sayur. When the harvest is poor, no feast is made.

The balei was very stuffy, and little light or air could enter, so I continued my journey, arriving later in the afternoon at Beringan, where a tiny, but clean, pasang-grahan awaited us. It consisted mainly of four small bamboo stalls, in which there was room for all of us to sleep, but the confined air produced a disagreeable congestion in my head the next day. 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.

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