He Would Jump Into The Water Up To His Neck To Push And Steer The Prahu, Or, In The Fashion Of The Dayaks And The Best Malays, Would Place His Strong Back Under And Against It To Help It Off When Grounded On A Rock.

When circumstances require quick action such men will dive under the prahu and put their backs to it from the other side.

There was little chance of more paddling, the prahus being poled or dragged by rattan, and many smaller kihams were passed. We entered the Busang River, which is barely thirty-five metres wide at its mouth, flowing through hilly country. The water was low at that time, but is liable to rise quickly, through rains, and as it has little opportunity for expansion at the sides the current flows with such violence that travel becomes impossible. The most difficult part of our journey lay before us, and the possibility of one or two, or even three months' delay on account of weather conditions is then taken as a matter of course by the natives, though I trusted to have better luck than that.

CHAPTER XVI

ARRIVAL AT BAHANDANG - ON THE EQUATOR - A STARTLING ROBBERY - OUR MOST LABORIOUS JOURNEY - HORN-BILLS - THE SNAKE AND THE INTREPID PENYAHBONG - ARRIVAL AT TAMALOE

Bahandang, where we arrived early in the second afternoon, is the headquarters of some Malay rubber and rattan gatherers of the surrounding utan. A house had been built at the conflux with the river of a small affluent, and here lived an old Malay who was employed in receiving the products from the workers in the field. Only his wife was present, he having gone to Naan on the Djuloi River, but was expected to return soon. The place is unattractive and looked abandoned. Evidently at a previous time effort had been made to clear the jungle and to cultivate bananas and cassavas. Among felled trees and the exuberance of a new growth of vegetation a few straggling bananas were observable, but all the big cassava plants had been uprooted and turned over by the wild pigs, tending to increase the dismal look of the place. A lieutenant in charge of a patrouille had put up a rough pasang-grahan here, where our lieutenant and the soldiers took refuge, while I had the ground cleared near one end of it, and there placed my tent.

Not far off stood a magnificent tree with full, straight stem, towering in lonely solitude fifty metres above the overgrown clearing. In a straight line up its tall trunk wooden plugs had been driven in firmly about thirty centimetres apart. This is the way Dayaks, and Malays who have learned it from them, climb trees to get the honey and wax of the bees' nests suspended from the high branches. On the Barito, from the deck of the Otto, I had observed similar contrivances on still taller trees of the same kind called tapang, which are left standing when the jungle is cleared to make ladangs.

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