On The Same Afternoon Djobing And Three Companions, Who Were Going Up To Another Rattan Station, Djudjang, On A Path Through The Jungle, Proposed To Me To Transport Some Of Our Luggage In One Of My Prahus.

The offer was gladly accepted, a liberal price paid, and similar tempting conditions offered if they and a few men, known to be at the station above, would unite in taking all our goods up that far.

The following morning they started off.

The Malays of these regions, who are mainly from the upper part of the Kapuas River in the western division and began to come here ten years previously, are physically much superior to the Malays we brought, and for work in the kihams are as fine as Dayaks. They remain here for years, spending two or three months at a time in the utan. Djobing had been here four years and had a wife in his native country. There are said to be 150 Malays engaged in gathering rattan, and, no doubt, also rubber, in these vast, otherwise uninhabited upper Dusun lands.

What with the absence of natives and the scarcity of animals and birds, the time spent here waiting was not exactly pleasant. Notwithstanding the combined efforts of the collector, the sergeant, and one other soldier, few specimens were brought in. Mr. Demmini, the photographer, and Mr. Loing were afflicted with dysentery, from which they recovered in a week.

As a climax came the startling discovery that one of the two money-boxes belonging to the expedition, containing f. 3,000 in silver, had been stolen one night from my tent, a few feet away from the pasang-grahan. They were both standing at one side covered with a bag, and while it was possible for two men to carry off such a heavy box if one of them lifted the tent wall, still the theft implied an amount of audacity and skill with which hitherto I had not credited the Malays. The rain clattering on the roof of the tent, and the fact that, contrary to Dutch custom, I always extinguished my lamp at night, was in their favour. After this occurrence the lamp at night always hung lighted outside of the tent door. All evidence pointed to the four men from Tumbang Djuloi who recently left us. The sergeant had noticed their prahus departing from a point lower down than convenience would dictate, and, as a matter of fact, nobody else could have done it. But they were gone, we were in seclusion, and there was nobody to send anywhere.

In the middle of February we had twenty-nine men here from Tamaloe, twenty of them Penyahbongs and the remainder Malays. The lieutenant had been successful, and the men had only used two days in coming down with the current. They were in charge of a Malay called Bangsul, who formerly had been in the service of a Dutch official, and whose fortune had brought him to distant Tamaloe, where he had acquired a dominating position over the Penyahbongs.

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