To Prevent The Natives From Drinking It, I
Let Several Of Them See Me Put In A Number Of Snakes And Lizards;
But I Rather Think This Did Not Prevent Them From Tasting It.
We
were accommodated here in the verandah of the large house, in
which were several great baskets of dried human heads, the
trophies of past generations of head-hunters.
Here also there was
a little mountain covered with fruit-trees, and there were some
magnificent Durian trees close by the house, the fruit of which
was ripe; and as the Dyaks looked upon me as a benefactor in
killing the Mias, which destroys a great deal of their fruit,
they let us eat as much as we liked; we revelled in this emperor
of fruits in its greatest perfection.
The very day after my arrival in this place, I was so fortunate
as to shoot another adult male of the small Orang, the Mias-
kassir of the Dyaks. It fell when dead, but caught in a fork of
the tree and remained fixed. As I was very anxious to get it, I
tried to persuade two young Dyaks who were with me to cut down
the tree, which was tall, perfectly straight and smooth-barked,
and without a branch for fifty or sixty feet. To my surprise,
they said they would prefer climbing up it, but it would be a
good deal of trouble, and, after a little talking together, they
said they would try. They first went to a clump of bamboo that
stood near, and cut down one of the largest stems.
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