[1] Pronounced as though it were spelled Cel-lay-bees, with the accent on the second syllable.
CHAPTER V
MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS
There is no name between the covers of the atlas which so smacks of romance and adventure as Borneo. Show me the red-blooded boy who, when he sees that magic name over the wild man's cage in the circus sideshow or over the orang-utan's cage in the zoo, does not secretly long to go adventuring in the jungles of its mysterious interior. So, because there is still in me a good deal of the boy, thank Heaven, I ordered the course of the Negros laid for Samarinda, which, if the charts were to be believed, was the principal gateway to the hinterland of Eastern Borneo. There are no roads in Borneo, you understand, only narrow foot-trails through the steaming jungle, so that the only practicable means of penetrating the interior is by ascending one of the great rivers. The Koetei, which has its nativity somewhere in the mysterious Kapuas Mountains, winds its way across four hundred miles of unmapped wilderness, and, a score of miles below Samarinda, empties into Makassar Straits, answered my requirements admirably, providing a highroad to the country of my boyish dreams. Though I told the others that I was going up the Koetei in order to see the strange tribes who dwell along its upper reaches, I admitted to myself that I had one object in view and one alone—to see the Wild Man.
Viewed from the deck of the Negros, Samarinda, which is the capital of the Residency of Koetei, was entirely satisfying. It corresponded in every respect to the mental picture which I had drawn of a Bornean town. It straggles for two miles or more along a dusty road shaded by a double row of flaming fire-trees. Facing on the road are a few-score miserable shops kept by Chinese and Arabs and the somewhat more pretentious buildings which house the offices of the European trading companies. Further out, at the edge of the town, are the dwellings of the Dutch officials and traders—comfortable-looking, one-story, whitewashed houses with deep verandahs, peering coyly out from the midst of fragrant, blazing gardens. The Residency, the Custom House, the Police Barracks and the Koetei Club can readily be distinguished by the Dutch flags that droop above them. The river-bank itself is one interminable street. Here dwells the brown-skinned population—Malays, Bugis, Makassars, and a sprinkling of Sea Dyaks. Sometimes the flimsy, cane-walled, leaf-thatched huts, perched aloft on bamboo stilts, stand, like flocks of storks, in clusters. Again they stray a little apart, seeking protection from the pitiless sun beneath clumps of palms. Malays in short, tight jackets and long, tight breeches of kaleidoscopic colors were sauntering along the yellow road, oblivious of the sun. On the shelving beach naked brown men were mending their nets or pottering about their dwellings. Now and then I caught a glimpse of a European, cool and comfortable in topee and white linen. It was all exactly as I had expected. It was, indeed, almost too story-booky to be true. Here, at last, was a green and lovely land, unspoiled by noisy, prying tourists, where one could lounge the lazy days away beneath the palm-trees or stroll with dusky beauties on a beach silvered by the tropic moon. I was impatient to go ashore.
Changing from pajamas to whites, I ordered the launch to the gangway and went ashore to pay my respects to the Resident. To leave your card on the local representative of Queen Wilhelmina is the first rule of etiquette to be observed by the foreigner traveling in the Outer Possessions. In Java, which is more highly civilized, it is not so necessary. Unlike the Latin races, the Dutch are not by nature a suspicious people, but political unrest is prevalent throughout the East, and with Bolshevists, Chinese agitators and other fomenters of disaffection surreptitiously at work among the natives, it is the part of prudence to establish your respectability at the start. To gain a friendly footing with the authorities is to save yourself from possible annoyance later on.
As I approached the shore the glamor lent by distance disappeared. The river-bank, which had looked so alluring from the cutter's deck, proved on closer inspection to be as squalid as the back-yard of a Neapolitan tenement. It was littered with dead cats and fowls and fish and castaway vegetables and rotten fruit and tin cans and greasy ashes and refuse from fishing nets and decaying cocoanuts by the million and sodden rags. This stewing garbage was strewn ankle-deep upon the sand or was floating on the surface of the river, not drifting seaward, as one would expect, but languidly following the tide up and down, forever lolling along the bank. Above this putrefying feast swarmed myriads of flies, their buzzing combining in a drone like that of an electric fan. The sun struck viciously down upon the yellow foreshore, its glare reflected by the hard-packed sands as by a sheet of brass; the heat-waves danced and flickered. Sending the launch back to the cutter, I picked my way across this noisome place to the shelter of the trees along the road. But the shade that had appeared so inviting from the river proved as illusory as everything else. Grass? There was none. The earth was baked to the hardness of asphalt.
To make matters worse, I found that I had landed too far down the beach. The building that I had assumed was the Residency proved to be the Custom House. The Harbor Master, whom I encountered there, seized the opportunity to present me with a bill for a hundred guilders—something over forty dollars—for port dues. It seemed a high price to pay for the privilege of lying in the stream, a quarter-mile off-shore. In all the Dutch ports at which we touched I noted this same disposition on the part of the authorities to charge all that the traffic would bear—and then some. Foreign vessels are rarely seen at Samarinda, and one would suppose that they would be welcomed accordingly, but the Dutch are a business people and do not permit sentiment to interfere with a chance to make a few honest guilders.
The Residency, I found upon inquiry, was two miles away, in the outskirts of the town. And, as there are neither rickshaws nor carriages for hire in Samarinda, I was compelled to walk. It was really too hot to move. In five minutes my clothes were as wet as though I had fallen in the river. The green silk lining of my sun-hat crocked and ran down my face in emerald rivulets. When I had covered half the distance I paused beneath a waringin tree to rest. A breath of breeze from the river, sighing through the palms, brought to my streaming cheeks a hint of coolness and to my nostrils more than a hint of the garbage broiling on the beach. Anyone who could be romantic in Borneo must be in love.