A Sea-snake—A dreary landing—Native dancing—Orchids at home—Tropical flowers—The jungle leech—A bad dinner—Rough paths—The blow-pipe—Head-hunting—A Murut reception.
Setting forth for the first time in a new country, of which but little is generally known, is always exciting work, and as a rule things turn out to be very different to what one had imagined they would be. I had pictured to myself landing in Borneo beneath a hot sun, and at one of the trading stations; but, on the contrary, it was a dark stormy night when I reached its shores amid a perfect deluge of cold rain; the thunder and lightning was more impressive than I ever saw it before or since, and the place where I landed was an obscure little village of scarcely a dozen palm-leaf huts, and up a river nearly twenty miles from the coast. It came about in this way. The Hon. W. H. Treacher, of Labuan, very kindly undertook to introduce me to the Bornean Kadyans and Muruts—the last a head-hunting tribe—who had settlements near the head of the Lawas and Meropok rivers a little to the northward of the capital. We crossed in a small open boat pulled by eight Brunei men with paddles, which is here the usual and best way of making short sea or river journeys. We started from the fishmarket pier, Labuan, about 9 P.M. on September 7th, and soon after turned into our rugs beneath the awning and slept until morning. We awoke about daybreak, and found ourselves some miles distant from the mouth of the river; but the heavy swell we had had all night had now subsided, and the men were making headway fast. About 7.30 they stopped pulling suddenly, and pointed to a large sea-snake lying full length on the surface of the water in the sun. It was about eight feet in length, and of a blue-black colour, barred with rich golden-yellow, the belly being dull white. Mr. Treacher fired at it with a shot-gun, striking it about the centre of its body; and we could see quite plainly where the shot had ripped the skin. As it lay quite motionless after the shot for several seconds, we imagined it to be dead, but on the men paddling the boat towards it it dived quite suddenly; and as the water was clear and still, we could distinguish it at a great depth below the surface. A week or two before, during my voyage from Singapore to Labuan, we had noticed a good many of these snakes on the surface of the sea, but none so large as the one seen here. The natives say it is a very dangerous kind, and some strange tales are told of their hiding themselves in boats and huts near the shore. About ten o’clock we entered the mouth of the Lawas, the well-wooded banks of which formed a beautiful foreground to the picturesque mountains behind, which rise higher and higher right away into the interior. We soon reached the first cluster of huts on the right bank, and it is here that one of the Sultan’s relatives, Pangeran Bazar, resides. His house is built on nebong piles over the water, from which you climb up a rude ladder on to a spacious platform, on which are half-a-dozen or more brass swivel guns of native manufacture. This platform is roofed over, and an immense wooden drum hangs over the entrance. This is formed of a hollow tree trunk, over one end of which a deer or goat skin is stretched lightly by means of a rattan ring and wooden wedges. It is beaten in the evening after the old Pangeran has read from the Koran, and sometimes on the arrival of strangers. Beyond the platform is a large public hall, wherein strangers may rest, and where the natives meet to hear the Koran read, or to talk.
The Pangeran’s private residence is behind, and differs but little from the other half-dozen palm-leaf houses around it, being merely a superior sort of shed, with mats in place of doors. Duties to the amount of ten per cent. are collected from the natives who bring gutta, rice, or other produce down the river; but by many this tax is evaded, as they drop down the river on a dark night in a prahu, and creep out along the coast, lying up some creek until a favourable breeze enables them to hoist sail for Labuan. I have stayed several times at this place, and always found this river chief obliging and hospitable, but a chronic deafness on his part makes a conversation with him anything but easy. He read from the Koran most evenings when I was there, the choruses or responses being chanted—I ought to say yelled—by five or six wicked young Malay boys, who amused themselves by laughing and talking, except just when their vocal powers were needed.
Two or three hundred yards further up the river is the residence of Pangeran Tanga, and here we went ashore to eat our breakfast of cold fowl and rice, eggs and fruit, followed by coffee and a weed. We bought a dozen new-laid eggs here, also some freshly-plucked bananas, and a splendid durian fruit, nearly as large as a child’s head. We noticed a half-finished prahu, or native boat, under one of the sheds, the timbers of which were well modelled, being fastened together with stout wooden pegs. After our men had cooked their rice and fish, we again started up the river for Meringit, a Kadyan settlement at the head of the Meropok branch; but owing to the strong current coming down, we did not reach the place until after dark, and, as before remarked, in a drenching thunder-storm. It was so dark that our men could not find the proper landing-place, and having ourselves just left a fairly lighted boat, we could not see a yard ahead in the blinding rain, and so we were soon drenched as we floundered along up to our knees in the soft mud of the river bank. At last two boys came down from the houses in answer to the shouts of our boatmen, and under their guidance we reached dry quarters after a few stumbles over logs and through the long grass. Our first care was to throw off our wet things and get on dry ones, after a rub with a dry towel, and we then ate our dinner, surrounded by most of the swarthy-skinned villagers, who flocked in to look at us. Afterwards it cleared up a bit, and hearing music in a neighbouring house, we adjourned thereto, and found a few of the young men and women enjoying themselves. Their instruments consisted of a native-made violin on a European model, a curious kind of native banjo made of a single joint of a large bamboo, a triangle, or its music rather, being represented by two or three steel hatchet heads, which were laid across laths on the floor, and beaten in time with a bit of iron. The music so produced was of a rather melancholy description, and one or two of the girls and boys danced a little, a mat being spread for the purpose; but their dancing is merely shuffling about in a more or less slow and stately manner, a singular effect being produced by the graceful way in which the arms are waved about in all directions. This was particularly noticeable in the case of one of the performers, who waved a handkerchief about during the dance, changing it from one hand to the other, until eventually it vanished from sight altogether; still the arms waved, and the fingers, in their ever slow changing movement, resembled tentaculæ groping for their prey as they were slowly waved through the air in every possible direction, presumably in quest of the lost article, the ultimate recovery of which terminated the dance. The only light in the apartment was the lurid flickering of a dammar torch, and its reflections on the faces and slightly-draped forms of the performers and lookers-on produced a weird effect, which was intensified by the silence of all present.
The next day “Bongsur,” a well-known bird-hunter of the district, and a party of natives, undertook to guide us to the forest we wished to explore, and we set off up one of the largest creeks in a canoe, followed by two or three others containing our men and guides. After paddling about a mile we landed, and after walking through several clearings in the hot sun, the primæval forest was at length reached, where it was much cooler and more pleasant, the sun’s rays being screened from us by the masses of leaves, epiphytes, and flowers overhead. After mountain climbing, and the wonders of the sea, perhaps nothing suggests one’s own littleness more forcibly than a walk through the old forests which exist in tropical lowlands. There is a comparative dearth of undergrowth,—but a hundred feet or more overhead the birds, insects, and flowers enjoy the bright light and warmth denied to all below. The monkeys and birds too find their favourite fruits aloft, and fling the husks below at your feet.
Nothing can possibly be of more interest to lovers of exotic plants generally, than to be able to form some idea of their native homes, so far as description can possibly supply the place of travel. The earth’s surface is like the sea, inasmuch as it is pretty nearly the same all the world over, but in countries where the mean temperature is thirty or forty degrees higher than in England, the clothing of the earth, so far as represented by vegetation, is of a luxuriance we can scarcely imagine, and the variety caused by the addition of such distinct types as tall palms, bananas, grasses, or bamboos and tree ferns to the more ordinary kinds of tree beauty, and the further clothing of these with epiphytes and parasites of the most singular or beautiful description, makes up a scene of immense interest.
Epiphytal orchids are essentially heat-lovers—like palms they are children of the sun. One may often travel a long way in the islands where these plants are most abundant without catching a glimpse of them; and this is especially true of Phalænopsis grandiflora, which is of all orchids perhaps the least obtrusive in its native habitats. This trait is, however, the unobtrusiveness of high birth, they do not care to touch the ground, but rather prefer a sphere of their own high up in the trees overhead. The plants have a charming freedom of aspect, as thus seen naturally high up in mid-air, screened from the sun by a leafy canopy, deluged with rains for half the year or more at least, and fanned by the cool sea-breezes or monsoons, which doubtless exercise some potent influence on their health—an influence which we can but rarely apply to them artificially, and the greatly modified conditions under which we must perforce cultivate them may not render this one so desirable as it sometimes appears to be abroad.
GREATER MOTH ORCHID (PHALÆNOPSIS) AT HOME.
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