Wanderings among South Sea Savages and in Borneo and the Philippines

by H. Wilfrid Walker

They resembled a lot of small children and would beat their gongs simply to amuse themselves. Very often a Dayak, on returning from his work or a hunt in the jungle, would walk straight up to a large gong that was hanging up and hammer on it for a few minutes in a most businesslike way, looking all the time as if it bored him. Then he would walk away in much the same way as a man would leave the telephone (as if he had just got through some business). I suppose it soothed them after their day’s work, but it irritated me.

The Dayak dogs are fearful and wonderful animals, both as regards shape and colour, and I could get very little sleep on account of the noise they made; yet the Dayaks seemed to sleep through it all.

One night I woke up after a particularly noisy fight, and saw what appeared to me to be a dog sitting calmly by my bed with its back turned to me. Lifting my mosquito net, therefore, very quietly, I let drive with my fist at it, putting all my pent-up indignation and anger for sleepless nights into the blow. Alas! it was a very solid dog that I struck against, being nothing more nor less than the side of one of my boxes, and I barked my knuckles rather badly. The laughter of the Dayaks was loud and prolonged when Dubi translated the yarn to them next day, and they remembered it long afterwards. Until I heard the roar of laughter that went up, the story had not struck me as being so very amusing!

All around the house for some distance was a forest of tall fruit-trees. They had of course all been planted in times past by the Dayaks’ ancestors, and every tree had its owner, but they had become mixed up with many beautiful wild tropic growths which had sprung up between the trees. Some of these fruit-trees, such as the “durian,” “rambutan,” mango, mangosteen, “tamadac” or jackfruit, “lansat” and bananas, were familiar to me, but there were a great number of fruits that I had never heard of before, and I got their names from my Dayak friends.[1]

Needless to say, I never before tasted so many fruits that were entirely new to me, and most of them were ripe at the time of my visit. The “durian” comes easily first. It is without doubt the king of all fruit in both the tropic and temperate zones, and is popular alike with man and beast, the orang-utan being a great culprit in robbing the Dayaks of their “durians.” I never saw the “good” “durian” growing wild in Sarawak, but I tasted here a small wild kind with an orange centre which made me violently sick. No description of the “durian” taste can do it justice. But its smell is also past description. It is so bad that many people refuse to taste it. It is a very large and heavy fruit, covered with strong, sharp spines, and as it grows on a very tall tree, it is dangerous to walk underneath in the fruiting season when they are falling, accidents being common among the Dayaks through this cause. I myself had a narrow escape one windy day. I was sitting at the foot of one of these trees eating some of the fallen fruit, when a large “durian” fell from above and buried itself in the mud not half a yard from me.

Danna, the second chief, would always leave one or two of the fruit for me on a box close by my head where I slept, before he went off to his “padi “-planting early in the morning, so that I got quite used to the bad smell.

The Dayak house was surrounded on three sides by a horrible swamp, the roads through which consisted of fallen trees laid end to end, or else of two or three thick poles, laid side by side, and kept in place by being lashed here and there to two upright stakes, so that I had to balance myself well or come to grief in the thick mud. The Dayak bridges, made chiefly of poles and bamboos, were in many cases awkward things to negotiate, and I had one or two rather nasty falls from them. While the Dayak women and children never showed any fear of me in the house, whenever I met them out in the woods or jungle they would run from me as if I were some kind of wild animal.

I saw several Dayak dances. The men put on their war-plumes and with shield and “parang” (mentioned above) twirl round and round and cut with their “parangs” at an imaginary foe, the women all the time accompanying them with the beating of gongs. Dubi one night showed them a Malay dance, which consisted of a sort of gliding motion and a graceful waving of the hands, quite the reverse of the Dayak dance. One night I noticed a general bustle in the house. The women seemed greatly excited, and the men passed to and fro with their “parangs” and “sumpitans” (blowpipes), and cast anxious looks in my direction as they passed me. They told Dubi they were going fishing; but it seemed strange that they should go fishing with these warlike weapons, and I told Dubi so. He himself thought they were going head-hunting, and I felt sure of it, as they left only the old men, youths, women and children behind. I did not see them again till the following evening, nor did I then see signs of any fish. I told Dubi that I thought it best that he should not ask them any questions, as it might be awkward if they thought we suspected them. At the same time, I am bound to admit that there was no direct proof to show that they had been headhunting; and for this I was glad, as there was no cause for me to say anything to the Government about it, and so get my kind hosts into trouble. Some months later I read in a Singapore paper that “the Dayaks in this district,” between Sibu and Kuching, were restless and inclined to join form with the Dayaks at Kapit, who had sent Dr. Hose a spear, signifying their defiance of the Sarawak Government.

One evening, when out looking for birds, Dubi and I came across two Dayaks, who were perched up in trees, waiting for wild pigs that came to feed on the fallen fruit, when they would spear them from above. They seemed rather annoyed with us for coming and frightening the pigs away, and that evening they told everyone that we were the cause of their not getting a pig. I rather scored them off, by telling Dubi in an angry voice to ask them what “the dickens” they meant by getting up in trees and frightening all my birds away. This highly amused all the other Dayaks, who laughed loud and long, and my two pig-hunting friends retired into the background discomfited. I myself went out one evening with a party of Dayaks after wild pig, and stayed for two hours upon a platform in a tree while they climbed other trees close by. However, no pigs turned up, although two “plandok” (mouse-deer) did, though I did not shoot them for fear of frightening the pigs away. I took my revolver with me, to the great amusement of the Dayaks, who, of course, had not seen one before, and ridiculed the idea of so small a weapon being able to kill a pig. The Dayaks told me that there were plenty of bears here, but I never saw any myself in this part of Borneo. They told me the bears were very fierce, and had often nearly killed some of their friends. The Dayak dogs are fearful cowards, and I was told that they run away at the sight of a wild pig.

Animal life here was not plentiful, and quite the reverse of what I had seen in the forests of North Borneo, where it was very plentiful.