The pork is cut into small cubes and boiled in bamboo joints; a very pleasant flavor is thereby imparted to the meat, if you can shut your eyes very tight to the fingers that prepare it.
After the feast was cooked and served in wooden trays and bowls, we all squatted here and there about the veranda, and helped ourselves to the toothsome delicacies of parboiled pork and chicken, excellent boiled rice, pulverized salted fish, and bananas. Then dusty and musty cords were cut on many a jar of ‘Borak,’ or sweetened rice beer, and the festive cup, either half a cocoanut or blue pressed-glass tumbler, was passed from lip to lip. Speeches were made, in which the invincible bravery of every warrior was proclaimed, and frightful threats were hinted as to the fate of the Lerons, had they not fled like the cowards that they are. Festival songs and war-dances, with kaluri accompaniment, followed. When the jars of Borak were drained to the dregs, one by one the exhausted warriors crept to bed, saturated with the serene joy of duty done, glory gained, and honour paid to their departed Chief.
Even after all these ceremonies and the feast, the house is not utterly free from taboo: for ten days no work may be done in the clearings, nor may the men go for rattans or any jungle product. There is always a foundation of wisdom for these taboos. Thus, to keep the men collected in or near the house for a number of days, after a head-hunting raid, is a wise provision: the house cannot be surprised unawares by a retaliating force.
Thus ended this memorable War Expedition of the Kayans and Kenyahs of the Baram against the Lerons of the Tinjar, to vindicate Juman for the legal killing of Tinggi and drive the Lerons back to their own district,—a typical expedition, save alone that the Omen Birds were not consulted, and that it did not end in a wild and wanton raid on innocent people.
WAR-COAT AND CAP MADE OF THE SKIN OF A MANIS.
‘JAWA’ OR PEACE-MAKING
During the rainy months, when all work in the fields is suspended, and Nature herself attends to the rice, every path in the jungle leads idle feet to mischief, and, if war be forbidden by the Prenta, pent-up energy may find a wild outlet in boisterous protestations of peace, provided only that these protestations have at least a suggestion of war.
After our war expedition up the Baram just narrated, barely a fortnight elapsed before we were organizing a great Peace-making with those very people of the Tinjar who had been our foes. Tama Bulan, Tama Usong, Aban Deng, and Juman, the chiefest Chiefs of the Kayans and Kenyahs, with all their numerous warriors, were eager to join in the Peace-making, and pledge themselves to the Tinjar people for the friendliness of all the dwellers on the Baram and its tributaries.