Accordingly, the Baram Chiefs were summoned to the Fort, and the day before this great army of peace-makers set out, Dr. Hose invited these Chiefs and their adherents to a lavish feast at his house. The viands were prepared according to the taste of the guests, and, to make all feel perfectly at home, served on the floor of the veranda; the arrack, however, was of extra Chinese brew, and, of course, superior and very much stronger than the diluted, home-brewed liquor to which they were accustomed. Consequently, the hilarity and fluency of song and speech, upon a liberal and well-laid foundation of boiled pork, chicken, rice, and salted fish, was exuberant, but never boisterous. Perhaps the presence of so many powerful Chiefs, above all, that of the all-powerful Resident, had a restraining influence. We all sat down (should I not say, squatted?) at about four in the afternoon, and the last of the guests departed to their quarters in the Bazaar at about eleven o’clock at night. About fifteen pounds of tobacco were consumed, three good-sized pigs were stowed away, and the Chinese shop-keepers alone know how many jars of arrack were unsealed. Tama Bulan and Tama Usong were the last to leave the scene of revelry, and we watched (I must admit with great relief) their dusky figures disappear down the path, as, linked arm in arm, they meandered off in the broad moonlight toward the Bazaar.
Juman, for the second time the important member of an expedition, failed to appear, and since it was partly on his account that the trouble between the people of the two rivers had arisen, the Peace-making would be incomplete without him. In Borneo, after past wrongs, peace and good-fellowship cannot be gained by simple asseverations; there must be always a palpable exchange of beads, highly prized jars, brass gongs, etc., as an indemnity. The perpetrator of the wrong, or one of his descendants, must be present with his adherents to join in the sham fight, known as the ‘Jawa.’ The canoes of the peace-party were laden accordingly with articles for exchange, and with the paraphernalia of the men who were to engage in the sham fight.
At an early hour on the morning after the feast, we started up-river in the Government’s steam launch, for which the river is navigable for at least sixty miles above the Fort; behind us trailed the long line of canoes with the peace-makers,—a pretty woe-begone, head-achey looking lot, after the Chinese arrack of the night before. As the day wore on and we steamed slowly up against the strong current, dodging the ponderous logs that swept past, one by one the Chiefs climbed up from their canoes and sat limp and taciturn around us on the small deck of the steamer. Still no sign of Juman and his party. We had expected to meet him before we turned off into the Tinjar River. So necessary a personage could not be left behind; therefore, a letter was left for him at the mouth of the Tinjar. On a large sheet of paper, we painted a picture of a steam boat heading up-stream with inky volumes of smoke issuing from the funnel and a long line of canoes in tow; underneath was a gigantic hand pointing up-stream. This letter was fastened in a cleft pole stuck up on the bank; then we steamed at full speed up the large tributary.
A CHARM AGAINST FEVER.
THE BARRIER AND CHARMS DEVISED BY THE DAYONG TO WARD OFF EVIL SPIRITS FROM THE HOUSE OF THE LELAK CLAN, AND TO DRIVE AWAY THE DEMONS WHO WERE ALREADY AFFLICTING THE HEAD-MAN OF THE HOUSE WITH FEVER AND TRYING TO LURE THE SOUL OUT OF HIS BODY.
A lovely feature peculiar to the Tinjar River is the hills cultivated with rice. On the lower reaches of the Baram, the flat, swampy ground extends for a mile or more from the river on both sides. Here, clearings extend over low undulating hills, and at this season of the year the rice was already six inches tall, and its tender emerald green was unspeakably refreshing after the dark foliage of the jungle. Twice we passed groups of men and women busily weeding the fields; but, poor wretches, as if their toil were not enough, they must all needs be clad in heavy war-cloaks; they had heard, so they said, that there was an enormous head-hunting army on the way from the Baram, and they were in hourly terror of being attacked and killed. We allayed their fears, and were delighted to learn that the fame of our War Expedition had travelled so bravely and had lost nothing in transmission.
Early in the afternoon we reached the household of the Lelaks, and halted for the night, to allow Juman to catch up with us. The old man of the house, whose adherents were not numerous enough to entitle him to the rank of a ‘Penghulu,’ and whose wealth was insufficient for the title of ‘Orang Kaya’ (Rich Man), merely presided over his household by reason of his age, and was known simply as the ‘Orang Tuah’ (Old Man). On our arrival, we were told that he was almost at death’s door from an attack of fever, and that every resource known to Dayong art had been tried in vain; evidently, the evil Spirits had resolved to entice his soul away, in spite of the elaborate barrier which the Dayongs had professionally erected in front of his house.
This barrier consisted of a circle of stakes cut, at intervals down their sides, into curled shavings; in the centre of the circle stood a high, squared pole painted with stripes of red and black; at about four feet from the ground, and again near its top, were cross-bars piercing it from front to back and from side to side. At its base stood an earthen jar filled with water, and round about outside the circle was a bristling thicket or sort of chevaux de frise of posts and stakes cut into manifold fringes of shavings, and several cleft sticks about three feet high, holding in the cleft an egg. To the Dayongs, these curled shavings and cleft sticks have a profound meaning which they either did not know or did not wish to divulge. All these prophylactics were, however, in vain; the evil Spirits obstinately and perversely refused to depart from the old man. Not being an angel, I pressed fearlessly within this charmed ground, and even took photographs there in spite of Tama Bulan’s solemn warning. He would not go near the barrier, and in awed tones warned me that just as sure as I touched any of those stakes I would have horrid dreams and most assuredly be clutched by a ghost and hideously scarred for life; should the ghost chance to clutch me by the throat, I would choke to death and never wake.[12]
After I had taken the photograph, we paid a visit to the old man as he lay feverishly tossing and turning on his hard board bed. I administered to him a placebo in the form of an assurance that I had skilfully caught and imprisoned the evil Spirits in my ‘box-with-an-eye’ (my camera), and they would trouble him no more; then, abandoning the ‘faith cure,’ I administered a generous dose of quinine.