The home-life of Borneo head-hunters

by William Henry Furness

THESE WATER-WORN, WOODEN IMAGES WERE WASHED UP ON THE BEACH AT THE MOUTH OF THE NIAH RIVER; THE ORANG-KAYA, PERCEIVING AT ONCE THAT THEY HAD COME, OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL, TO BRING HIM GOOD FORTUNE, ESTABLISHED THEM IN A PLACE OF HONOUR IN THE VERANDA OF HIS HOUSE, AND ADORNED THEM WITH SUITABLE RAIMENT.

THE FEATHERED WAR-COAT HANGING TO THE LEFT OF THE IMAGES WAS WORN BY THE ORANG-KAYA AT THE TIME OF THE FEAST, WITH ITS ATTENDANT SACRIFICE OF PIGS, WHICH WAS HELD TO COUNTERACT THE EVIL ENTAILED BY THE VIOLENT AND SUDDEN DEATH OF A MEMBER OF THE HOUSEHOLD WHO RAN AMUCK. THE BLOOD-SMEARED COAT IS HUNG NEAR THE GODS, TO ASSURE THEM THAT EVERY RITE HAD BEEN PERFORMED TO PRESERVE THEIR DIGNITY.

Mt. Subis is only about fifteen hundred feet high, and the entrance to the birds’-nest cave on the mountain side is some little distance from the base, and can be gained only by a very tortuous and narrow path round the ledges and projections of slippery limestone.

Not far from the main cave is a smaller one, known as the ‘Traders’ cave,’ wherein is a village of twenty or thirty huts, for the accommodation of the Chinese traders who come to pay for the nests that have been collected. It is a village of houses without roofs; within the cave there is no fear of the sun smiting by day nor the moon by night, nor of rain from clouds; consequently, the houses are merely walls and floors, and pretty wobbly walls and floors in addition. The roof of the cave, frescoed with green mould and lichen, is fifty or sixty feet overhead, with irregular projections of limestone, but free from stalactites. No swallows build here, the cave is too light and shallow.

The Punans’ cave, beyond, is of majestic size; just within the entrance the floor dips abruptly to a deep valley, and the roof curves upward in a vast dome; hence, from the level of the valley to the roof is at least six hundred feet. Insensate, indeed, must he be who is not filled with speechless awe as he turns from the brilliant sunshine and enters this illimitable abode of silence and of night. It seemed the veritable entrance to the Inferno; and as the light from the opening struck the massive projections here and there, and cast long, blacker shadows, it became a landscape in the moon, while the appalling, death-like stillness seemed to presage a frightful cataclysm in nature. Underfoot is a deep carpet,—fully three feet deep,—of what seemed tan-bark, but which proved to be a fine, dry, odorless guano, composed mostly of the wing-covers of insects, of a dark-brown color; the jagged sides and roof, and here and there boulders projecting through the covering of the floor, were covered with a deep-green mould or lichen, except where the white limestone gleamed out in patches and seemed almost phosphorescent. The extent beyond, in the utter darkness, seemed illimitable.

Our presence and the echoing of our voices soon startled the swallows, and forth they emerged, in myriads on myriads, from the darkness, and circled round us and above us, and about the mouth of the cave like swarming bees; the whirr of their wings and their twittering sounded like waves on a pebbly beach.

On a flat ledge at one side, near the entrance, was a line of fifteen or twenty of the platform dwellings of the Punans, even more fragile and tumble-down than the huts in the ‘Traders’ cave.’ At the time of our visit, the huts were deserted, giving an air of even greater desolation.

The nests are obtained by lashing long, stout poles, end to end, and then supporting them with guy-ropes of rattan until they reach to the very top of the cave. Up these poles the agile Punans climb hand over hand and foot over foot, walking up them like monkeys; when at the top, they scrape down the nests within reach, by means of a long pole bearing a hoe-like blade, and with a home-made wax candle fastened to it to show where the nests are. An assistant below gathers the nests as they fall. There are two varieties of nest, the black and the white; the latter sell for two thousand Mexican dollars a picul, (one hundred and twenty-three pounds,) the black nests bring only a hundred dollars for the same weight. Unfortunately, the Niah caves are ‘black nest’ caves; but the nests are so very abundant that the export revenue tax assessed on them by the Sarawak Government amounts to thousands of dollars in a year.

The Punans, however, are not the owners of the poles in the caves, but, on account of their skill in climbing, are hired by a Malay or Chinaman, who pays so much a season to the Government for all the nests gathered in an area prescribed by the length of the detaching-pole. The Punans do not use the nests as food, and have learned their value and the best times and methods of harvesting them only since Chinese and Malay traders have come to Niah. The caves, however, have been inhabited by the Punans for very many years. We found tobacco growing wild not far from the mouth, and we were told that it is to be found in considerable quantities all about this locality. The Punans know it well and gather it, but maintain that it is none of their planting, and that it has been known to them and used by them as long as they can remember.