52 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



Flakiy and is formally consulted before any party 

 of Kenyahs sets out from home for distant parts. 



To illustrate the formalities with which they read 

 the omens we will transcribe here a passage from 

 a journal kept by one of us. The occasion of the 

 incidents described was the setting out of a large 

 body of Kenyahs from the house of Tama Bulan 

 (PL 27), a chief who by his personal merits had 

 attained to a position of great influence among the 

 other Kenyah chiefs, and who had been confirmed in 

 his authority by His Highness the Rajah of Sarawak. 

 The object of the expedition was to visit and make 

 peace with another great fighting tribe, the 

 Madangs, who live in the remotest interior of 

 Borneo.^ Tama Bulan, whose belief in the value 

 of the omens had been slightly shaken, was willing 

 to start without ceremonies, and to make those 

 powers which he believed to protect us responsible 

 for himself and his people also. But the people 

 had begged him not to neglect the traditional rites, 

 and he had yielded to their wishes. 



At break of day, before I was up, Tama Bulan was 

 washed by the women at the river's brink with water and 

 the blood of pigs to purify him for his journey, and later 

 in the morning the people set to work to seek omens and a 

 guarantee of their safety on the journey from the hawks 

 that are so numerous here. A small shelter of sticks and 

 leaves was made on the river-bank before the house, and 

 the women having been sent to their rooms, three men of 

 the upper class ^ sat under this leaf-shelter beside a small 

 fire, and searched the sky for hawks. After sitting there 

 silently for about an hour the three men suddenly became 

 animated ; one of them took in his right hand a small chick 

 and a stick frayed by many deep cuts with a knife, and 

 waved them repeatedly from left to right, at the same time 

 pouring out a rapid flood of words. They had caught sight 

 of a hawk high up and far away from them, and they were 

 trying to persuade it to fly towards the right. Presently 



1 See Chap. XXII. 

 2 •* No one but a patrician could take the auspices." 



