94 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



less he has forbidden them to kill it. He does not 

 like to speak of it, but he does so at our request. 

 Payang concluded by saying that he had no doubt 

 that we white men have secret helpers, very much 

 more powerful than the I ban's, and that to them 

 we owe our ability to do so many wonderful 

 things. 



Imban, an I ban who had recently moved to the 

 Baram river from the Rejang, had once when sick 

 seen in a dream the Labi- Labi, the large river-turtle 

 ( Trionyx subplanus), and had made a promise that 

 if he should recover he would never kill it. So when 

 he settled on the Baram river as head of a house- 

 hold, he attempted to impose a fine on his people 

 for killing the Labi- Labi, insisting that it was 

 mali to kill it or bring its carcase into his river. 

 They appealed to one of us as the resident magis- 

 trate, and it was decided that if Imban wished 

 to insist on this observance he must remove to a 

 small tributary stream. This he has done, and a 

 few of his people have followed him ; and on them 

 he enforces a strict observance of his cult of the 

 river-turtle. 



A still more interesting case is the following 

 one: — A community of I bans were building a new 

 house on the Dabai river some years ago, and one 

 day, while they were at work, a porcupine ran out 

 of a hole in the ground near by. During the follow- 

 ing night one of the party was told by the porcupine 

 in a dream to join their new house with his (the 

 porcupine's). So they completed their house ; and 

 ever since that time they have made yearly feasts in 

 honour of the porcupines that live beneath the house, 

 and no one in the house dare injure one of them, 

 though they will still kill and eat other porcupines in 

 the jungle. They have had no death in the house 

 during the seven years that it has been built, and 

 this they attribute to the protecting power of the 



