i66 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



It is difficult to say exactly at what age puberty 

 begins with the youths. The girls mostly begin 

 their courses in the fourteenth or fifteenth year. 

 By this time the girl of the better class has the 

 lobes of her ears distended to form loops, which 

 allow her heavy ear-rings to reach to her collar-bone 

 or even lower, and she is far advanced towards com- 

 pletion of her tatu on thighs, feet, hands, and fore- 

 arms (see Chap. XII.). The process is begun at 

 about the tenth year, and is continued from time to 

 time, only a small area being covered at each bout, 

 owing to the pain of the operation and the ensuing 

 inflammation and discomfort. 



The boys begin at about fifteen years, or rather 

 earlier, to assert their independence, by clubbing 

 together with those of their own age, and taking 

 up their sleeping quarters with the bachelors in the 

 gallery. At an earlier age the children have picked 

 up a number of songs and spontaneously sing them 

 in groups, but now they begin to develop their 

 powers of musical expression by practising with the 

 keluri, Jew's harp, drum and tawak. 



Of these instruments the first is the most used, 

 especially by the youths. 1 1 is a rude form of the bag- 

 pipes. The keluri consists of a dried gourd which has 

 the shape of an oval flask with a long neck (Fig. 85). 

 The closed ends of a bundle of six narrow bamboo 

 pipes are inserted in the body of the gourd through 

 a hole cut in its wall, and are fixed hermetically with 

 wax. Their free ends are open, and each pipe has 

 a small lateral hole or stop at a carefully deter- 

 mined distance from the open end. The artist blows 

 through the neck of the gourd, and the air enters 

 the base of each pipe by an oblong aperture which 

 is filled .by a vibrating tongue or reed ; this is formed 

 by shaving away the wall of the bamboo till it is 

 very thin, and then cutting through it round three 

 sides of the oblong ; it is weighted with a piece of 



