214 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



stories about the personages they are supposed to 

 represent (Chap. XVI I.)/ They seem to have paid 

 no special attention to the planets. Inconsistently 

 with the star myths, the stars are regarded as small 

 holes in the floor of another and brighter world, 

 and it is said that these holes have been made by 

 the roots of plants which have penetrated through 

 the soil of that world. 



The sky is regarded as a dome which meets the 

 earth on every hand, and this limiting zone is spoken 

 of as the edge of the sky ; but they have no notion 

 how far away this edge may be ; they recognise that, 

 no matter how many days one travels in any one 

 direction, one never gets appreciably nearer to it, 

 and they conclude, therefore, that it must be very 

 distant. They understand that the clouds are very 

 much less distant than the sky, and that they merely 

 float about the earth. Neither sun nor moon seems 

 to be regarded as animated. 



Two total eclipses of the sun have occurred in 

 Borneo in the last half-century. These, of course, 

 caused much excitement and some consternation.^ 

 The former of them serves as a fixed date in relation 

 to which other events are dated. 



The traditional lore of the Kayans provides 

 answers of a kind to many of the deep questions 

 that the spirit of enquiry proposes whenever man 

 has made provision against the most urgent needs 

 of his animal nature. Yet the keener intelligences 

 among them do not rest satisfied with these conven- 

 tional answers ; rather, they ponder some of the 

 deepest questions and discuss them with one another 

 from time to time. One question we have heard 



^ There is current among the Klemantans a larger number of such myths 

 than among the Kayans. 



2 The second occurred during the residence of one of us (C. H.) in the Baram, 

 and the alarm of the people was largely prevented by the issue to all the chiefs 

 of tebuku (tallies) foretelling the date of its incidence. Nevertheless one 

 woman, at least, was so much frightened by the spectacle that she ran into 

 her house and dropped down dead. 



