BORNEO. 



729 



Borneo. 

 Minerals. 



Rivers. 



Swalloo, a 

 species of 

 tea-snail. 



Manners 

 and cus- 

 toms of the 

 inhabi- 

 tants. 



likewise found several kinds of metals ; iron, copper, 

 tin, and gold. The gold is found chiefly in the state 

 of dust mingled with the sand of rivers. It is said 

 that gold-dust is not only more abundant, but much 

 finer in Borneo than in any other part of the globe. 

 There appears to be no silver in this extensive re- 

 gion ; or the unskilful islanders know not how to ex- 

 plore and work the mines. Hence, if we may credit 

 the accounts of some travellers, silver is exchanged 

 in Borneo weight for weight with gold ; or if we 

 should suspect these accounts of being somewhat ex- 

 aggerated, they must at least be admitted as a suffi- 

 cient proof of the great scarcity of silver. In the 

 northern regions of Borneo, there are numerous and 

 very productive quarries of freestone. The centre 

 of the island is occupied by an extensive ridge of 

 mountains, which, from the great quantity of crystal 

 they contain, are called the Crystal Mountains. 



At the foot of these mountains there is a large 

 lake, which gives rise to all the rivers that traverse the 

 island. Of these rivers, the- most important are the 

 Banjar-massin, Succatana, Lawa, Sambas, and Bor- 

 neo. The river of Borneo is navigable far above the 

 town of the same name, to vessels of considerable 

 burden ; the only difficulty is at the mouth, where 

 the channel is narrow. For the length of a quar- 

 ter of a mile, it is at the most about seventeen feet 

 broad at high water; but the bottom is sandy and 

 soft, and the river so completely enclosed between the 

 banks, that a vessel which should run aground there, 

 would be in little danger of being wrecked. 



On the coasts of Borneo, there is a species of 

 sea-snail, called by the natives swalloo, which is es- 

 teemed a great luxury, and is a pretty lucrative 

 article in their commerce with the Chinese. It 19 

 fished by the Biadjoos, the original inhabitants, ia 

 seven or eight fathoms depth of water. When the 

 water is clear, they perceive the swalloo at the bot- 

 tom, and strike it with an iron instrument having four 

 points, fixed along a stone almost cylindrical, but 

 narrower at one end than at the other, and about 

 eighteen inches long. To the end of the stone, 

 near the four prongs, they always attach a ball of 

 iron. The swalloos are likewise procured by diving ; 

 the best being always found in the deepest water. 

 The black swalloo is much preferable to the white ; 

 but there is a kind more esteemed than either, of a 

 clear colour, and found only in deep water. Swalloos 

 of this kind are sometimes so large as to weigh half 

 a pound ; and they are sold at China for forty Spa- 

 nish dollars the pccul (somewhat more than the 

 twelfth of a ton,) whereas the same quantity of 

 white swalloos never brings more than four or five 

 dollars. 



This island was at first wholly occupied by the 

 Biadjoos, or Dajakkese ; but the incursions of va- 

 rious nations from the continent of Asia, and the 

 neighbouring islands, have obliged them to retire 

 from the coasts, and to take refuge in the interior of 

 the country. The coasts are now inhabited by Ma- 

 lays, Moors, Macassers from Celebes, and Javanese. 

 These people are 3aid to have once extended their 

 dominions as far as Palawan, Manilla, and other parts 

 of the Philippine isles, and even Sooloo is supposed 

 to have formed at one time a part of the empire of 



VOL. III. PART IV. 



Borneo. 



Borneo. These distant conquests, together with some 

 traditions current among the Bomeans themselves, 

 warrant the belief that they were originally a war- 

 like people, but that they have experienced the fate 

 of many other empires, which, after attaining a cer- 

 tain pitch of greatness, have relapsed into their ori. 

 ginal condition for want of an active and vigorous 

 government, without which no foreign conquest can 

 ever be preserved. At present they are sunk in the 

 most listless indolence and inactivity, completely des- 

 titute of the enterprising courage of their piratical 

 ancestors, and without the least influence over the 

 states of the north of Borneo, which they had for- 

 merly subjected to their empire. Thus enervated and 

 unwarlike, they are at the same time extremely en- 

 vious of the private property of one another. Yet 

 they are frank in their dealings, cool and deliberate 

 in their resentments even when they have the power 

 of revenge in their own hands, upright in their inten- 

 tions, strangers to that polish and acuteness which is 

 called a knowledge of the world, yet by no means 

 deficient in native intelligence, which they have par- 

 ticularly displayed in the perfection to which they 

 have brought the mechanical arts established among 

 them, especially the foundery of bronze cannon : iri 

 this art they are superior to all the Asiatics. This 

 character, however, must be understood as applying 

 only to the inhabitants of some parts of the coast, 

 and even of their character we have a darker side to 

 contemplate. They are civilized and refined, indeed, 

 compared with the Biadjoos, and the Idaans or 

 Mooroots, yet they are not altogether free of the 

 barbarities which characterise these rude and savage 

 people. 



The Idaans and Biadjoos are the slaves of the most Idaans and 

 dreadful idolatry. It is one of their religious tenets, Biadjoos. 

 that their fate in a future life depends on the number 

 of human beings whom they shall have slain in their 

 combats, or in their ordinary quarrels, and that their 

 happiness or respectability will then be proportioned to 

 the number of human skulls which they have in their 

 possession. The bloody heads which they have been 

 so fortunate as to obtain in their skirmishes, are sus- 

 pended over their doors as the most honourable tro- 

 phies. In order to increase their number of these 

 trophies, they frequently make secret excursions to 

 the river Banjar, and surprise some small vessel 

 belonging to Banjar fishermen. One or two of their 

 unfortunate captives are then sacrificed to their dismal 

 superstition. When they return with a head, all the 

 inhabitants of the village in which they reside, men, 

 women, and children, exhibit the most extravagant 

 demonstrations of joy. Gongs, or musical instru- 

 ments of copper, are beat by those who conduct the 

 conqueror to his own house, where the women dance 

 around him, and receiving from him the head, force 

 into the mouth some meat and drink : this ceremony 

 is followed by a banquet and dance, after which the 

 head is hung up at the door. The arms of these sa- 

 vages are long knives, and the soompihan, which is a 

 sarbacand or trunk of wood, across which they shoot 

 small arrows poisoned at one end, and charged at the 

 other with a small bit of cork, just thick enough to 

 fill the tube. If one of these arrows only cut the 

 ekin, the wound brings inevitable death, unless there 

 4 Y 



