320 THROUGH CENTRAL BORNEO 



return from up country. When one of the men consented 

 to pose before the camera his wife fled with ludicrous pre- 

 cipitation. A dwarf was photographed, forty years old 

 and unmarried, whose height was 1.13 metres. 



I was about to leave when the people began to be- 

 have in a boisterous manner. Men caught firebrands 

 and beat with them about the feet of the others. Some 

 cut mats in pieces, ignited them, and struck with those. 

 A woman came running out of the house with a piece of 

 burning mat and beat me about my feet and ankles (my 

 trousers and shoes were supposed to be white) and then 

 went after others, all in good humour and laughingly. 

 She next exchanged firebrands with a man, and both 

 struck at each other repeatedly. This same custom 

 is used at funerals with the Ot-Danums on the Samba, 

 and the explanation given in both tribes is that the 

 mourners want to forget their grief. 



After distributing pieces of chewing-tobacco to all 

 present, which seemed to please them much, I left the 

 entertaining scene. In the afternoon we arrived at 

 a small kampong, Tevang Karangan, (tevang = inlet; 

 karangan = a bank of coarse sand or pebbles) where Upper 

 Katingans appeared for the first time. No Malays live 

 here, but there is much intermixture with Ot-Danums. 

 The people were without rice, and edible roots from the 

 jungle were lying in the sun to dry. The cemetery was 

 close at hand in the outskirts of the jungle, where little 

 houses could be seen consisting simply of platforms on 

 four poles with roofs of palm-leaf mats, each containing 

 one, two, or three coffins. It is impossible to buy skulls 



