3 so THROUGH CENTRAL BORNEO 



a prominent Katingan I passed beneath a few cocoanut 

 trees growing in front of the house, as is the custom, while 

 a gentle breeze played with the stately leaves. "Better 

 get away from there/' my native guide suddenly said; 

 "a cocoanut may fall," and we had scarcely arrived inside 

 the house before one fell to the ground with a resounding 

 thump half a metre from where I had been standing. 

 Eighteen years previously a Katingan had been killed 

 in this way as he descended the ladder. Eleven years 

 later another was carrying his child on his back when a 

 cocoanut of small size hit and killed the little one. 



The man whose house I visited was rich, according to 

 Dayak standard, not in money, but in certain wares 

 that to him are of equal or greater value. Besides 

 thirty gongs, rows of fine old valuable jars stood along 

 the walls of his room. There are several varieties of 

 these blangas, some of which are many hundred years 

 old and come from China or Siam. This man possessed 

 five of the expensive kind, estimated by the "onder" at 

 a value of six thousand florins each. He consented to 

 have one of the ordinary kind, called gutshi, taken out- 

 side to be photographed; to remove the real blanga, he 

 said, would necessitate the sacrifice of a fowl. To the 

 casual observer no great difference between them is ap- 

 parent, their worth being enhanced by age. In 1880 

 Controleur Michielsen saw thirty blangas in one house 

 on the Upper Katingan, among them several that in his 

 estimation were priceless. Over them hung forty gongs, 

 of which the biggest, unquestionably, had a diameter of 

 one metre. Without exaggeration it represented, he says, 



