434 TWO YEAKS IN THE JUNGLE. 



smootli board, kneaded vigorously with the hands, and afterward 

 trodden with the bare feet of the operator. When it got almost 

 too stiff to work, it was flattened out carefully, then rolled up in a 

 wedge-shaped mass, a hole was punched through the thin end to 

 serve as a handle, and it was declared ready for the trader. I 

 have seen the Dyaks roll up a good-sized wad of pounded bark in 

 the centre of these wedges of crude gutta, in order to get even with 

 the traders who cheat in weight, but I have also seen the sharp 

 trader cut every lump of gutta in two before buying it. If he 

 found bark, you may well believe he did not pay for it at the price 

 of gutta. The crude gutta has a mottled, or marbled, light-brown 

 appearance, is heavy and hard, and smooth on the outside. 



" November 28i/i. — To-day Le Tiac announced his intention of 

 climbing a lai-ge tapang tree we saw in the forest a few days ago, 

 and I went along to see it done. His object in chmbing was to 

 secure some bees' nests, which we saw hanging to the under side 

 of the largest limb. Some torch-wood was taken along with which 

 to make a smoke to protect the climber from the bees. The tree 

 was a grand specimen of its kind, about five feet in diameter at the 

 base, covered with fine-grained, soft, white bark, straight as a ship's 

 mast and without the smallest limb or knot for fully a hundred and 

 twenty feet up. It towered grandly above its neighbors, and to any 

 one but a Dyak its top was utterly inaccessible. Hanging from the 

 under side of the largest and lowest Hmb, was a good bees' nest, 

 simply a naked, triangular piece of white comb, but we could not 

 see any bees flying around it. 



"A Dyak 'ladder,' by courtesy so called, reached from the 

 ground to the branches, put up the previous year, the Dyaks said, 

 but stiU strong. It was a very simple contrivance, but one requir- 

 ing a bold man, utterly destitute of nen^es, either to put it up or 

 ascend it. It consisted of seven twenty-foot bamboo poles held al- 

 most end to end alongside the trunk by sharp pegs driven into the 

 soft wood about two feet apart, fii-st on one side of the poles and 

 then on the other, to which the bamboo poles were lashed by rat- 

 tans, and held firmly about eight inches from the tree. These pegs 

 served as the rungs of the ladder. The builder was obliged to let 

 the ends of the poles overlap a few feet in order to build the lad- 

 der with safety to himself. Just imagine yourself a hundred feet 

 from the ground, clinging to a shaky hghtning-rod and hauling up 

 another section twenty feet long, to put in place and peg fast at the 

 lower end, so that you can cHmb it and make it fast as you proceed! 



