CHAPTER V 



On the Serambo Hill — Land-Dyak Village and Head-House — Pinin- 



jau porphyritic hllls true and false swifts with edible 



Nests — Wallace and his Nocturnal Moth-Hunting — Gunong 

 Skunyet — Vegetation of the Secondary Forests — Dyak Path- 

 ways — Limestone Cliffs and their Caves — The Durian — Notes on 

 the Land-Dyaks 



WE had been more than four months in Sarawak and as yet 

 we knew nothing of the Land-Dyaks, although from our 

 verandah we could see the hills on which they lived. 



The desire to visit some of their villages w r as thus most natural ; 

 and acting upon it, on the night of November ist, when the tide was 

 in our favour, we took our sampan with our own men and sufficient 

 provisions, and started for a week on the Serambo hill, where the 

 Rajah had a wooden bungalow used as a country villa and sana- 

 torium. The tide carried us as far as Lida-tana (i.e., "Tongue of 

 Land "), about fourteen miles above Kuching, where the Sarawak 

 river divides into two branches. We took the one on our right, 

 which turns abruptly to the west. The current was now against 

 us, for the tide has no effect beyond Lida-tana, except at certain 

 seasons ; whilst, on the other hand, during the great rains when the 

 river is swollen — " Ayer bawa," as the Malays express it — the tide is 

 only felt as far up as Kuching. It was daylight when we reached 

 Bilida, about seven miles above Lida-tana, and here we landed on 

 the left bank of the river, opposite the Serambo hill. 



Blida, Bellida, or Bilida, for it is thus variously rendered, is a 

 small wooden fort, constructed at a time when the opposite bank 

 was crowned by the big Chinese village of Sinyawan, which was 

 destroyed during the mutiny to which I have already alluded. The 

 fort stands on a slight eminence on the river bank, and was con- 

 sidered by the Malays a strategic point, and used as such during 

 wars, even before Rajah Brooke came to Sarawak. It is now 

 deserted, and only used occasionally as a hunting lodge by Euro- 

 peans from Kuching, for deer are abundant in the neighbourhood, 

 and there are plenty of marsh-loving birds such as snipe and plover. 

 We found large flocks of wild pigeons on the trees growing around, 

 the " -punai " of the Malays (Treron vernans), and shot many of 



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