vn] HEIGHT OF BORNEAN TREES 



fusion, made of the perfumed wood of Aquilariaa gallocha. Suddenly 

 the door leading to the store on the left of the entrance was opened, 

 and a man rushed out dressed in a sort of surplice of rich mate- 

 rial not unlike that worn by Roman Catholic priests in saying mass. 

 Staggering and shaking with a violent convulsive movement, he 

 placed himself in front of the altar, turning his back on the specta- 

 tors. He continued trembling like one possessed for some time, 

 but the convulsions gradually passed off, and when he was quite 

 calm he turned round towards the audience. He then took two 

 big needles, or rather skewers, about eight inches in length and 

 spatulate at one end, and thrust them, one on each side, into his 

 upper lip from above downwards. By violent contortions of the 

 lip these were kept rolling about, and imparted, with the hanging 

 lip, a singularly horrible expression to the face. But this was only 

 the prelude to a still more repulsive spectacle. Opening his mouth 

 as wide as possible and holding in his right hand one of those small 

 triangular razors used by the Chinese, he made a deep longitudinal 

 cut down the middle of his tongue. At the same time an assistant 

 handed him a porcelain cup in which he collected the blood which 

 flowed abundantly from the wound. With this the wizard traced 

 with the tips of his fingers various cabalistic signs on bits of red 

 paper, which were successively burnt by his attendant. After this 

 he retired to the room he had come from. All was done with 

 singular imperturbability and indifference. 



I do not believe there was any trickery in what I saw, for during 

 the whole ceremony I stood quite close to the altar and could have 

 touched the performer. It is, however, quite possible that he may 

 previously have worked himself into a superexcited condition, such 

 as to make him insensible to pain. 



On reaching Mattang I found my house just as I had left it. I 

 at once set to work to finish it, and fit it up so as to render it as 

 comfortable as possible. In the hall I fixed a large table, in my 

 sleeping room a bedstead, while opposite the window, which opened 

 towards the east, I had a small work-table placed. All these were 

 what house-furnishers would term " fitments," were strongly 

 though simply made, and of a practical kind. The legs of these 

 articles of furniture were fixed in the floor and strengthened 

 with cross-bars tied with rotangs. The flooring was of lante of 

 nibong, over which I had had spread squared sheets of bark with 

 the smooth side upwards. 



My large dining-table was more useful to me for preparing 

 botanical specimens than for taking my frugal meals. The bed- 

 stead, after laying over it a. thin mattress covered with a fine pan- 

 danus mat from the Natunas, was comfort itself. My small work- 

 table opposite the window witnessed many happy hours during 

 the months I lived at my Bornean " Vallombrosa," for on it I took 



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