xv] AT LUNDU 



light of the stars, I could see rushing out of the boat towards the 

 forest, brandishing their parangs and spears. I could not make 

 out at first what had happened, but soon joined in the laugh when 

 my men returned from the vain chase of a wild boar, which had come 

 sniffing round quite close to the boat, attracted, no doubt, by the 

 odour of our provisions. 



On the morning of the 22nd I entered and ascended the Lundu 

 river, which I had already explored, but I wished to pay a visit to 

 my friend Mr. Nelson, then Resident or Government Agent in this 

 district. I reached the Residency just at the time the Dyaks were 

 bringing their annual tribute, which consisted of two dollars for each 

 adult male. At Lundu there were several very big houses, each of 

 which, belonging to a number of families, may be looked upon as a 

 separate village. In one of these houses, which are tolerably com- 

 mon inland, there were living 150 men and an unknown number of 

 women. There was also a church here built of timber, and a sub- 

 stantial house for the missionaries. Above the village the river, 

 which rises behind Mount Mattang, can be ascended for three or four 

 days in small boats. Near its sources the Chinese have found gold, 

 in formations similar to those at Busso and at Bau ; and were at 

 that time asking to be aided by Government to begin working. 

 The Chinese had fine gardens and orchards at Lundu, remarkably 

 well kept, where, amongst other cultivated plants, the mulberry 

 tree was growing. This interested the Tuan Muda a good deal, as 

 he wished to attempt the rearing of silkworms. 



The Dyaks mostly cultivate rice on terraced hill fields on the 

 dry system ; but in the plains of Lundu the usual water cultivation 

 is also practised. There, in the abandoned ricefields, already 

 covered with rank high herbage, I found growing a wild species of 

 rice plant called by the Malays " padi pipit," i.e. " sparrow rice," 

 because its grain is much smaller than that of the cultivated plant. 

 I imagine that these must have grown from seeds of the ordinary 

 cultivated rice plant, fallen out of the husk during the harvest, which, 

 in the lack of any cultivation had to submit to a struggle with the 

 weeds, and thus produced smaller grain— a return to the primitive 

 wild form. 1 



Next day I descended the river, and reaching its mouth headed 

 once more for the Sarawak. We passed the night at Sumpa, a 

 small fisherman's hamlet composed of seven or eight huts ; and on 

 the twenty-fourth of June we paddled towards Santubong, where I 

 had a slight attack of malarial fever, the first I had experienced 

 during two years of a nomadic life in the forests of Borneo. I 

 could not at first believe that the uneasiness and the shiverings I 



1 This kind of rice has been collected by Zollinger in Java, and distributed 

 under the name of Oryza sativa {L. spontanea). 



22Q 



