IN BORNEAN FORESTS [chap. 



A most singular custom of these people is that of flattening 

 the heads of their girl babies, giving the forehead a sharp slope 

 backward ; this malformation is produced by applying a small 

 board to the forehead shortly after birth, and keeping it there for 

 many months. 



The Mellanao men at Bintulu dress as Malays ; they are never 

 tattooed, nor do they use any kind of personal ornament. The women 

 wear a long shirt or tunic reaching to the feet, made of European 

 cotton cloth of a dark blue or nearly black colour, which is at Bintulu 

 one of the main articles of importation. This woman's dress has 

 very wide sleeves, open on one side with hanging lappets, not unlike 

 the costume of Italian ladies in the fourteenth century. The 

 aperture of the sleeve is ornamented with buttons or bell-shaped 

 pendants, which are often of gold. The Mellanao women also wear 

 costly bracelets. 



On the morning after my arrival, I sallied out from the fort 

 shortly after sunrise and walked towards the beach, where I found a 

 lot of women busily engaged in searching amongst the flotsam and 

 jetsam thrown up by the sea. At first it looked as if they were 

 picking up stones ; but on approaching nearer I was surprised to 

 find that the object of their search was a species of resin, which 

 occurred in lumps from about the size of a walnut to that of the 

 fist, worn and rounded at the edges just like the river pebbles. 

 This resin is the product of some dipterocarp abounding in the 

 forests of the interior and carried down by floods to the sea, where 

 it acquires the appearance of little rounded stones as above described, 

 and on this account is called dammar batu, or stone dammar, by 

 the Malays. 



Besides this resin the sea had washed ashore all sorts of vegetable 

 detritus, amongst them quite a number of fruits, most of which I 

 recognised, though some were new to me. Some distance above 

 the fort a small stream debouched, and after heavy rain I have seen 

 this carry down large quantities of mud, which covered the flotsam 

 and jetsam cast up by the waves. This is highly instructive, for 

 it gives us an undoubted instance of a littoral marine formation 

 which consists nearly entirely of land and freshwater vegetable 

 remains, and in which the pebbles of resin are in surroundings very 

 similar to those in which amber is found. 



The rivers of this portion of Borneo, such as the Rejang, Bintulu,. 

 and especially the Barram, farther north, must carry down to the 

 sea an immense quantity of debris. According to a statement of 

 Mr. St. John, 1 great accumulations of tree-trunks, floating and 

 covered with seaweed, have been met with out at sea off Barram 

 Point, and have even impeded the course of vessels when the wind 

 was slack. On passing Barram Point I did not notice anything of 



1 Op. cit. i. p. 17. 

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