IN BORNEAN FORESTS [chap. 



noon, when we halted at some houses belonging to the Tanj ongs — 

 one of the many tribes living on the Rejang, but belonging, from 

 what I could discover, to the great Kayan family. Together with 

 these Tanj ongs some Buketans had recently come to live, and had 

 begun to plant rice. 



The Tanj ongs are more tattooed than the Kayans. In most of 

 those I saw the breast, chin, and part of the shoulders were covered 

 with tattooed designs. The women now dress as the Bintulu 

 females, in black cotton cloth, and have the lobes of their ears 

 enormously distended by the heavy tin, brass, or copper rings, 

 some as big as bracelets, which they wear in them. 



We had got now to the Dyak country, and on both sides of the 

 river the hills were covered with well cultivated rice fields, the old 

 forest having been utterly cleared away. Many isolated houses 

 were seen. The commonest tree I noticed on the river banks was 

 the " kayu bayor," a species of Pterospermum, which produces 

 large white flowers. We passed the mouth of the Ketibas, along 

 whose banks still live the most dreaded and savage Dyaks of the 

 Rejang, inveterate head-hunters. Only the year before they took 

 those of two Chinamen who were trading up the river. For this 

 misdeed they were duly and severely punished by the Tuan Muda, 

 but it appears that the lesson had not been sufficient, for even then 

 they were sending out parties in search of heads. I stayed the 

 night at a Dyak house, the inmates of which appeared to me not 

 to differ from the Dyaks I had met with on the Batang Lupar. 



On the following morning, October ist, I had not much trouble 

 in getting my Kayans to start, for they were anxious to reach Sibu, 

 and soon after dawn we were en route once more. We stopped at 

 the small fort of Nongma, then the farthest inland station of the 

 Sarawak Government, but I found no Europeans resident here. 

 At 2 p.m. we reached Kanowit, a village at the mouth of a river 

 which bears the same name. The people here are different in 

 appearance both from Kayans and Dyaks. They wear the jaw at 

 like the latter, but are offended if they are compared with them. 

 The women are dressed in the usual Malay fashion. 



The Kanowits were once a race of ferocious head-hunters, but 

 are now peaceful and inoffensive. Before Rajah Brooke and his 

 nephew used their energetic civilising influence, giving peace and 

 prosperity to these people, it was considered a duty, when a Kanowit 

 died, for his kindred to obtain a head at any cost, and on such 

 occasions they did not hesitate to take that of the first person they 

 met, man, woman, or child, were they even members of their own 

 tribe, and even, it is said, relatives. This is certainly a queer way 

 of understanding " duty," a word which can only express a hereditary 

 form of sentiment, corresponding to the social condition of a given 

 people at a certain epoch. 



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