Oh. XIV.] DEUMMING OP H0ENBILL8. 239 



in the fotm of young cocoa-nuts and oranges, which had 

 been dispensed to me by the Eajah's housekeepers. 



On the way down I met several family parties of Dyaks 

 toiling up to their homes, carrying on their heads heavy 

 bundles of grass, and other things which they had procured 

 from the lower world. I could not help feehng that, al- 

 though there had been a period when it was safer to dwell 

 in the mountains, it must be fearfully inconvenient and 

 trying to perform daily such a laborious journey. 



On the following day I ascended Peninjau from the oppo- 

 site side by a new route, in order to visit the village of 

 Bombok. This ascent was even steeper than that to Serambo, 

 the stones were higher, the rocks more rugged, and the 

 batangs longer and more perpendicular ; so that in the 

 absence of anything to hold on by, it was not easy to mount 

 them, although I had no truss of hay upon my head. The 

 operation was not unlike walking upon a tight rope, espe- 

 cially as the heavy rain, which had drenched me as I re- 

 turned the previous day, had rendered the notches slippery, 

 a circumstance keenly felt in the descent. It was while 

 balancing myself cautiously upon one of these precarious 

 batangs that I was suddenly startled by a loud rushing noise 

 overhead, which seemed rapidly approaching, and gave me 

 a momentary apprehension that a tree was falling, or that 

 an avalanche of stones was rolling down from above. Look- 

 ing up in some alarm, I discovered that the sound was pro- 

 duced by a large hornbiU (Buceros), which was performing 

 a drumming noise with his great wings, precisely similar in 

 character to the drumming of the snipe. The hornbill, 

 hovering in the air, vibrated the quiU-feathers of the wing 

 with violence and rapidity, thus producing the rushing noise 

 which had so startled me. 



