288 The Gardens of the Sun. [ch. xiv. 



musket for a couple of these lieads, but so highly are they 

 still valued by these people that he refused to part with 

 them, even for so high a price. This custom of head- 

 hunting may be said to have died out amongst the Dusun, 

 since they failed to subsist by hunting, and have taken to 

 the less exciting employment of land culture. One place 

 was pointed out to me where thirty men and their chief 

 had been slaughtered together and their heads taken, 

 only a few years ago. This was at a ford near Sineroup, 

 and a rude circle of stones still marks the spot where the 

 bodies were interred; aU the stones are single except that 

 which represents the chief, which has a smaller stone on 

 its apex. I find the custom of marking burial places 

 with erect stones very common among these people. On 

 returning to the house I find that " Kurus," one of my 

 men, a shock-haired Bruneian, has brought in my buffalo, 

 having tracked it through the soft mud to a bit of jungle 

 at some distance from the village, and there he found him 

 tied to a tree ! 



The large house in which we stayed is big enough to 

 accommodate five or six families, and the large common 

 room, which extends from end to end, will hold twenty or 

 thirty men and their baggage quite comfortably, having 

 three or four hearth-stones for fires at intervals. It 

 stands on a grassy knoll just at the entrance to the village, 

 and the group of pinang and cocoa-nut palms on the lower 

 side give to it quite a picturesque appearance. All over 

 this district tree-ferns are very beautiful, especially so in 

 the valleys and glades which exist up among these cool 

 hills. Every now and then the traveller comes upon 

 whole groves of them, and solitary groups exist even in 

 the cultivated ground. So sweetly fresh and green are 

 they, and quite distinct in form and tint from all sur- 

 rounding vegetation, indeed, these feathery tree-ferns. 



