118 BRITISH BORNEO. 
to the village of Sebongan on the Kinabatangan River, which 
has been quite abandoned. 
Crocodiles in time become very bold and will carry off peo- 
ple bathing on the steps of their houses over the water, and 
even take them bodily out of their canoes. 
At an estate on the island of Daat, I had two men thus 
carried off out of their boats, at sea, after sunset, in both cases 
the mutilated bodies being subsequently recovered. The 
largest crocodile | have seen was one which was washed 
ashore on an island, dead, and which I found to measure with- 
in an inch of twenty feet. 
Some natives entertain the theory that a crocodile will not 
touch you if you are swimming or floating in the water and 
not holding on to any thing, but this isa theory which I should 
not care to put practically to the test myself. 
There is a native superstition in some parts of the West 
Coast, to the effect that the washing of a mosquito curtain in 
a stream is sure to excite the anger of the crocodiles and 
cause them to become dangerous. So implicit was the belief 
in this superstition, that the Brunai Government proclaimed 
it a punishable crime for any person to wash a mosquito cur- 
tain in a running stream. 
When that Government was succeeded by the Company, 
this proclamation fell into abeyance, but it unfortunately hap- 
pened that a woman at Mempakul, availing herself of the 
laxity of the law in this matter, did actually wash her curtain 
in a creek, and that very night her husband was seized and 
carried off by a crocodile while on the steps of his house. For- 
tunately, an alarm was raised in time, and his friends managed 
to rescue him, though badly wounded; but the belief in the 
superstition cannot but have been strengthened by the 
incident. 
Some of the aboriginal natives on the West Coast are keen 
sportsmen and, in the pursuit of deer and wild pig, employ a 
curious small dog, which they call asu, not making use of the 
Malay word for dog—anjing. ‘The termasw is that generally 
employed by the Javanese, from whose country possibly the 
dog may have been introduced into Borneo. In Brunai, dogs 
