AN EXPEDITION TO MOUNT BATU LAWI. 
me before and this time I intended taking both father and son to 
see me through the journey. According to them the ‘Tabuns come 
of a Treng stock and they used to occupy the country at the head 
waters of the Tutau and Madihit but a series of disastrous wars 
and diseases of various kinds sadly reduced their numbers, so that 
but very few representatives of this once powerful race now remain. 
The Tabuns occupy about three houses on the Limbang Iiver and 
perhaps numbered in all some 100 souls; they are nearly related to 
the Muruts and Kalabits and speak both these languages easily, 
though the Tabun dialect itself is distinct. Closely related to the 
Tabuns, and in fact from the same Treng stock, are the Long 
Patas who live in a long house on the Tutau River under Oyau 
Blawing (or Tama Saging, the father of Saging, as he is now 
-known).? These two branches now form the sole survivors in 
Sarawak territory of the once populous Trengs. 
Soon after we landed below the Beluloks’ house, a long boat 
swept round the corner and drew up beside ours, and we were soon 
busy shaking hands with some oJd friends from up-river whom we 
met last year. These were some 20 ’abuns and Dayaks from the 
Kuala Madalam on their way down river to pay their respects to 
the Rajah at Limbang. However I had to explain to them that 
His Highness had arrived at Limbang and left again already, so 
they turned back, while we stayed to make arrangements for coolies. 
In the afternoon three of us paddled a little way up the Seradan 
to look for a Dayak who, we were told, was working gutta there ; 
I had arranged with him last year to accompany me in my next 
expedition. We eventually found his “lancho” or hut by the side 
of the stream, a few fowls outside and some lumps of rubber, and 
the barking of dogs told us he was not far off. Eventually we 
began to realize that there was some meaning to the continued 
barking and we were startled at hearing some animal rush through 
the jungle quite close; we tore off after it in the direction of the 
sound of cracking branches and then lost the “scent,” but another 
_Dayak joined us almost immediately and said he had just caught 
sight of a pig swimming the river with the dogs in close pursuit; but 
they eventually lost it, although later in the evening our Dayak 
friend and his trusty dogs succeeded in bagging a “rusa” (deer). 
The scenery up the little Seradan stream was typical, to my mind, 
of the best kind to be seen in Sarawak. Where a view over any 
large extent of country only consists of one unbroken panorama of 
uniform dull coloured jungle, one has to fall back upon small 
patches:of country for the most pleasing scenic effects, and these 
are par excellence to be found up such jungle-shaded streams as 
this; dense unfathomable jungle, suggesting an infinity of forest, 
wall: one in on each side, huge trees towering above with branches 
1.;.. For an- cinteresting account of the custom of changing names among 
these tribes see ‘A comparative Vocabulary of the Kayan, Kenyah & Kalabit 
languages-’’ by: R.S.Douglas in the Sarawak Museum Journal No. I, 1911, p. 
Once 
Tour, Straits Branch 
