AN EXPEDITION TO MOUNT BATU LAWI. 15 
on a sunny gravel bed in mid-stream ; this is also a rare species in 
Sarawak. A little before mid-day we arrived at a long Murut 
house, where we stopped for a meal. ‘he head of the house, one 
Klowat, wanted us to stay the night, as they were celebrating the 
marriage of one of the ladies of the house with a Dayak. Such 
marriages are by no means infrequent; a party of wandering Sea- 
Dayaks go off for several months after gutta and very often finding 
desirable maidens, two or three of them marry and settle down in 
their adopted country. Our boats’ crew were all in favour of the 
project and tried hard to persuade me to accept Klowats’s invit- 
ation, this was the last house we should see before reaching the 
kuala Madihit, at least some three or four days’ journey ahead of us, 
so the occasion for a convivial evening seemed too tempting to be 
missed. However I was determined to take every advantage of 
the present low state of the river and push on as far as possible, 
knowing from bitter experience last year the difficulties caused by 
the least fresh; so after an hour’s patient- and good-tempered 
argument we started off again, our crew further increased by two 
more Muruts from this house. 
This was the third house we had stopped at on the way since 
leaving Ukong, and each of these three houses had been built since 
my visit to them last year. In 1910 ‘Tama Belulok’s house was a 
small tumble-down little shanty ill-becoming an important chief, 
and he was then meditating building a decent house; this year 
I found him in the same kind of house built a few yards from the 
site of that of last year, and again he was talking of building one 
of larger size and more lasting material. Tama Seluling’s house 
had also been rebuilt within a few yards of last year’s but his new 
one was a decided improvement on the old one and should perhaps 
last three years. Klowat’s house had also been rebuilt, but this 
time a little further up the river. Last year I spent four days in his 
old house waiting for the river to go down, and consequently got te 
know something about that class of house. Like all native houses 
in Sarawak it was raised on wooden piles some eight feet off the 
ground on the high bank of the river, but out of reach of all but 
the biggest floods. A notched trunk led up from the water’s edge 
over the slippery bank and another leaning against the end of the 
house gave access on to a rough platform. The house was divided 
down the middle by a wooden partition, which shut off the living 
rooms of each family on the left, leaving the whole of the right 
side open as one long common room. ‘The leaf attap roof, highest 
along this centre line slopes down to within some 4 feet of the floor 
on each side, the space thus left was filled in with rough boards or 
in some ‘places simply with split bamhoo, leaving a long slit of 
perhaps a foot in width, running the length of the house through 
which one could look out. In the common verandah every-body 
used to gather, only dispersing into the living rooms for meals and 
at night to sleep; though visitors always sleep (and sometimes have 
their meals) in this verandah. Unlike Sea-Dayak houses thére® 
R. A. Soc., No. 63, 1912. 
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