48 AN EXPEDITION TO MOUNT. BATU LAWI. 
in the morning, a large number were somewhat the worse for drink. 
It reminded me of a Murut house I visited two years ago in the 
Lawas district near Mengalong; here we found the whole house 
absolutely drunk at 9 in the morning; all very friendly however and 
insistent on our staying the rest of the day to join in the reyels, and 
it was with none too steady legs that we managed to get away from 
them and proceed with our journey some two hours later. The 
Muruts unfortunately have a great weakness for arrack (rice-beer) 
and the least event is made an excuse for a drinking bout of several 
days, so that it is by no means rare to find a house thus occupied, 
when journeying in their country. It naturally has a bad effect 
on their physical condition and drink must be put down as the 
cause of many of their unpleasant characteristics, e.g. indolence, 
dirt, skin diseases; though from what I have seen of the Muruts of 
the Lawas and Limbang, I should say that those who live up-river 
are far cleaner, healthier and more hard-working than those who 
live down-river within reach of a bazaar. The same thing is very 
noticeable too among the Land-Dayaks of Sarawak, who, if living 
near civilization, 1.e., a Chinese bazaar, present a miserable example 
of the evils of drink and gambling, in sharp contrast to their 
sturdy relatives who live in the hills further inland, active, lithe of 
limb, hard-working and cheerful. 
This Kalabit house has been visited by the same strange 
disease and many had died from it. Tamarpin asked permission 
for himself and his six men to go and talk with the dead for a few 
minutes before we continued our journey; he said it was the 
Kalabit custom, and shortly after I heard a kind of mournful chant 
issuing from a room near by and then again from a place just out- 
side the house. Unlike the hideous noises, one usually imagines 
associated with the ceremonies of barbarous races, the songs of 
these Kalabits seemed to be almost Iuropean in their complex— 
and at the same time tuneful-nature. Both this funeral chant and 
the drinking chorus we heard from the Kalabits at the Madihit 
were quite pleasant to listen to, which is more than one can say 
for the irritating cantations indulged in by Malays. 
They wanted me to stay the night there, but I felt it necessary 
to push on down river to Ciaudetown as fast as possible in order to 
catch the next steamer for Kuching. There was absolutely no 
means of knowing when that was due and I could only trust to 
luck not to arrive a few hours or days after the steamer had left. 
A nice little fresh in the river helped us comfortably down the 
rapids which are not nearly so bad as those on the Limbang; the 
Mago flows in a south-westerly direction down to its junction with 
the Tutau which we reached between 3 and 4 p.m. and then camped 
on the right bank of that river. This is a fine wide reach here, 
made all the more imposing by tall jungle lining the banks on each 
side. We had a refreshing bathe here and I challenged Balang 
Katou to a race across to the other side; he won on the outward 
swim and I on the return—rather to my surprise as I did not 
Jour. Straits Branch 
