46 
NORTH BORNEO. 
sound with its tiny hoofs, which is easily imitated by tapping gently the leaves with a light 
switch, and answering their peculiar low whistle. In this manner they can be attracted 
within a few yards and easily secured. I first saw a native doing this in Malacca; I tried 
it on some low hills at the hack of our house with great success—not so much for sport, but 
to replenish my always-empty larder. As our shooting-grounds were some distance from 
home, and most of the journey had to be performed in the dug-out, often after nine o’clock 
at night, on a river plentifully stocked with crocodiles, I must say it was always with a 
feeling of relief that I left our canoe. 
Crocodiles are always on the feed after dark, and there was one which had attempted 
to drag a woman into the water a short time previously, not far from our dwelling; also a 
man used to visit us with most of the flesh torn off his arm by one of these brutes, which 
had seized him in his canoe; and sometimes the larger ones will swamp a canoe and carry 
off one of the occupants : so you may guess that I was not very keen about these after-dark 
expeditions as perhaps the absence of crocodiles would otherwise have made me. A walk 
through a tropical forest in almost pitchy darkness is uncanny work at the best, as one 
always imagines every possible enemy to be ready to pounce out: every creeper transforms 
itself into a snake, every fallen log becomes a crocodile. In the Bornean forests after dark 
a curious fungus (like a toadstool) becomes quite luminous; added to this goblin-like effect, 
the extraordinary forms of the forest-growths, the cries and howls of many animals and 
night-birds, and a hundred other noises which must be heard to be understood, is enough to 
give a nervous person like myself “ the creeps ” or some other feeling. The only sport we 
had plenty of was pig-shooting in the maize-plantations, for which amusement the Orang 
Sungei would call us at all hours in the night. Wild pigs (Sus barbatus) and deer do great 
damage to the maize- and rice-plantations of these people, they not being a hunting or 
trapping race like the Muruts, who kill everything from a rhinoceros to a rat; so if they 
would save their crops they have to sit up all night in small shelters placed about in their 
fields, and keep a fire burning to scare both pigs and mosquitoes, which, as usual, are more 
than plentiful. In these shelters the people sit, yelling and calling out at the pigs, which 
may be heard carrying on their work of destruction some distance off. When we arrived on 
the river the maize-crop was nearly ripe, and in one night the pigs would destroy several 
acres; this they do by biting the stalks and laying them flat, when if the corn-pods are not 
quite to their liking they would proceed with their work, seldom eating more than one or 
two mouthfuls from a stalk of several pods. Often at night we used to stalk about in the 
maize-plantations listening to the pigs crunching and breaking down the stems; but my 
bootless servants got more shots than I could, boots being horrible tell-tales anywhere. On 
some nights we got two huge brutes, to the delight of the plantation-owners and Dusuns. 
These pigs were larger and of a different colour to any I met with elsewhere in Borneo, 
standing three feet nine inches at the shoulder, dirty white in colour, and almost hairless, 
except on the snout, where they were adorned with a huge tuft of coarse bristles. The 
Dusuns from a neighbouring village used to be on the spot the next morning whenever they 
heard us shooting after dark, and cut up the pigs in the most scientific manner, amidst a 
swarm of blow-flies, which were so numerous as to blacken the maize-leaves with their 
numbers. The way in which these men would carry huge lumps of meat on their heads, 
