CHAPTER XXX
My life in Sarawak • 第38章
CHAPTER XXX
On our return to Kuching, Bertram and I were anxious to pay a flying visit to a place called Paku, where one of the Rajah’s magistrates resides. The people in the neighbourhood are mostly Chinese, and near by are antimony and quicksilver mines worked by the Borneo Company Limited.
We left Kuching in one of the Government launches about eleven o’clock in the morning, and after a few hours’ steaming came to a Chinese settlement, called Sigobang, where the land on the banks becomes a broad alluvial plain and where Chinese settlers grow plantations of sugar, that beautiful cane with its emerald green leaves and golden stems. Fresh sugar-cane is a pleasant thing to munch at in a desultory way. You cut through a piece of the stem, slice it into tubes, peel off its thick rind, and when it looks like a stick of white wood you bite into it, suck its juice, and dispose of its filaments in the most convenient way. The paths in the vicinity of towns or villages are always strewn with the vestiges of sugar-cane eaters, who suck in the juice and spit out the filaments as they go. As we steamed up river we saw pepper vines, yams, pineapples, etc., also growing near the banks, and Chinamen clad in short cotton drawers, holding umbrellas over their heads, and using their other hand as they worked in their gardens. Yellow dogs, about the size of fox terriers, rushed out from Chinese houses and yelped at us from doorways; these were evidently Dyak dogs, who are never known to bark. Bamboo wheels stood under open sheds—primitive machines for extracting the sugar juice from the cane. These Chinese houses appeared more substantial than were those of the poorer Malays. They were built level with the ground, and their wooden doors were ornamented with scarlet bands of paper over which were large black Chinese characters. Ducks and geese were swimming about in the river near these settlements.
These small villages being left behind us, the forests once more encroached on the land. The river now became narrower, and rocky banks replaced the mud. The banks were covered with ferns and bamboo grass, the latter weed looking like green lace and shaking at the slightest current of air. Black butterflies fluttered over the grass, and an alligator bird, or bul-bul, was singing on the banks in the sunshine. Clumps of bamboos grew here and there, and great trees hung over the water, clinging to the banks, their branches entangled with parasites and stag’s-horn ferns, whilst the reflection of lagerstremias covered with purple spiked flowers, stained the running water.
AN ENCAMPMENT UP THE BATANG LUPAR RIVER
THE TUAN MUDA, MR. BAILEY AND THE AUTHOR WITH MALAY AND DYAK CHIEFS
We reached Busu, the landing-place for Paku, at six in the evening. At this point the stream is
about twenty yards wide. Malay houses, devoid of orchards or gardens, stood on poles amongst the weeds on the banks. On platforms of crazy planks, where Malays husk their paddy, jutting out from these houses, dilapidated coxcombs planted in old kerosene tins struggled to live in their uncongenial surroundings. A path made of single bamboos, dovetailing into each other, led from the cottages to the river. A man on the bank, shouldering a bamboo, came out of one of these houses to fetch water from the river. He was met with a storm of scornful remarks from our crew, as Malay men are supposed to leave water-carrying to the women of their household. A little farther on was the Borneo Company Ltd.’s wharf, whence the antimony and quicksilver is shipped to Kuching and thence to Singapore and Europe. A tramway starts from the landing-place, leading to the mines some miles inland.
We found Mr. Awdry, one of the Rajah’s officers and a great friend of ours, awaiting us at the Wharf. We then got into a horse-truck kindly put at our disposal by the Manager of the Mines, furnished with mattresses and pillows, and comfortably travelled over the four miles separating us from the bungalow. Mrs. Awdry met us at the bottom of the hill leading to her house. As we clambered down from the truck, which was pretty high, a concourse of Chinamen, who had come to meet us, started beating their gongs, blowing into instruments sounding like bagpipes, and waving banners, whilst others set fire to piles of crackers, hanging from iron tripods, all along the road. The hill was steep and, as we headed the procession, the orchestra and banner-bearers, in the exuberance of their welcome, followed closely at our heels, so that we were pushed forward by our noisy welcomers, until I found myself racing up the incline like a panting hare, with a crowd of pursuers immediately behind me. The din was fearful, but the people meant well, and, although short of breath from my exertions, I managed to thank them for their kind reception as soon as I reached the top.
From the verandah of the house a great stretch of country could be seen. There were curious-shaped hills of limestone sticking up singly here and there, although, viewed from Kuching, they appear like a chain of mountains. One of them, called Sebigi, stood out from the plain like a great green thumb. Although forest fires are unusual in Sarawak, for droughts are rare, the whole of one of these hills, called Jambusan, was a mass of burnt trees with the limestone showing through the charred stumps. No one knew how the fire had occurred, but it was conjectured that the rubbing together of the bamboos in the wind during the dry weather had caused them to ignite. With the exception of this charred hillock, the house we were in seemed to be the centre of a sea of green waves. Along the valleys were small Chinese gardens, these people, as is well known, being excellent agriculturists. Here were pumpkins, water melons, scarlet runners, sweet potatoes, maize, and a kind of native spinach growing magnificently. There were small ponds on which floated those beautiful pink and white lotuses, the Chinese cultivating the flowers as food for their pigs. A hot spring bubbled up somewhere in the flat ground near by, its temperature being about 100° Fahrenheit. The Chinese and Dyaks of the district bathed in its waters as a cure for rheumatism. English cattle were grazing here and there, and the place looked prosperous and peaceful.
The day after our arrival at Paku an individual named Pa Baniak (meaning Father of plenty) came to see me, accompanied by two members of his tribe. He was a Land Dyak and his village was situated on the steep slope of limestone mountains in the neighbourhood. He was short and stout, and a few white bristles sprouted over his chin. He wore Chinese drawers, a dirty white cotton jacket, and a dark blue handkerchief was twisted round his head. He had wooden discs screwed into the rims of his ears, which, he said, were necessary to his comfort for two reasons: firstly, they made his hearing more acute, and secondly, they pleased the crocodiles. He told us that although he and his tribe were constantly fishing in the main river, he felt sure that none of these monsters would attempt to eat any of them. In response to my inquiry, he related the following story—not, however, before he had risen, coughed, spat out of the verandah, taken hold of the tips of my fingers, passed the back of his hand across his nostrils, and then returned to his place on the floor:—
“Malays are not good people,” he said, “and before the first white Rajah came to our country, they did many wicked things. In the time of long ago, a Malay caught a crocodile; this was treacherous of him, because he tied a dog to a wooden hook attached to a long piece of rattan which he made fast to a tree, leaving its loose end floating on the river. The dog howled and attracted a hungry crocodile, who swam joyfully to the spot, and, in spite of the warnings of his friend, the alligator bird, he snapped at the bait. He swallowed the dog and hook at one gulp, when the hook fixed itself in his throat, as the Malay had intended, and the beast could neither swallow the hook nor spit it up, and therefore his jaw was prised open. The Malay, seeing the loose end of the rattan floating down the river, paddled after it, but the beast was too quick for him, and got away from the country near the sea to the country of the Land Dyaks, more inland. A member of Pa Baniak’s tribe, passing by in a canoe, noticed the crocodile’s open jaw and felt sorry for him. The crocodile begged the man to put his arm down his throat and wrench the hook away. Thinking it might be dangerous, the Dyak did not much like the task, and inquired what the crocodile would do for him in return. ‘I promise never to attack or eat any member of your tribe,’ said the crocodile. The man thought this a fair offer, and the compact was made, after which the man removed the hook. The operation over, the crocodile thanked his deliverer, and told him to warn all his people to thrust wooden discs in the cartilage of their ears, so that crocodiles should not mistake them for members of some other tribe.”
To prove the truth of this tale, Pa Baniak informed me that, only a few days before our arrival at Paku, a young man of his tribe had been seized by a crocodile as he was taking fruit from his orchard down the river to the Kuching market. With a switch of its tail the animal sent the canoe up in the air, and as its occupant, paddle in hand, was falling into its formidable jaws, the beast noticed the wooden discs, and finding that the man’s flesh did not taste nice, he threw him on shore and went away snorting with disgust. Bertram and I made ejaculations of approval at the end of this tale, and Pa Baniak was mightily pleased at the effect he had produced.
Although four or five miles away, the trees on the top of Singghi mountain stood out distinctly that afternoon in the lurid light of an approaching thunderstorm. His thumbs pointing in the direction of the mountain, Pa Baniak said, “Antus live up there, and my tribe has made wooden images of men and women to keep them amused. If ever the trees on the top of Singghi are cut down, leaving the antus without either playground or shelter, they would roam amongst the trees in the plain and tease the people living there.” We listened to Pa Baniak’s talk for some little time, and he told us many things, as for instance, about the terrible consequences of men eating the flesh of deer, which made them cowards; of the importance of being burned instead of buried in the earth, in order that one’s relations could tell by the direction of the smoke whether or no the dead had started for Paradise. But at length we became tired and allowed him to depart. He rose slowly, grunted, scratched himself under his armpits, took a little brass bell off the sirih basket hanging at his waist, and gave it to me. “It will preserve you from lightning, snake bites, and antus,” he said. Then, followed by his attendants, he made his way downstairs. Thunder was growling in the distance, and drops of rain were falling as the trio went out of the house, each opening Chinese umbrellas to keep the rain off their naked bodies, for most Sarawak natives imagine that rain falling on their skin brings on malaria. We watched them as they went along the plain in single file; then the rain came down in torrents, blotting them out from view.