East, 1863.
13. With regard to the collection of orchids it has also been found necessary to do this. Collectors would ruthlessly destroy all orchids, especially the rarer kinds, which they could not carry away, in order to prevent others from collecting these.
14. In about 1825 a large bone was found in a cave at Bau which was pronounced to be that of an elephant. These animals are common in parts of N. Borneo, and Pigafetta found them at Bruni in 1521.
15. The Ptilocercus Lowii, only found in Borneo. It has been awarded a genus all to itself, and is one of the rarest of Bornean curiosities.—J. Hewitt, Sarawak Gazette, September 1, 1908.
16. "According to Mr. Boulanger, Borneo can boast of producing the longest legged frog and the longest legged toad in the world."—Idem.
17. "Mr. St. John (Forests of the Far East, p. 190) mentions stones or pebbles of a dark colour considered by the natives as sacred. Some such, found at Quop, were said to have been lost during the civil wars. They are possibly paleolithic implements."—Beccari, op. cit. p. 367.
18. The late Rajah wrote in 1838: "We know scarcely anything of these varieties of the human race beyond the bare fact of their existence." We have since learnt something of their languages and customs; of their origin nothing.
19. Mr. F. D. de Rozario. The Sarawak Gazette, September 2, 1901. Mr. de Rozario, the officer in charge of Kapit Fort, has been in the Government service for some fifty years, of which nearly all have been spent in the Upper Rejang, and his knowledge of the natives, their customs and languages, is unique.
21. The Indra Lila (brother of the Lila Pelawan, who was the present Rajah's Malay chief at Lingga over fifty years ago), was their chief. Trouble arose owing to Akam Nipa, the celebrated Kayan chief, who will be noticed hereafter, having fallen in love with a Malay girl of rank. His suit being rejected, he threatened to forcibly abduct the lady, a threat which he could have carried out with ease, so the Malays fled with her to Lingga. This occurred some eighty years ago.
22. One of Magellan's chroniclers records that in 1521 men were found in Gilo (Gilolo or Jilolo, to the east of, and near to the Celebes), "with ears so long and pendulous that they reached to their shoulders."—Magellan, Hakluyt Society. Marsden, History of Sumatra, says that the people of Neas island off the west coast of Sumatra elongate their ears in the same manner; so do the Sagais of Belungan. The sculptures above mentioned, and the fact that this curious custom still exists in southern India, point to it being one of Hindu origin.
23. Human sacrifices are still in vogue amongst the Kayans and Kenyahs in the Batang Kayan and Mahkam rivers.
24. The Kajamans, Sekapans, Sians, and Lanans are said to have been the first to cross over from the Bantang Kayan (Belungan) into the Balui (Rejang). They were probably then one tribe.
25. Muka is the Malay for face. The word has been carried into the English language as mug, contemptuously "an ugly mug," from the Sanskrit word muhka, the face.
26. Mr. E. A. W. Cox, formerly Resident of the Trusan, and latterly of the Bintulu, says the Kadayan tradition is that many generations back they were brought from Deli in Sumatra by a former Sultan of Bruni. They have always been the immediate followers of the sultans, forming their main bodyguard. They have no distinctive language of their own, and talk a low Bruni patois; their dress is peculiar; and their system of rice cultivation is far in advance of all other Borneans.
27. The Hindu sacred bull.
28. Writing of the Rafflesia, "those extraordinary parasitical plants, whose huge and startling conspicuous flowers spring from the ground like gigantic mushrooms," Beccari (op. cit. p. 102) says, "The Land-Dayaks called the variety he found at Poi (and which he named R. Tuan-Mudæ, in honour of the present Rajah) 'Bua pakma'; evidently a corruption of 'patma' or 'padma,' the sacred lotus (Nelumbian speciosum) of the Hindus, which is not a native of Borneo. This is, no doubt, one of the many traces of the ancient faith once professed by the Dayaks, who have preserved the memory of the emblematical flower, transferring its name to that of another plant conspicuous for its size and singular appearance. In Java, as well as in Sumatra, the Rafflesia is known as 'Patma'; but there the fact is not surprising, for the prevalence of Hinduism in those islands is a matter of not very remote history." Pakma or patma is the Malay name for the lotus.
The late Sir Hugh Low notes that the Land-Dayaks, who (in common with most of the inland tribes) regulate their farming seasons by the motions of the Pleiades, call that constellation Sakara, probably from the Batara Sakra of the Hindu-Javan mythology, to whose particular care the earth was confided.—Sarawak.
Hindu gold ornaments and a Persian coin, bearing a date corresponding with the year 960 A.D., have been discovered up the Sarawak river, and some in the centre of the Land-Dayak country, which shows that the people of the ancient Hindu-Javan settlement at Santubong must have spread into the interior, and have mixed with the natives.
29. Afterwards Admiral of the Fleet.
30. Disappointment in marriage and unkindness or harshness on the part of relatives are common causes of suicide by man or woman, but the most common motive is shame, particularly in cases of an unmarried woman, when enceinte, being unable to prove to the tribe who the father of her child is. A whole family has been known to poison themselves to escape the consequences and disgrace which would have befallen them owing to one of them having been the accidental cause of a long communal house being destroyed by fire. Suicide is invariably committed by eating the poisonous root of the tuba plant, derris elliptica.
31. The worst on record in Sarawak was committed in 1894 by a half-bred Chinaman (his mother was a Segalang, and he was brought up as one) at Seduan village, three miles from Sibu, in the Rejang. This man, who had just been discharged from jail, arose in the middle of the night, and speared or cut down all the inmates of the house—thirteen women and children, of whom only two or three survived. He was shot by Mr. Q. A. Buck, then the Resident at Sibu (joined 1874, retired 1899), who was quickly on the spot, and was the means of preventing a further loss of life.
32. The Sea-Dayaks
