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As soon as we entered the country of the Oma-Suling it was pleasant to observe that the humble cottages of the ladangs had finely carved wooden ornaments standing out from each gable. Gongs were sounding, but very few people were there, and no visitors at all, although this was the first day of the feast.
Every day they started up the river to their ladangs a few miles distant, returning in the evening with their crops. I decided to visit these fields, taking my cameras with me. In years gone by the kampong people have gradually cleared the jungle from a large tract of country, but part of this clearing was still covered by logs that had not been burned.
Low receding hills rise all around as we steam along, and the utan, which more or less covers the country, looks attractive, though at first the forests surrounding the ladangs of the Malays are partly defaced by dead trees, purposely killed by fire in order to gain more fields.
Domestic pigs, of which the kampong possessed over a hundred, at last began to come in from the outlying ladangs. One by one they were carried alive on the backs of men. The feet having first been tied together, the animal was enclosed in a coarse network of rattan or fibre. For the smaller specimens tiny, close-fitting bamboo boxes had been made, pointed at one end to accommodate the snout.
It is situated on a steep hill surrounded by others, which in many places are cleared to their tops, where the inhabitants have their ladangs or rice plantations. They appeared to be a quiet, inoffensive set of people; their language different from the Malayan, which most of them spoke, but very imperfectly and hardly to be understood by us.
Beyond the point of junction with the Songi the Sadung retains an average breadth of from three-quarters of a mile to a mile. The banks continue to be partially cleared, with here and there a few Dyaks residing in single families or small communities on their ladangs or farms.
These precautions are taken to avoid bad luck in fishing and hunting, because the eyesight is believed to be adversely affected by such contact. Their sacred number is four. An unusual game played with large tops is much practised for the purpose of taking omens in the season when the jungle is cleared in order to make new ladangs.
The produce of the grounds thus tilled is reckoned at thirty for one; from those in the ordinary mode about a hundred fold on the average, the ladangs yielding about eighty, and the sawahs a hundred and twenty. Under favourable circumstances I am assured the rate of produce is sometimes so high as a hundred and forty fold.
While he slept a female orang-utan, which had its nest in the same tree and had been away hunting for food, came home, lifted the man in her arms, and carried him to her nest high up in the branches. When he awoke it seemed impossible for him to climb down, so he remained there. Each day she brought him fruit of various kinds, also occasionally boiled rice, stolen from the houses of the ladangs.
Considerable similarity is evident in customs, manners, and beliefs of the Long-Glats and the Oma-Sulings, though the limited time at my disposal did not permit me fully to investigate this subject. Sumpitans are bought, and blians' shields such as the Penihings have are not made. Both these tribes pray for many children, which to them means larger ladangs and much food.
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