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A fowl or a pig, or both, may then be killed and the blood collected. As another effective means of inducing the return of the soul the blian sings for several hours during one night or more. In the Penihing tribe he accompanies himself by beating an especially made stringed shield.
According to the Penihing chief in Long Kai the name Penyahbong was applied formerly not only to the people, but also to the mountain range in which they were living, the Muller mountains, around the headwaters of the Kapuas River in the Western Division. The western sides of the Muller mountains seem to have been their headquarters, and most of them still live west of the mountains.
Blarey did not like to have Europeans come to that country, which belonged to the natives, as he expressed it. The Penihing kampong, Sungei Lobang, was soon reached. It is newly made, in accordance with the habit of the Dayaks to change the location of their villages every fourteen or fifteen years, and lies on a high bank, or rather a mud-ridge, which falls steeply down on all sides.
No Penihing will go to the cave of the dead except to help carry a corpse, because many antohs are there who make people ill. The extreme silence was interrupted only once, by the defiant cry of an argus pheasant. As the weather was cloudy I decided to return here soon, by myself, in order to photograph and make closer inspection of the burial-place.
The blian usually resorts also to feats of juggling, proceeding in the following way: Clasping his open hands forcibly together over the painful part, at the same time turning himself round and stamping on the floor, he wrings his hands for a few seconds and then, in sight of all, produces an object which in the Penihing conception represents a bad antoh in fact, by them is called antoh.
For more than a generation a small number has been settled at Serrata, six hours walking distance from Long Kai. The other nomads, called Bukats, from the mountains around the headwaters of the Mahakam, have lately established themselves on the river a short distance above its junction with the Kasao; a few also live in the Penihing kampong Nuncilao.
The great hornbill, as well as the red and white hawk, may be killed, but are not eaten. Three times a day the women bring water and take baths, while the men bathe when fancy dictates. Penihing and Kayan women begin to husk rice about five o'clock in the morning, while it is still dark. The women who remain in the kampong place paddi on mats in the sun to dry, and at noon they husk rice.
The kapala whom I saw at Long Kai had the mark of a ripe durian on each shoulder in front and an immature one above each nipple. On the lower part of the upper arm was a tatu of an edible root, in Penihing called rayong. Over the back of his right hand, toward the knuckles, he had a zigzag mark representing the excrescences of the durian fruit.
In Long Tjehan I observed two natives who, though passing as Penihings, were of decidedly different type, being much darker in colour and of powerful build, one having curly hair while that of the other was straight. Penihing women have unpleasantly shrill voices, a characteristic less pronounced with the men.
Until lately these inveterate head-hunters would cross the mountains, make prahus, then travel down the Upper Mahakam, and commit serious depredations among the kampongs, killing whomsoever they could, the others fleeing to the mountains. As one Penihing chief expressed it to me: "The river was full of their prahus from the Kasao River to Long Blu."
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