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I had declined it, as the meat of the wild pig is very poor and to my taste repulsive; this old male being also unusually tough, the soldiers complained. The following morning I saw the head and jaws almost entirely untouched, too tough even for the Penyahbongs. Next day the river ran much narrower and between rocky sides.
To one of the tributaries of this river the tribe owes the name by which they are known among Punans, Saputans, and Bukats, who call the Penyahbongs simply Kreho. They are not numerous and so far as my information goes they are limited to a few hundred.
The following morning we started in a heavy rain at which we rejoiced, because it enabled us to use our prahus until we reached the foot of the dividing ridge. At noon we arrived in camp, with our clothing thoroughly wet. What the downpour might have left intact the Penyahbongs, forgetting everything but the safety of the prahus, had done their best to drench by splashing water all the time.
Shortly after their prahu had disappeared from view, on February 20, we departed in the opposite direction. Our new crew, of Penyahbongs mostly, who only lately have become acquainted with prahus, were not quite so efficient as the former, but much more amiable, laughing and cracking jokes with each other as they ran along over the rocks, pulling the rattan ropes of the prahus.
Two or three minutes later they returned, one man bearing in his arms a scarcely half-grown live pig, which had been hit by the sumpitan. The whole affair lasted barely ten minutes. At another place, where we were again waiting for the big prahu, the Penyahbongs amused themselves with wrestling in water up to their shoulders.
With the Penyahbongs the male chiefly hunts, the female doing all the work. She makes the house, cuts the sago palm, and prepares the sago. When setting forth to bring home the animal killed by her husband she carries her own parang with which to cut it up, placing it inside the rattan bag on her back. With one or two other women she may go out with the dogs to kill wild pigs with a spear.
As a rule the days were bright, warm, and beautiful; the few which were cloudy seemed actually chilly and made one desire the return of the sun. Our first task was to make arrangements for the further journey up the Busang River to Tamaloe, a remote kampong recently formed by the Penyahbongs on the upper part of the river.
It was pleasant to know that the most laborious part of the expedition was over. I put up my tent under a large durian tree, which was then in bloom. The Penyahbongs until lately were nomadic people, roaming about in the nearby Muller mountains, subsisting on wild sago and the chase and cultivating some tobacco. They lived in bark huts on the ground or in trees.
Besides the small knife for splitting rattan, which is the special implement of the Dayak woman, the fair sex of the Penyahbongs has a parang, a spear, an axe, a bone implement used in working rattan mats, and a rattan bag which is carried on the back. The women in several Dayak tribes also possess such feminine accessories.
The lieutenant had been successful, and the men had only used two days in coming down with the current. They were in charge of a Malay called Bangsul, who formerly had been in the service of a Dutch official, and whose fortune had brought him to distant Tamaloe, where he had acquired a dominating position over the Penyahbongs.
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