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A wooden bridge crosses the river at the narrow end of the funnel-shaped harbour, connecting it with the town in the steaming valley, the usual medley of open tokos and atap huts, supplemented by two dubious hotels, a green aloon-aloon, and a few stone houses denoting the presence of the European element. The original inhabitants of Gorontalo are of Alfoer race dark, glum, and forbidding.
The most general mode of covering houses is with the atap, which is the leaf of a species of palm called nipah.
Our present quest has no connection with the mysteries of the interior, and only concerns itself with the prosaic task of taking in a cargo of oil, used as the ship's fuel. We steam into a wooded bay, beneath a hill covered with the brown atap bungalows of European colonists. Colossal oil-tanks, painted red, disfigure the shore.
There were showers during the afternoon, at times heavy, and the Malays were much opposed to getting wet, wanting to stop paddling, notwithstanding the fact that the entire prahu was covered with an atap. As we approached the mouth of the river, where I intended to camp for the night, I noticed a prahu halting at the rough landing place of a ladang, and as we passed it the rain poured down.
What with making light shelters against sun and rain, in Malay called atap, usually erected for long journeys, the placing of split bamboo sticks in the bottom of my prahu, and with the Penihings evidently unaccustomed to such work, it was eight o'clock before the start was made.
The shy brown people, who at first hide in their atap huts at the approach of strangers, venture out to see the last of the departing steamer, which forms the sole link between barbarism and civilisation, and a month must elapse before any contact with the outside world can vary the seclusion of this lonely spot, a dreamland vision of repose.
The Kenyahs recognise the following minor deities: BALI ATAP protects the house against sickness and attack, and is called upon in cases of madness to expel the evil spirit possessing the patient.
Two passengers disembark for the ebony plantations on the slopes of a volcanic range, declaring itself by a slight earthquake rocking the atap shanty, where the ship's officer who tallies the cargo, offers hospitality until the fierce heat modifies sufficiently for a stroll.
The simple burning down of a Malay town can prove no serious impediment to future piratical enterprises: constructed, as they are, of bamboos, mats, and atap leaves, a town is almost rebuilt in the same period of time as it takes to destroy it.
It seems to us that the only difficult step in such a simple and direct evolution of the idea of a beneficent Supreme Being is the conception of gods or spirits that perform definite functions, such as Bali Atap, who guards the house, and the gods that preside over harvesting and war, as distinct from such gods or nature-spirits as Balingo and Bali Sungei.
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