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Updated: June 27, 2025
Everything considered, Bali offers more inducements than any place I know to the tired business man or the absconding bank cashier. I entered Java through the back door, as it were.
After inquiring of the patient the locality of his pains, he holds up the polished blade of a sword, and, gazing at it as one seeing visions, he sings a long incantation beginning: The crowd of people, men and women, sitting round the central figure, join in the BALI DAYONG, which recurs as the refrain at the end of each verse, intoning in loud deep voices.
The hawk is always spoken of and addressed as BALI FLAKI, and is formally consulted before any party of Kenyahs sets out from home for distant parts. To illustrate the formalities with which they read the omens we will transcribe here a passage from a journal kept by one of us.
"We will have a look at the chart, and ascertain how far off the land is," said Lord Reginald. Going below, he and Voules eagerly examined the chart. No islands appeared for some distance ahead. To the northward, was the east end of Java, with Bali, Sumbawa, and Floris, extending in a long line beyond it.
Houses were blown down; Roofs of houses going along with the wind like chaff, the shady trees in the town bending and breaking; and in the intervals between the roaring of the thunder, nothing was heard but the war cry of the men and the screams of women and children, as no one knew but that an enemy was at hand, and that they should every instant share in the fate of Bali.
The Controleur told me that he planned to utilize his next long leave in taking a native ballet to Europe, and, perhaps, to the United States. So, should you see the Bali dancers advertised to appear on Broadway, I strongly advise you not to miss them.
Something will be said of the cult of BALI FLAKI in a later chapter; but we would note here that this bird is peculiar among the many omen-birds of the Kenyahs, in that an altar-post before the house is assigned to him, or at least one of the posts rudely carved to suggest the human figure is specially associated with BALI FLAKI, and in some cases is surmounted by a wooden image of the hawk.
At last I reached Elias's mountain, and sprang over Behring's Straits into Asia; I followed the western coast in its various windings, carefully observing which of the neighbouring isles was accessible to me. From the peninsula of Malacca, my boots carried me to Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Lombok.
Bali, eh? Got bonies? I vant bonies! Vant all you got; ha! ha! ha! Gome in!"
At last I reached Elias's mountain, and sprang over Behring's Straits into Asia; I followed the western coast in its various windings, carefully observing which of the neighboring isles was accessible to me. From the peninsula of Malacca my boots carried me to Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Lombok.
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