Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
One evening at the Bandjermasin hotel I was startled by seeing our three Javanese men taking a sudden and determined departure, carrying all their belongings. One of the hotel boys who occupied the room next to them had shown the well-known symptoms of cholera, whereupon they immediately decamped.
The sea loudly announces its presence here, the tide overflowing much of the low ground, hence the Malay name, bandjir = overflow, masin = salt water. Large clumps of a peculiar water-plant float on the river in Bandjermasin in great numbers, passing downward with the current, upward with the tide, producing a singular, but pleasing sight.
I could not afford to wait for the monthly steamer which touches at Sampit on its way to Singapore, so I arranged to make the trip on board an old wooden craft which was under repairs in Bandjermasin, and in the afternoon of June 5 we started. The steamer was small, slow, and heavily laden, so it was not a very pleasant trip.
B. Brouers, of Bandjermasin, whose mother was a Dayak noble from the Lower Kahayan, was instructed by her never to eat turtle. He, being a Dutchman, disregards this and nothing has ever happened, as he said, but he added that an acquaintance who did likewise lost the skin of his finger-tips. Long, long ago a man was catching punai with sticks to which glue had been applied.
These same Kenyahs are entrusted to go to Long Iram to bring provisions to the garrison. About eighty of them are sent, accompanied by only two soldiers, and after three months' absence the goods arrive safely at Long Nawang. On board the steamer were also two Punan head-hunters from the interior who were being taken to Bandjermasin under the guard of two soldiers.
In Bandjermasin is the headquarters of a German missionary society whose activities are confined mainly to the Kahayan River. They are Protestants and worked for a great number of years without making any noteworthy impression on the natives, but of late years they have been more successful. Catholics, who came later, have a station on the Mahakam River.
The kapala, who had exerted himself to get our things on board again, thanked me for the visit and we steamed away, arriving safely in Sampit a couple of days later. In the beginning of July I returned to Bandjermasin, where I packed my collections and despatched them to Europe.
That the efforts have been crowned with success is indicated from the reports issued in 1916, showing that plague cases had been reduced seventy per cent. Returning to Bandjermasin toward the end of October, I began to make arrangements for a journey to Lok Besar, in a hilly region of the Northeast at the source of the Riam Kiwa River.
It was a matter of five or six days by prahu from Bandjermasin, followed by a three days' march, and I decided to return by a different route, cross the mountain range, and emerge by Kandangan. Accompanied by Mr. Loing, the surveyor, and the soldier-collector, I started from Bandjermasin on November 1.
As it had been found impossible to secure Dayaks in the Bulungan for my expedition to New Guinea, the resident courteously offered to get eighty men from the Mahakam River. This would take at least two months and gave me opportunity to visit a lake called Sembulo, a considerable distance west of Bandjermasin.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking