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We were afterwards informed that, on the arrival of these symbolic gifts, TAMA KULING called together the chiefs of all the surrounding villages to receive their share, and to discuss the advisability of accepting the implied invitation to migrate into the Baram.
This was observed with regret by an influential chief, who, therefore, found an opportunity to relate in public the following story. "A party of Kayans," he said, "once came over from the Batang Kayan to visit their relatives in the Baram.
A Turik on the Baram River, in Borneo, refused to part with some hook-like stones, because they, as it were, hooked his soul to his body, and so prevented the spiritual portion of him from becoming detached from the material.
But just as peace seemed restored, a great shout went up from the Baram men, "Tama Bulan is wounded"; and sure enough there he stood with blood flowing freely over his face.
Here much grain is produced, one hundred piculs of black birds'-nests, two hundred piculs of wax, some gold, pepper, camphor, &c., but the tin-mines, before mentioned, are utterly neglected. There are several other towns upon each of the rivers along this coast; the principal ones are Salat, Bacalo, Pasir, and Baram.
Neither these Madangs nor the Kenyahs of the Batang Kayan had entered into friendly relations with the Sarawak government, and they had preserved a hostile attitude towards the Baram tribes.
"I'm an old man now," he told the Resident, "but if I were as salt as I used to be, the Rajah would not have taken possession of the Baram without a struggle." Another of his many picturesque sayings seems worth recording: "Your Rajah may govern the down-river people; they are inside the Sultan's fence and he had the right to hand them over.
The Resident of the Baram having heard of the presence in the central no-man's land of a considerable population of Kenyahs under a strong chief, TAMA KULING, sent friendly messages to the latter.
Nieuwenhuis, to study the people, their customs and conditions, and by its generous expenditure upon the publication of the handsome volumes in which he has embodied his valuable reports. On the second journey this intrepid traveller penetrated to the head of the Batang Kayan, and there made the acquaintance of the same Kenyahs who had recently visited the Resident of the Baram.
This was an area in which, except along the coast, the Sultan's authority had never been exercised, and which had been kept closed to trade and the depredations of the Malays, by the fear of the Kayans. For the Kayans, who dominated all the middle waters of the Baram, had in the past threatened even Bruni.
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