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In the great rivers, like the Barito and the Katingan, are many of huge size, larger than those in the mountains. Trees, animals, and even all lifeless objects, are possessed by antohs good or bad. According to the Katingans the sun is a benevolent masculine antoh which sleeps at night. The moon is a feminine antoh, also beneficent. Stars are the children of the sun and moon some good, some bad.
The most recent case that came to my notice on the Mahakam was a Penihing raid from Long Tjehan to the Upper Barito five years previously, in which four Murung heads were taken.
In a steam-launch he had gone four days up the Ajo River, a tributary to the Barito from the east, which passes between limestone cliffs. In that locality the Dayaks are rarely visited by Malays and therefore have retained their excellent tribal characteristics. The men are inclined to obesity.
A Dutch doctor in Sourabaia told me that he had been practising two years on the Barito River in Borneo, and had gone through a severe epidemic of cholera, but neither he nor his wife had been affected, although their native boy, while waiting at table, fell to the floor and in two hours expired.
On the Barito, from the deck of the Otto, I had observed similar contrivances on still taller trees of the same kind called tapang, which are left standing when the jungle is cleared to make ladangs. A few days later the rest of our party arrived and, having picked up six rubber gatherers, brought the remainder of the luggage from their camp.
According to reliable reports this custom extends over a wide area of the inland, from the upper regions of the Kapuas, Kahayan, and Barito Rivers in the east, stretching westward as far as and including the tribes of the Kotawaringin. Also, in the Western Division on the Upper Kapuas and Melawi Rivers, the same usage obtains.
One of the best known and most successful in Borneo is an old man who runs a ferry across the Barito at Bandjermasin. He has capitalized his skill and cunning by organizing himself into a sort of crocodile liability company, as it were. Anyone may secure a policy in this company by paying him a weekly premium of 2-1/2 Dutch cents.
Several old men, now dead, had their bodies, even their backs, legs, and faces, covered with tatu marks, and one thus decorated was said still to be living. Near the kampong Pendahara, where we camped the first night, were many of the majestic tapang trees which I first noticed on the Barito.
The rivers and the surrounding sea swarm with fish of many kinds, furnishing an abundance of food, although generally not very palatable. The djelavat, in flavour not unlike salmon, and the salap, both of which I met in the upper courses of the rivers Samba, Barito, and Mahakam, are notable exceptions.
It is further declared that its habitat extends through the hilly regions between the headwaters of the Busang River and the Upper Barito, and that it is especially numerous near the kampong Kelasin.
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