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Updated: May 12, 2025
"Come, old lady, I'll carry you," said Roger Trew, lifting up the hen hornbill; but the bird fought so desperately that he was glad to put her down again. "We must tie your legs and put your nose in a bag, ma'am," said Roger, "or you will be doing some one a mischief." A larger basket was therefore made, into which we put the old bird, fastening in its head at the same time.
The hornbill plays an important part in the decorative art of the Long Glat, a Klemantan tribe of the Mahakkam river, and we suspect that, if these Blu-u Kayans are of true Kayan stock, they have borrowed the hornbill design from their neighbours.
It must be remembered that the Long Glat design is tatued in rows down the front and sides of the thigh, whilst these Kayan designs have been modified to form more or less of a sinuous line design for the back of the thigh; or, in other words, the hornbill elements in the Long Glat design, though they are serially repeated, are quite separate and distinct one from the other, whilst in the Kayan designs the hornbill elements are fused and modified to produce the sinuous line pattern that in one form or another is generally employed for the decoration of the back of the thigh.
The hornbill must be included among the sacred birds of the Iban, although it does not give omens. On the occasion of making peace between hostile tribes, the Ibans sometimes make a large wooden image of the hornbill and hang great numbers of cigarettes upon it; and these are taken from it during the ceremony and smoked by all the men taking part in it.
Everything was now very still, only that once from a distance came the hoarse cry of a bird of paradise and the scream of a parrot, but directly after I seemed to detect the peculiar noise made by a hornbill, one of which birds flapped across the little valley towards a clump of trees.
On the occasion of the great peace-making at Baram in March 1899, at which thousands of Kenyahs, Kayans, Klemantans, and Ibans were present, the Ibans made an elaborate image of the hornbill some nine feet in height, and hung upon it many thousands of cigarettes, and these were smoked by the men of the different tribes, all apparently with full understanding of the value of the act.
Though the old hen hornbill, after her long and seemingly forced period of incubation, might not prove such a tender morsel, they were nevertheless rejoiced at this accession to their now exhausted larder, and the pilot at once set about plucking her, while Murtagh kindled a fresh fire.
But it seemed yet more dangerous not to venture it; and with this reflection passing through his mind he watched the hornbill through several of its swoopings, and when at length in one of these it receded to some distance from Henry's face, he took quick sight upon it, and pulled trigger.
This is secured round the neck by a huge shell, and is covered from top to bottom with the black and white feathers of the rhinoceros hornbill loosely attached to it, and which flapping about with every movement of the wearer, gives him the appearance of some huge bird.
The ground hornbill is confined to Africa; and the tree hornbill of the Philippines does not make its nest at the foot of trees, as in this story. A mountain-plant whose stem has a thin, glossy, black sheath, that is stripped off and used in twisting the decorative leglet called tikus.
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