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Updated: June 17, 2025
The Kapuas River is broad here, I should say at least 600 metres; if there is any wind one cannot cross because the prahus are all made of iron-wood and sink easily, owing to the fact that they are heavy and do not accommodate themselves to the waves. A German missionary and family had been here ten years.
"When the groined roof," he says, "was relieved of the long-accumulated coats of whitewash and repaired, the crescent was taken down and regilt. It was found to be made of a foreign wood, somewhat like in grain to the eastern wood known by the name of iron-wood.
Reptiles of all kinds, and even caterpillars, are devoured by them when hungry. The Caingwas are under the average height, but use the longest bows and arrows I have ever seen. Some I brought away measure nearly seven feet in length. The points are made of sharpened iron-wood, notched like the back of a fish-hook, and they are poisoned with serpent venom.
"It so happened, however, that my deification was due neither to my recognition as a diplomatist nor as a military strategist," said the explorer. "No, they wanted something beyond the mere fighting man to worship, and my knowledge of that fact combined with their paeans of victory to the obbligato of a solid iron-wood drum beaten with the thigh bones of the conquered to keep me awake at night.
But once the timber has been brought together upon the chosen site, the building goes on rapidly, and the whole of a house some hundreds of yards in length may be substantially completed within a fortnight. The main supports of the structure are four rows of massive columns of iron-wood. Holes about four feet in depth are dug for the reception of the butt ends of these.
I warned Miss Coomes that she must unpack the box directly, on account of the white ants; but she put it off till the next day, and at night these wretches ate through the bottom of the box, and munched up the new linen and stockings. We soon learnt to guard against their attacks by using no wood except balean, or iron-wood, which is too hard for them to bite.
Luckily I had a few tools of my own, including a small saw and some chisels, and these were now severely tried, cutting and fitting heavy iron-wood planks for the flooring and the posts that support the triangular mast.
The message was sent and an hour later a dozen of the native craftsmen arrived with their rude tools and a supply of planks cut from a kind of iron-wood or ebony tree. They prostrated themselves to Alan, then the master of them rising, instantly began to measure Jeekie with a marked reed.
The timber that is piled there cedar of Lebanon, oak from Pontus and heavy iron-wood from Ethiopia is worth hundreds of talents." "And does all that belong to your master?" "No; the owner is the grandson of a freedman, formerly in his family. Now they are very rich and highly respected, and Master Clemens sits in the Senate. There he is that man in a white robe."
After this, I made a great heavy pestle or beater of the wood called the iron-wood, and this I prepared and laid by against I had my next crop of corn, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn or meal to make my bread.
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