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Updated: June 16, 2025
I looked around to discover whence it could come, when I saw bright flames bursting forth close below me from some buildings which I recognised as the village or kampong to which I belonged.
For more than a generation a small number has been settled at Serrata, six hours walking distance from Long Kai. The other nomads, called Bukats, from the mountains around the headwaters of the Mahakam, have lately established themselves on the river a short distance above its junction with the Kasao; a few also live in the Penihing kampong Nuncilao.
They had been five miles away for water. Their skin was flushed with exercise. There they stood, mystified at seeing white men in the village Kampong. In fact they were terrified. Their big brown eyes bulged out. Their breasts heaved with fear. I said to the missionary, "Dyak Madonnas! What a painting they would make?" "Yes, there are no more beautiful women anywhere.
As soon as he is strong enough, say eight or nine years of age, the young Malay, according to the kampong, or division of the town, in which his lot has been cast, joins in his father's trade and becomes a fisherman, a trader, or a worker in brass or in iron as the case may be.
At a small kampong, where I took my midday meal sitting under a banana-tree, the kapala came and in a friendly way presented me with a basket of bananas, for these Dayaks are very hospitable, offering, according to custom, rice and fruit to the stranger. He told me that nearly all the children were ill, also two adults, but nobody had died from a disease which was raging, evidently measles.
On the seventh day Busuk's head was shaven and she was named Fatima; but they called her Busuk in the kampong, and some even called her Inchi Busuk, the princess. From the low-barred window of Busuk's home she could look out on the shimmering, sunlit waters of the Straits of Malacca.
On the knife-handle it is also very popular. There are three modes of disposing of the dead: by burying in the ground a metre deep; by depositing the coffin in a cave, or by making a house, called bila, inside of which the coffin is placed. A raja is disposed of according to either the second or third method, but the ordinary people of the kampong are placed in the ground.
PRYER first hoisted his flag, there was only one solitary Chinaman and no Europeans in the harbour, though at one time, during the Spanish blockade of Sulu, a Singapore firm had established a trading station, known as "Kampong German," using it as their head-quarters from which to run the blockade of Sulu, which they successfully did for some considerable time, to their no small gain and advantage.
These Punans had been encountered at some distance from kampong Bruen, higher up the river, and, according to reports, made up the entire nomadic population of the lower Kayan River. They actually seemed to hate the sun, and next day when it broke through the mist for a little while they all sought shelter in the shade of trees.
The Murungs, as seen here for the first time, are rather shy, dark-complexioned, somewhat short and strongly set people. They are not ugly, though their mouths always seem ungainly. The next day we arrived at a Malay kampong, Muara Topu, which is less attractive on account of its lack of cleanliness and its pretense of being civilised.
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