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Before you raise your eyebrows incredulously you might take a look at the accompanying photograph of this monster. Nor was this a record crocodile, for, shortly before our arrival at Samarinda, one was caught in the Koetei which measured ten metres, or within a few inches of thirty-three feet.
Some of the tombs hold the ashes of men who sat on the throne of Koetei when it was one of the great kingdoms of the East, long before the coming of the white man. Lady luck was kind to me, for shortly after our arrival at Tenggaroeng a delegation of Dyaks from one of the tribes of the far interior appeared at the palace to lay some tribal dispute before the Regent for his adjudication.
Further out, at the edge of the town, are the dwellings of the Dutch officials and traders comfortable-looking, one-story, whitewashed houses with deep verandahs, peering coyly out from the midst of fragrant, blazing gardens. The Residency, the Custom House, the Police Barracks and the Koetei Club can readily be distinguished by the Dutch flags that droop above them.
The doors were sealed with strips of paper affixed by means of wax wafers, but, peering through the glass, I could made out a large table piled high with trays of precious stones, ingots of virgin gold and silver, vessels, utensils and images of the same precious metals. It was the state treasure of Koetei and was worth, so the Resident told me, upward of a million dollars.
Outside the palace just below its windows, in fact is a long, low, dirt-floored, wooden-roofed shed, such as American farmers build to keep their wagons and farm machinery under. This was the royal cemetery. Beneath it the former rulers of Koetei lie buried, their resting-places being marked by a most curious assortment of fantastically carved tombs and headstones.
Though I told the others that I was going up the Koetei in order to see the strange tribes who dwell along its upper reaches, I admitted to myself that I had one object in view and one alone to see the Wild Man. Viewed from the deck of the Negros, Samarinda, which is the capital of the Residency of Koetei, was entirely satisfying.
It is a great barn of a place, two stories in height, painted a bright pink, with the arms of Koetei emblazoned above the entrance. It reminded me of a Coney Island dance hall or one of the tabernacles built for Billy Sunday. A broad flight of white marble steps leads to a wide, covered terrace of the same incongruous material.
When I set out on my long journey the old whaling captain whose tales had kindled my youthful imagination had been sleeping for a quarter of a century in the Mattapoisett graveyard, but when our anchor rumbled down off Tawi Tawi, when, steaming across Makassar Straits, we picked up the Little Paternosters, when our tiny vessel poked her bowsprit up the steaming Koetei into the heart of the Borneo jungle, I knew that, though invisible to human eyes, he was standing beside me on the bridge.
At my taste the officials pretended to be surprised and grieved. But Monsieur de Haan, doubtless because he had lived so long in the wilds that head-hunters were to him a commonplace, not only made no objection, he even offered to accompany me. "We can go up the Koetei on your cutter," he suggested.
"It is navigable as far as Long Iram, two hundred miles up-country, which is the farthest point inland that one of our garrisons is stationed. Thus you will be able to see the Dyak country as comfortably as you could see Holland from the deck of a canal boat. On our way we might pay a visit to the Sultan of Koetei, who has a palace at Tenggaroeng.
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