HEAD HUNTERS IN BORNEO.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1524, 26 March 1886, Page 3

HEAD HUNTERS IN BORNEO.

We arrived at my men's camp from our short trip at 10. 30. Tne place was 'veil pooled below a bend iu the river, at the loot of a hill 4,0u0 feel high. Potatoes, kaladi, ineloue, cucumbers were now plentiful, and my famished men got a teed of something more than rice, lor which they were very thankful. The country here is very mountainous, and, as the river is restricted oy high banks, the current is tremendous; and all the Dyaks, Sulue, ifej., said I was very brave to go up at all. it was about 11. 30 when we started on again, my prahu leading • a little prahu with Datu Mahmad followed i then came Smith and the police, and lastly the mandore and coolies in a large prahu lull of thingg. We had just passed a difficult bit of river when I heard a cry, and looking round 1 saw several heads bobbiug U p and down in the rushing river, and a prahu bottom upwards, floating down the stream, and dashing among the boulders in the distance. I jumped from my prahu and rushed to the gpot» but before 1 arrived the gopang had gone

oat of sight, and most of the men had got ashore, some with *reat difficulty and many narrow escapes. The missing goods were many, the severest losses heing two bags of rice, three guns, six axes, some panangs, blankets and all the men's little things. The Dumpas and Sulumen, whom I was protecting against the Dyaks, dived all day, getting things out, and we recovered a little. The Dyaks gave us no assistance; in fact they were waiting down the river to get stray goods. The Dyaks here are true head hunters, and only a few days ago a head was taken at a bridge over a torrent. The man was walking over the felled tree, which in this country always constitutes a bridge, when four men rushed on him, pushed him down the steep bank, and, jumping dowD after him, took his head off in a twinkling. I saw the victim's head and hand in a house not far from the scene of the murder. The headman said that three years ago seven heads had been taken from slaughtered men of Tingara, with which country he, Sogolitan, was fighting. The bodies of these men were thrown into the wood near us, and all the men said that at night, when the wind blew from a certain quarter, there was a fearful smell of dead animal matter. The Dyaks here all eat monkeys, the skins of which they tie round their waists, letting the tails hang down behind. This, no doubt, is the origin of the reported existence of " men with tails."— Advenj tures on the Equator, by Joseph Hatton I in the English Illustrated Magazine.