In Batak Land—Sumatra.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 932, 10 January 1890, Page 8

In Batak Land — Sumatra.

(Juan Kechil, tn The. Field.) Serapit greatly surprised me, alike by its size and its superiority to a Malay campong. Instead of the rickety palm-leaf sheds, fallen into all sorts of shapes by the giving way of their lashings, which content a Malay, here were regular houses, small it is true, but supported on solid piles of hard wood, roughly, squared ; the wails of ratan, plaited into elegant patterns. The roofs, of the usual palm thatch, were of a most peculiar shape, the gable ends leaning outwards so muoh that the ridge was many feet longer than the eaves, giving a peculiar top-heavy appearance to the building, and many had a fantastic carved wooden ornament at each end of the l-idge, There was no regular order in the arrangement of the houses, but the place seemed surprisingly clean, and devoid of the litter of rubbish which generally forms such a feature in a Malay village. Another sign that we w*—’ among the followers f ' fT i 0 no i onger w*— .. jslamwaa the number Aon, as little accustomed to the -gut of white men as the young ladies we had just met, retreated under the houses, and yelled at us with all the power of

their throats as we slowly made our way through the crowd to the chief’s house. These dogs are of a peculiar > breed, employed by the Bataks in deer hunting; they are small animals,' of a foxy-red colonr, with large pricked ears and curly tails, alert and intelligent;, but snappish and difficult to get into civilised habits when acquired by Europeans. The Dyaks have, I believe, an exactly similar breed in Borneo. Another animal who disapproved of us was an immense buffalo, who was being conducted to the river by a very small boy, and, seeing us, came to a dead stop, blocking the path with his bulky pinkish bodv and great crescent horns, obliging us to make a detour. The chief, or Punghulu—such being his Malay rank—was no stranger to the sight of Europeans, and was taking 'his usual siesta when we arrived, so that we had to wait some minutes before he was ready to receive us. His residence, as well as fivb or six neighbouring ones, was a very large one, for this part of the world, at least 40ft long by. 20ft wide, and the pil=s and beams supporting it were massive "enough for a railway brilge. Meanwhile, the crowd of sight-seers, which numbered by this time some 400 men, women, and children, squatted around at a respectful distance, the women chattering, the ohlldten for the most part frightened and adding their outcries to the yelping of the dogs, and the men stolidly crunching at their huge quids of tobacco and ‘sirih.’ The description of our guide would apply to the greater part of the latter, but 10 per cent at least had a further addition to their personal attractions in the shape of a huge goitre, which unpleasant appendage, often as big as a 21b loaf, either tilted the wearer’s head over on one shoulder, or turned his face up to the heavens in such a way that it was puzzling to imagine how he managed to walk in safety. All were armed, and well armed, with the befove-mentioned reaping-hook sabres, the more formidable 4 klewang 1 ’ a long, heavy, curved blade, with carved buffalo horn hilt, or the shorter straight weapon of the Achinese. Some had wellmade spears, handsomely mounted with brass, the blade, purposely ■ kept rough and raw-edged by the constant application of limejuice, covered by a neat wooden sheath. Only a few wore the characteristic) Malay weapon, the kris, having instead a narrow, curved, single-edged knife. Five or six carried the sumpitan or blow-tube ; but their firearms, with which they wore, as we afterwards found, pretty well supplied, they did not exhibit. Nearly all wore silver rings of ‘ knuckle-duster ’ pattern, not a solid circle, but cut in two, so that they could be adjusted to the size of the wearer’s finger. The women were a strange contrast to the men in appearance. While the latter were as lean as whipping-posts, and uglier than most monkeys, the former—at least those under twpnty or so—were plump, solidlybuilt, full-bosomed creatures, and there were at least half-a-dozen in the crowd before us who might be termed good-looking. One youDg lady, who must have weighed 12 stone at least, had quite a frank and ‘ jolly ’ expression on her full-moon face as she stood gazing open-eyed at us, chattering volubly and puffing at a palm-leaf cigarette. Yon can see her exact portrait iu Carl Bock’s ‘ Head Hunters of Borneo,’ entitled 4 The Belle of Long Wai.’ Indeed, the resemblance between the cannibal Dyaks described by Mr Bock and the Bataks is remarkable. She was attired in a blue sarong, of the size and shape of a small jack towel, and a coloured head handkerchief crowning a head of hair which, in colour and texture, resembled the tail of one of the country ponies, and wore in her ears a most curious species of ornament. A silver rod, about ISin long, and as thick as a pipe stem, had been passed through the extreme top of each ear and then doubled, and the ends coiled into flat spirals, which were in some way fastened into the head handkerchief. The effect was very striking, and I quite recommend it to any lady who wants to attract attention at a fancy dress ball. Most of the women present were similarly adorned, and indeed it seemed as if the fair sox had quite an equal share with the men in the good things of Batak life, and a good deal to say on matters of public interest. But there was one fatal drawback to the attractions even of the Belle Sauvage. Soap was an unknown article, and every now and then memories of my boyhood’s ferret.keeping days revisited me, with recollections of the monkey house at Regent’s Park as it was twenty year a ago.

But the older members of the community, the women especially, almost surpass my powers of description to give an idea of their weird uglines3. K. tersely summed them up aB ‘ baked monkey;’ but a monkey would at least have had a covering of hair, whereas these dreadful persons had nothing but their, very scanty clothing to canoeal any part of the leathery integument that was so tightly shrunken over their skeleton bodies, and looked so hard and dry that you expected to hear them crackle when they moved. Their faces seemed to consist solely of skin drawn over a skull without a particle ot flesh, and looked precisely as if someone had tried to make a mask out of old leather, and, failing, had thrown it down in disgust and stamped on it. Yet they seemed neither decrepit nor idiotic. The men oarried their complement of arms ; one old fellow had girded on the longest and erookedst sword there. He looked like Death with his scythe. A woman, who resembled one of the dried mummies of blacks found in North Queensland, reanimated, was pounding paddy in a wooden mortar, so I concluded that appearances were deceptive, and that they were not nearly so old as they looked. Indeed, the Malayan races aro not long lived, and really old people are very scarce, such an instanoe as the late Sultan of Brunei, who lived to 100, being almost unheard of. An 4 here is the appropriate place to speak of ♦’’* strange and unnatural practice, nr/ascribed to the Bataks. *»- “ ..iversalty Dntch travellers _ uU con fi rme d by stand • t . „nougli I do not under. ...<** any European has actually witnessed the ceremony. When the elder members of a family have reached the stage of decrepitude and uselessness (and what their appearance must be one shudders to contemplate), a general meeting of relations is held, and the senile one is invited to ascend a small tree, which the affectionate

relatives then shake with all their might, chanting a song expressive of hunger the while. If he can succeed in holding on until the shakers are tired out, he is reprieved ; but if, as is most likely, he tumbles off, he -is promptly despatched, A Dutch author, Jnnghuhns, I think, grimly remarks that this ceremony usually takes place at the time of the year when limes are ripe, this fruit being plentiful, and forming a large ingredient in the cuisine of both Malays and Batakß. But if the natives of the interior resemble those whom I am describing, the meal must be a mere form. I had forgotten to state that the Bataks file or grind all their incisor teeth down to the level of the gums, and only the jaws of a hysena could have disposed of one of the elders of Serapit. As to their cannibalism there can be no -doubt whatever. About a year later I was residing in the Asahan district, some forty miles distant, when two Chinese coolies, who had deserted from a Dutch estate, were captured by the Bataks of Lima Pulo. The usual reward for bringing back such runaways is five dollars each, hut the Bataks demanded a much larger sum, which not beiug forthcoming, they slew, cooked, and ate the unfortunates, sending some of the viands with their compliments to the head man of a large Malay campong, with which they were on bad terms They are certainly a hungry race, as might be supposed from their appearance, and not in the least particular about the quality of their food, so that there is plenty of it. I once b»w five or six men who had purchased the carcase of a worn-out gharry pony which had dropped dead on the road. They bad dragged it a little way into the jungle, and were gorging themselves like wolves, with the merest show of cooking the meat. On another occasion I met a large party with huge lumps of flesh from a rhinoceros they had killed in such a horrible state of decomposition that I was obliged to make a hasty retreat. Naturally the Malays, though but lax Mahommedans, hold soch practices in extreme disgust, and regard the Batak as little better than a wild beast.

At length the chief made his appearance at the door of his residence, and politely invited us to enter. He was a man of about forty, as far as one could guess, and his countenance, though as ill-favoured as that of the rest, was much more intelligent, and hi 3 expression would have been almost agreeable, but for the revolting, shapeless, toothless, hippopotamus-like mouth, stained dark red with ‘ sirih’ juice. He wore an embroidered skull cap, the jacket of a Dutch infantry officer, about three sizes too large, and ornamented with Spanish dollars by way of buttons, and the national bine sarong, on the folds of which were stuck no less than three strangely fashioned knives. The house, not having any windows, was so dark that I had nearly endangered the safety of the party by sitting upon one of the chief’s progeny, an infant of about a month old, in a basket; but presently someone pushed up a kind cf trapdoor on the roof, and allowed us to survey the apartment, which occupied about one-third of the house, the rest being partitioned off for private apartments. The floor was of split strips of * mbong ’ palm, whose sharp edges made themselves felt through the palm-leaf mats, and the sides of the room were ornamented with some dozen pairs of deer horns, some of them magnificent specimens, on which were hung a miscellaneous collection of objects and weapons, spears, swords, and guns, the latter mostly • Tower ’ smooth-bores. One, however, was a regular brass flint-lock blunderbuss, such as was once carried by the guard of a mail coach in England, and was the favourite weapon of the Irish * Whiteboy.’ Another was a very long-barrelled Spanish musket, dated 1770, and handsomely inlaid—the loot, no donbt, of some Baligini or Sulu pirate—which could have told strange tales of its centnry’s travels from one murderous hand to another.

Our Javanese, who had made up their minds that their only hope of safety consisted in not losing sight of us for an instant, occupied the platform outside the door, every now and then glancing nervously in, to make sure that we had not been spirited away. Having found places on the floor where it was possible to sit in thin linen trousers without absolute torture, K. began to explain the object of our visit, dilating

| largely on the pecuniary benefits which | would accrue to him, the chief, from the establishment of a ‘ kabun ’ or plantation in 1 his neighbourhood. He replied in Malay, which he spoke fluently, though, from the want of teeth, not very intelligibly, that he himself was perfectly agreeable to let the land for such purpose ; but then came the usual qualification, that his uncle, his hrother-in law, and several others, had a say in the matter, and would have to be consulted, and, I suppose, ‘squared.’ Meanwhile, several leading members of the community, hearing frequent mention of ‘ringgit,’ or dollars, entered without much ceremony, bringing a strong menagerie flavour with them, and, seating themselves around a brass spittoon, commenced filling it with great rapidity. As I took no part in the negotiations, I occupied myself in looking about, and, seeing a curious knife in the hand of the man next to me I asked him to show it me. He at once handed it over. It was a narrow, thick-backed, slightly curved weapon, about a foot long, the blade and socket into which the hilt was inserted beautifully inlaid with gold ; but the hilt was the most singular j.art. It was apparently ivory, yellow and Craeked with age, and in shape not anlike the handle of a compass saw, being bent twice at right angles, the upper part inserted in the socket and the lower terminating in a blunt point. The centre was muoh thicker than the ends. I inquired if ifc was ivory. * No,’ answered the owner, ‘a fish’s tooth’; and, looking closer, I saw that it was in fact a tooth or tusk entire, but of what fish, or, indeed, what animal, I am quite at a loss to imagine. No ivory-bearing animal known ha 3 teeth anything like it. I inquired whence it came. ‘From the mountains,’ he replied, pointing in the direction of Lake Tobah, the* centre of Batak Land, which, with its dense population and fortified towns—said by Dutch account to aggregate 300,000 inhabitants—was distant some five days’ travel beyond the rugged forest-clad ranges in the distance. Several times afterwards I saw these extraordinary tusks as the hilts of knives and krises. The owners always gave the same account of them, and I much regret that the extravagant prices set upon them were beyond my means. In connection with the gold inlaying, I might mention that there is abundance of alluvial gold in the country at th 6 foot of these ranges. The Bataks collect considerable quantities by the most primitive methods, but the gold is so fine, that I feel sure they get hut a very small percentage of what the wash-dirt actually contains. I saw one of these diggings, which was situated on a sloping hillside, while about a dozen men were scratching like rabbits in the ground, and, after collecting sufficient stuff, shaking it up in an earthen pot with cocoa nut oil and wateir, when the oil carried up with it to the surface the fine scales of gold, which were skimmed off with a leaf. The locality would have been a good one for sluicing or hydraulic mining. What is done with the gold I do not know, as I never saw any gold ornaments among them, and I conclude that is is either sold to Chinese traders, or is a perquisite of the chief.