This, I Was Told, Is The Way They Formerly Were Trained.

As in a bull-fight, so here my sympathy was naturally with the animal, which managed to bite a dog severely in the side and shook another vigorously by the tail.

Finally some young boys gave it a merciful death with spears.

A woman blian died after an illness of five days, and the next forenoon a coffin was made from an old prahu. She had not been ill long, so the preparations for the funeral were brief. Early in the afternoon wailing was heard from the gallery, and a few minutes later the cortege emerged on its way to the river bank, taking a short cut over the slope between the trees, walking fast because they feared that if they lingered other people might become ill. There were only seven or eight members of the procession; most of whom acted as pall-bearers, and all were poor people. They deposited their burden on the bank, kneeling around it for a few minutes and crying mournfully. A hen had been killed at the house, but no food was offered to antoh at the place of embarkation, as had been expected by some of their neighbours.

Covered with a large white cloth, the coffin was hurriedly taken down from the embankment and placed in a prahu, which they immediately proceeded to paddle down-stream where the burial was to take place in the utan some distance away. The reddish-brown waters of the Mahakam, nearly always at flood, flowed swiftly between the walls of dark jungle on either side and shone in the early afternoon sun, under a pale-blue sky, with beautiful, small, distant white clouds.

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