Friends Invited Me To Go On An Excursion To A Small Island, Kambang, Where There Are A Number Of Monkeys To Whom Malays Who Desire Children Sacrifice Food.

On our arrival the animals came to meet us in a way that was almost uncanny, running like big rats in the tall grass on the muddy beach.

Many remnants of sacrificial offerings were strewn about.

Two years later I was again in Bandjermasin, when an elderly American and his wife appeared upon the scene-tourists, by the way, being very unusual here. At the breakfast table they asked a young Dutchman the whereabouts of the church and museum, and he replied that he did not think there was either in the town. As a matter of fact there is a small wooden Dutch church hidden away in a back street. Moreover, in 1914 the Resident, who at that time was Mr. L.F.J. Rijckmans, had a house built, in Malay style of architecture, for the safekeeping of Bornean industrial and ethnological objects which had been on view at the exhibition at Samarang in Java, thus forming the nucleus of a museum which at some future time may be successfully developed. The Kahayan Dayaks, not far away to the north, make exquisite cigar-cases from rattan, while the Bugis weave attractive cotton goods, resembling silk, with an original and pleasing colour combination.

The Europeans have a lawn-tennis court where they usually play every afternoon. In Bandjermasin is the headquarters of a German missionary society whose activities are confined mainly to the Kahayan River.

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