There Are One Or Two Cannons In Most Of These Forts.
The fort
at Sibu was close to Dr. Hose's house and was attacked by Dayaks only
a few years ago.
Johnson, one of Dr. Hose's assistants, showed me a
very long Dayak canoe capable of seating over one hundred men. It was
made out of one tree, but large as it was, it did not equal some of the
Kayan canoes on this river, one of which was one hundred and forty-five
feet in length. This Dayak canoe was literally riddled with bullets,
and Johnson told me that a few weeks' ago he was fighting some Dayaks
on the Kanawit, a branch river near here, when he was attacked by some
Dayaks in this very canoe. As they came up throwing spears he told his
men to fire, with the result that eighteen Dayaks were killed. The
river at Sibu was of great width, over a mile across, in fact, and
close to the bank is a Malay village, and a bazaar where the wily
Chinaman does a thriving trade in the wild produce of the country,
and makes huge profits out of the Dayaks and other natives on this
river. But the Dayaks often have their revenge and attack the Chinamen
with great slaughter, the result being that they take home with them
plenty of yellow-skinned heads with nice long pig-tails to hang them
up by. During my stay on this river there were two or three cases of
Chinamen being slaughtered by the Dayaks, and if it were not for the
forts on these rivers, every Chinaman would be wiped out of existence.
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