had it not been for them I think the accident would
have been a fatal one. The missing goods were many,
the severest losses being two bags of rice, three rifles,
six axes, and some parango, and a box of blow-pipe
apparatus ; while all the men’s clothes, blankets, &c.,
had gone out to sea, and some poor fellows had
scarcely a rag to stand in. The Dumpas and Sulu men
who were following us dived all day trying to recover
goods, and by their means two guns and half a bag of
rice were got up. The Dyaks here gave us no help,
and indeed their prahus were on the watch at a bend
of the river some way down, for blankets, kaglangs, or
other things which might float down, and which they
would very quickly clear up. ■ These people are indeed
head-hunters. Only seven days ago a head was taken
at a tree bridge over a torrent. A Dumpas man was
walking over a felled tree (which in this country
always constitutes a bridge), when four Sogolitan
men set on him, pushed him down the steep bank,
and jumping down after him, took his head and
hand and made away. I saw the victim’s head and
his hand in a-house not far from the scene of the
murder. Some four or five weeks ago the Sogolitan
chiefs, Iamboune and Pongout, admitted that seven
heads had been taken from slaughtered men of Tin-
gara (a country near the Kinabatangan). He (Iamboune)
said there was a blood-feud going on between
the men of “ Loundat ” in Sogolitan and the Tingara
tribes.
Having got our things together, we crossed the river
and made our camp for the night. I t was useless to
expect anything from the Sogolitan people. They had
already requested us not to go up to their houses, as