Headhunters of Borneo. Shaun Clarke

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       Prelude

      The landscape consisted of dense, often impenetrable jungle, swamps, rivers so broad and deep that they were frequently impassable and aerial walkways created at dizzying heights over the rapids by the primitive tribesmen. Snakes, scorpions, lizards, poisonous spiders and dangerous wild pigs infested the whole area. Though seemingly uninhabitable, the jungle was home to many native settlements, or kampongs, most located either by the river or on a hillside, where the inhabitants tilled the land around them or hunted for fish, lizard, boar, deer, baboon, porcupine or the ever-present snake.

      These primitive peoples were Land Dyaks, Ibans, Muruts and Punans, who lived in longhouses made of atap wood, with sloping roofs of tin or thatch. The longhouses were apt to creak balefully on the stilts that had kept them out of the water for decades. Inside they were unhygienic and usually fetid because as many as fifteen families would live in a single dwelling at any given time, using the slatted floor as a communal lavatory. Small and indolent, the natives wore nothing above the waist, regardless of sex, wore their hair long, often tattooed themselves against evil spirits, and lived off rice, tapioca, vegetables and curried meat. Before being killed for eating, their prey was first stunned by a virulent nerve poison borne on a slim bamboo СКАЧАТЬ