Caves in the Jungle

by AGNES NEWTON KEITH

1

IN a day when human sacrifices were made to pagan gods, when head-hunting was a happy pastime and human heads hung from native roofs as coconuts hang from trees, the bird’s nest caves were to early Borneo what gold was to pioneer California. The Gomantong Caves on the Kinabatangan alone produced $25,000 worth of nests yearly, a huge fortune in those days, and this sum represented the greatest native wealth in all North Bornco. Possession of these caves was claimed by a peaceful, timid, native tribe, the Buludupies, whose leadership Pengiran Digadong Samah had forcibly acquired by being the opposite of peaceful and timid. Shriveled and brown, with legs like mangrove roots, fists like elephant hide, with the sad, bright, liquid eyes of a Pekinese, and a conscience that was not his guide, he ruled his river in Borneo with native poisons, knives, and daggers, blackmail, and a fierce cruel cunning. Soon the Pengiran came to consider the caves as his own private property, although he still generously permitted his tribesmen to do the work of collecting the nests, of climbing to great heights on bamboo poles and rattan ladders.

In addition to bird’s nest marketing the Pengiran ran other rackets. He strung rattan across the river and when a boat passed up or down he collected tithes from the occupants, and also collected taxes from neighboring villages. If spies were sent to outwit him he plied them with wine and women, or poison, until they went to bed or the grave.

Being a sturdy individualist and not one to go along with progress, when the states comprising North Borneo were turned over to the Chartered Company and the white man came to rule, the Pengiran did not fall into line. He continued to collect taxes, distribute poison, hack up his enemies, promote his friends, and collect wives.

Finally a time came when the police of the white men had had enough of this rugged individualism, and they went up the river with guns. But this wasn’t the old story of the native who had no guns: the Kinabatangan people under the Digadong’s tutelage had old muzzle-loaders and tower muskets, and in addition to blowpipes, knives, and poison, they met the police with these. When the white men saw the natives with guns, the Digadong’s last chance was gone. The guns spoke, the Buludupies’ decadent muskets lost aim, exploded, went wild. Not so the white man’s — Pengiran Digadong Samah fell, and a legend was done.

The Government confiscated the Gomantong Caves and hired contractors to work the caves and collect the birds’ nests, Government to keep one half the gross profits and the contractors and their hired labor the other half. For the people who had once owned the nests there was nothing, except that the work of collecting must be done by them for a share in the contractor’s profits.

Today, the most satisfying source of revenue to both natives and Government is the harvesting, sale, and export to China of bird’s nests from the fifteen famous cave groups of North Borneo which are a byword wherever bird’s nest soup is sipped. The bird’s nest industry now brings yearly to this country almost $100,000, plus a goodly sum for export duty — all acquired at the expense of the birds alone.

The vital ingredient of bird’s nest soup is not feathers, sticks, twigs, or grass, but, as is known to epicures, it is the inspissated saliva of adult swiftlets. This is a secretion from the salivary glands of certain swiftlets, with which they make their nests. The saliva hardens on exposure to the air into something like isinglass, and this is the edible ingredient of bird’s nests.

Nests are attached at great and inaccessible heights inside the inky chambers of the limestone caves when the nest-building urge comes to the small, dark-plumaged, white-bellied swiftlet. When nests are completed and eggs are ready for hatching, both nest and eggs are collected by natives, leaving the frantic swiftlet balked of its mission. Once, twice, and a third time the bird makes its nest every year, and the third time the swiftlet is permitted to hatch her eggs and the nests are not taken until after the birds are fledged. Even then, nests are sometimes taken too hurriedly, and many of the immature fledglings fall to the floor of the cave, to die or be eaten by cockroaches. If nests are taken more than three times in one year, the bird becomes exhausted and frustrated, refuses to build another nest, and its posterity is lost.

The nests are classified as black or white by their color, which is determined by the species of swiftlet which makes them. Nests are collected by expert native climbers from several tribes, among these the original Buludupies and the Orang Sungei, who with lifetime training mount rattan ladders to daring heights of four to nine hundred feet to steal the nests.

The caves are also inhabited by myriads of bats, and the winging beat of their startled flight floods the caves with eerie sound. As the intruder feels his way over the damp floor of the caves he creeps over a moving, seething mass of cockroaches and cave centipedes, and he looks upwards in vain for a view of the nests. Not until climbers mount and light the cavern roof with torches and candles will he see the drab, nonspectacular, grayish cups clinging far above him to damp cave walls—cups which mean home to the swiftlets and epicurean soup in China.

Bird’s nests are classified in North Borneo as forest produce, and in most cases the caves are in Forest Reserves. For this reason the harvesting, revenue, responsibility for, and conservation of the industry — except in the case of a few nativeowned caves—is in the hands of the Forest Department and is of vital interest to Harry. My own first nightmare jungle trip in 1935 was to the most famous of all bird’s nest factories, the Gomantong Caves.

Unless you know jungle travel, you will think it ridiculous that a limestone hill full of sizable caves is lost when it is within a known radius of seven miles. But despite their reported fabulous value, the Shaitan’s caves remain both lost and unexplored. A Buludupi named Galpan, who acts as agent for Government and for the natives who hold contracts for the removal of the birds’ nests from Gomantong Caves, one day suggested to Harry that they organize a search for the lost caves. If successful, this undertaking would profit the Government a worth-while sum and would double Galpan’s own takings as contractor. The proposed expedition was exactly to Harry’s taste and he decided to accompany Galpan, taking George with him.

Harry’s diaries are always accurate and specific. They inform the reader exactly what hour and day he arrived and departed from each given destination, and they are filled with correct and precisedata, but human emotions have no place in them. This is quite impossible for me to understand, as Harry himself is exactly the opposite.

Any man who puts “Married 4 P.M.”as a description of his wedding day, and “Son born 9 A.M.”for final comment on the birlh of his son and heir, is not one to paint the jungle with anything more colorful than mud. However, Harry promised me that on the forthcoming trip to the Caves he would strike a real literary key — if he remembered, if he had time, and if there was anything to tell! Meanwhile I began to feel myself getting backed unwillingly into another jungle trip.

When the men of my family returned ten days later, it did not surprise me that they both assured me that nothing had happened, and each hurried off to his own preoccupation — George to a comic and Harry to the office. I could wait for evening; then I knew I would be permitted to see the small black leather book.

Evening came, the black book lay open before me, and I turned hopefully, then less hopefully, through its pages. I closed it, handed it back, and with an effort said nothing.

“Get anything out of it?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think you would. Really, nothing happened. The weather was horrible, we didn’t find the caves, and there isn’t anything more to say about it — except that Galpan still thinks we may find them when we go again next month.”

“Look, dear, you were ten days in the jungle. Didn’t you notice anything about George? What he said, how he looked, or anything?”

“No, I didn’t; he just looked dirty to me. Why don’t you come yourself next time and find out what he says and does? I suggest that you come with us next month. Will you?”

A groan. “I suppose so.”

2

THIRTEEN men, a boy, and a woman who hates the jungle stand, loll, squat, on the soft surface of leaves which spread over the hard black mud like a brown carpet over waxed linoleum. The skins of the boy, two men, and woman are a sickly bananayellow in the jungle light, and the rest are Dusunand-Murut brown in shades of burnt sienna.

The elements have been at work, and as usual the rain falls. The dusk of noon suffuses the jungle in the half-light of a hidden world where we live in gloom, looking up at a roof of leaves without seeing the sun. Outside the jungle, men drip with sweat; here we and the trees drip with rain.

“Shall I drink it out of the tin, Mum?” George suspends a condensed milk tin above his open mouth.

“ Why not ? ”

The sweet, sticky milk goes down George’s throat. “Ummm. Good!”

The brownskins are eating cold rice cooked the night before and carried with them to save time from building a fire, and Harry lights the primus stove to make coffee. George sits crosslegged with the coolies, and between his knees is a coconut shell full of cold rice given him by Ungib, a Dusun, his pal, who squats beside him. Ungib at eighteen and George at eight see things alike, the same jokes amuse and the same pleasures delight, Ungib grins into his rice bowl as he nimbly rolls the rice into balls with his fingertips and shoves it into his mouth. George does the same.

“Ummm! This cold rice is good!”

“I’ll remember to add cold rice to your diet when we get home,” I promise. George is an epicure at home.

“I do like jungle travel. Ma. Don’t you?”

“Only when it’s over and I write about how wonderful it is.”

“Ready?” says Harry. “ We can’t waste time.”

“Okay, Dad. Can I have some milk chocolate to cut on the way?”

“Here you are. Do your leech bites bother you ? ”

“No, but look at the blood!” George points proudly to dried streamers of blood which trail down from each leech wound to cake like red paint on his legs.

“I suppose you’re a seasoned traveler now.” I look gloomily at my own raw legs. “Did you burn the leeches yourself with a cigarette?”

“Sure. I borrowed a cigarette from Ungib.”

Ungib grins at the sound of his name, scratches himself, spits, gets to his feet, and pulls his pack on his back and his pack strap over his forehead, and waits for the party to move. George stands beside him, having performed the same processes.

“Let’s get going now, George. This is the last stop before we make camp for the night. Stick close behind me.”

“Okay, Dad. And Ungib next to me. Come, Ungib.”

In the old days it was I to whom Harry said, Stick close! I thought. The center of things shifts with the birth of a child, yet somehow one doesn’t mind.

We had left Sandakan two days before by the Elopura, crossing the bay and traveling up the Kinabatangan as far as the landing at Lamag.

The next day the party was joined by ten Dusun carriers and Galpan, who had developed a further working theory as to where the Shaitan’s caves were hidden, and who believed that five or six days’ search would serve to locate them. Food for ten days was packed in carrying receptacles to be taken with us to the jungle.

At dawn this morning as the sky lightened to gray and a steady rain fell, we drew away from the launch in small native dugouts, looking back to wave, then peering silently forward through the mist to the tree-walled jungle shore. Jungle travel at dawn is always a dismal adventure which requires fortitude more than daring, and silence more than cheer; and not even George interrupted the sound of dripping paddles with his exuberant voice.

At the river’s bank we formed into single file with George and me in the middle and the carrying coolies last. As we proceeded away from the river by Galpan’s directions, the jungle proved only moderately heavy, but the land alternates between swamp and hillside and we are always either plodding through mud or pulling up and down hills.

It has been a good year, for jungle fruit, illipi nuts, meritam, lansat, and tampoi are still fruiting, and game is evident. Pig wallows are frequent and muddy gray rumps slide out of sight into swamps; jibbering, gray river monkeys swing through the treetops; the cries of barking deer echo often in the distance; and elephant turds are underfoot to be stumbled over; but we move forward without stopping for game.

Light rains continue and every leaf quivers with a leech looping madly with ambition to attach himself to a passer-by. We have rubbed ourselves with leech repellent, a scented oil which protects while it adheres to the skin, but washes away after a couple of hours of rain and mud, and now the leeches are attaching themselves to exposed portions. But as our bodies weary, the annoyance of the leech tickle is swamped in fatigue, and I have to remind myself that night is the time to dread, when itching begins and scratching continues. The natives move through jungle without seeming to disturb a leaf, their eyes quick to note when a leech attaches, and they deal instant death by burning with a cigarette, or scraping them off with the jungle knife which is always in their hands.

3

AS the rain grows heavier, so do our feet; the jungle damp creeps like a chill in the bones. I have my mind categorically fixed on the evening drink, food, and bed, but George has his mind on Harry’s rifle. He has survived the morning well, being perfect jungle size, about five feet four and the height of the average native. Tall travelers like myself catch their hair in trees and their feet in roots and bend double to stumble awkwardly through tunnels of vines cut by the natives to fit their own dimensions.

By 3 o’clock Harry is watching for a possible camp site, as in east coast jungle it is necessary to make camp by this hour if you hope to escape the heavier rains. If shelter is not established early, sleeping equipment will be soaked, campfires won’t burn, the night will be misery, and the next day a weary one.

By 3.30 we have chosen a site on a slight rise in the least heavy part of the jungle, after first making sure that no dead trees are near to fall in a storm. The coolies clear ground for camp, and Harry and George break branches and chop stumps for firewood. I bring out the gin bottle, and George refreshes himself otherwise.

“More chocolate, please, Mum!”

“I thought I just gave you some.”

“I gave it to Ungib.”

I hand out a fresh bar of milk-with-nuts.

“ Are you very tired ? ”

“Not tired at all. Isn’t this chocolate good?” The chocolate mingles on George’s face with mud, sweat, and rain.

“Don’t eat too much chocolate, or you’ll spoil your appetite for supper.”

“I couldn’t spoil my appetite!”

“Hurry up with the firewood, or we’ll never eat,” says Harry. “Where’s your pal Ungib? He doesn’t seem to be very energetic about making camp.”

“He heard a deer call, and went to see. He’s a wonderful shot, Dad.”

Usually Harry travels with a light tent fly of sufficient size to cover himself and a companion, leaving the coolies to rely on kajang thatches, as is the native custom. But even a light tent is a heavy load after a wet night, and on this trip Harry has abandoned the tent theory and we all sleep under kajang thatching brought from the launch.

The thatches used are made from palm leaves sewn into three-by-five-foot strips with a fold in the center, and thirty kajang are enough to shelter all the party. The weight of the entire load is little greater than that of a canvas tent large enough to shelter two, after the tent is wet.

Now the men cut a number of saplings and lash these together with rattan strips to form a framework. The trees which have been left standing at convenient distances support the ridgepole, which is lashed to them at a distance of four feet from the ground. With the pole used as a crossbeam, the thatches are hung down much as canvas would be draped across the ridgepole of a tent, and extra thatches are shingled downward. This shelter is comparable to a low shed roof without sides; when finished, it is sufficient to break the rain but not luxurious enough to corrupt its occupants into late sleeping.

Now the roof is up and three small camp cots are placed at one end, with mosquito nets hung over them from the roof above. The remainder of the shelter will accommodate Galpan and the carriers, who will stretch out on their mats of split rattan and scratch all night. The end near the fire is reserved for them, as they do not use mosquito nets and the smudge will help dissipate the insects, although it will not stop the scratching.

The routine of camp-making requires about an hour, depending on how much jungle space there is to be cleared. The same length of time is also the minimum required to clear ground and erect a small tent sufficient only for our own needs.

The campfire has blazed and settled now to a well-controlled bed of coals, the saucepan of water is bubbling, the coffee boils, something which smells very good is sizzling over the coals.

“Hi, Ma, when do we eat?”

George’s wet hair plasters on his forehead in sleek dabs, his damp shirt sticks to his ribs, his long lean brown legs glisten, his gray-blue eyes squint with wood smoke, and his nostrils spread with the smell of food.

“Right now we eat.”

I dish out the menu. Well, anyway, I do know how to cook rice. Here it is, cooked only as the Orient knows it, each grain separate and flaky and no soggy pudding effect. And over it a tin of bully beef with onions. Now comes the noise of the scraping of enamel plates.

“When the plates are clean, apricots and cheese are coming,” I say. And the customers eat the apricots and cheese without complaint.

It is only 6.30, but supper is over and Harry and I are in our cots ready for sleep, and it seems to me that this hour of peace makes it all worth while. It is so sensuously wonderful just to be lying there in a complete negation of all effort, not dragging my feet out of the mud, not keeping up, not smiling pleasantly, not doing my part, scarcely even existing. Surely, nothing can be as good as nothing, I tell myself!

4

DAWN. I am attending to my own dismal preparations for the day, and leaving George to his father. As far back as I can remember jungle travel, I recall these dawn preparations. First, the struggle to tear myself from the only comfortable spot on the trip, the blankets I sleep between. Not the struggle to awaken, because sleeping has been interrupted by scratching all night, as the warmth of the bedding makes the leech bites squirm. Then the pathetic pretense of starting the day clean, with face washing, tooth scrubbing, and the more protracted, maddening attempt to comb out and put up long, straight hair in semidarkness, an attempt which lasts only during the first days of the trip, after which it is combed out and braided in two dark tails which dangle beside my highcheekboned face. Then the blue shorts, shirt, and wool socks, sneakers, and bandana on the hair.

Then the bed to make, folding the blankets, rolling the camp mattress, and stuffing them all in the bag. And then the tidying up, burning dirty Kleenex, cigarette butts, scraps of paper, placing dry shorts and shirt in my knapsack where I can get them as soon as we make camp at night, and collecting the other pair of sneakers from the fire where they have been drying, and slinging them in on top of the pack with the cigarettes, the leech repellent, the sketching block, and the toilet paper.

Now I can take time to look around and breathe deeply of damp, gray early air and feel grateful that another day is done, another one begun, I am that much nearer home, and still alive. In fact, in spite of complaints, more alive at this painful hour of 5.45 than I have been for some time.

“It’s ready, Agnes, the life-giving fluid!”

“ Coffee! ”

One cup, two cups, three cups . . .

“Ah! Now the lifeblood starts to flow! But — not that I want to be critical at this juncture, because, even if it isn’t coffee, it’s done me a lot of good, but — what is this stuff, Harry?”

“I put eight tablespoons of coffee in the pot, and the rest is water from the jungle stream, the principal ingredient of which is mud. It’s boiled to sterility, however.”

“The epic of good earth. Well, very excellent mud, anyway. I think I can live now. And the twirp? How does he find himself?”

But the twirp doesn’t find himself at all, at dawn; he takes his sleeping seriously, and the one thing he doesn’t approve of in jungle travel is early rising.

The kajang roof is bundled up by now, the beds are folded and in carrying cases, and it is just light enough to travel. The first day has left its mark without yet hardening the victims for the future, and the second day is bound to be the hardest.

The jungle is denser, the rain heavier, mud deeper, the hills more slippery, and feet grow heavier to lift hour by hour. Every leaf bears a leech longing to seek ingress by some sensitive spot, but each man goes doggedly along with the air of a job to be done, and I, without any air at all, spend considerable time in the mud. I see that Harry watches George a little anxiously, but George is okay, now the dawn has passed.

“Are you all right, old man?”

“Yes, Dad. More chocolate, please!”

Harry reaches into the pack. “Not too tired?”

“I’m fine! This is fun, isn’t it?”

“Are you getting chilled, George?”

“No, I’m fine! I wish we could live like this always!”

Tonight we make camp earlier, and the same routine of putting up shelter proceeds, but hampered tonight by heavier rain. Meanwhile Ungib hears barking deer in the distance and gets George’s ear, and George gets Harry’s.

“My rifle? . . . My God, George, aren’t you ever tired?”

“No, Dad — this was an easy day! So, please let us have the rifle? Ungib and I will get that deer for sure. You’d better have a good hot fire ready to cook it on when we come back.”

“You’ve been wet all day!” says Mother. “If you had any sense you’d stay in camp and get dry. And if your father had any sense, he’d make you!”

“Why, I’m not wet, Mum!” He is as wet and sleek and shining as a young deer, and as much in his element.

“Why do you want to go out and kill things, anyway?”

“Oh . . .” This is not a new idea. “But we need the meat, Dad.”

“We don’t need it. We have rations.”

“But the coolies want meat. Ungib says so. So please can we go, Dad?”

“The coolies always want meat — especially deer! Well, all right, go. I suppose it takes time to learn . . .”

“Learn what, Dad? To hunt?”

“Learn not to hunt!”

“Oh . . . Well . . . Bye, Dad.”

The shelter is up, the rice is cooked, the campfire burned to coals when we hear a deer call, followed by shots. Shortly after, the hunters arrive.

“We got it, Dad! We got it! Ungib called it by blowing on a leaf, and the deer thought it was another deer and came in our direction, and we shot it! Oh, look, Dad; look, Mum!”

We look, as George dumps on the ground before us a little barking deer, slender, satiny, smallboned, with body stiff now and eyes staring in death. George stands triumphantly over it, young, sleek, streamlined, and triumphantly alive.

“See, Mum!”

I turn away; he knows what I think.

“See, Dad!”

“Yes, you got it, George. You got your deer.”

“Well, aren’t you pleased about it, Dad?”

“Not very.”

“ But you used to hunt a lot yourself! Anyhow, you brought the gun!”

“I know, George. I brought the gun for emergency. I don’t like killing things unnecessarily any more.”

The little deer is quickly quartered, and the sweet meat, the equivalent of a filet steak, is placed in the stew pot in preference to my menu; the rest goes to the coolies.

Now the stew is served and the meat is so tough it can scarcely be chewed. We make no comment.

“I say, Dad, this deer is good!” says George, chewing madly. “Lucky we got it, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and no.” Harry feels his jaw tenderly. “What about a tin of bully beef, Ma? I’m hungry.”

“ Well — yes. Followed by apricots and cheese?”

“ Excellent suggestion! ”

“And save this for tomorrow?” asks George.

“Or perhaps you might give what’s left to the men. After all, it’s the First camp kill.”

“Okay.”

The coolies hang their portions over the campfire to smoke it through the night. Next morning they will cut it into small hunks to toss in the bottom of their packs where, in days to come, it will stink worse and worse, until it is, by their standards, edible.

As he cuddles into his sleeping bag George grumbles for the first time, “I wish we didn’t have to get up so early tomorrow.”

5

ANOTHER day comes, camp is made, and again George and Ungib go hunting. No shots are heard, but the two return jubilant in a short time.

“Mum, look what I got!” George holds up a tortoise a foot across and gray with jungle mud, and Ungib displays a similar one.

“Aren’t they fine? I’m going to keep them and take them home.”

“What do you want them at home for? I can’t imagine anything less appealing.”

“I’m going to breed them and start a tortoise farm.”

“What makes you think you have both sexes there?”

“Ungib says! He’s an expert on tortoises. This is the female . . . see?”

Examination.

“Well, no. I don’t, as a matter of fact!”

“Well — that means she’s the female! Oh, you’ll know I’m right when they start to produce babies!”

“Who’s going to carry them home?”

“Ungib’s going to make us a basket out of vines, and we’ll carry them.”

“We? That’s nice for Ungib!”

“It’s fun, isn’t it, to bring something back alive and not shoot it, Mum?”

“You’re getting the idea, eh? Now, George, you really must get to bed.”

“Okay. I’m as good as in!”

And he’s in.

“Mum, Galpan says that our God is really the same as his god, Allah. So perhaps I’ll be a Moslem. It’s a very good religion except for not eating pork.”

Silence from me. The child should be asleep!

“Dad?”

“ Ummmh.”

“Dad, what is Ungib? I mean what god does he have?”

“He’s a pagan, and he believes in a god called Kinaringan, and Kinaringan’s wife, Munsummundok.”

“Does he say prayers to them?”

“Not exactly, but he makes little offerings to them like a bit of cloth, or tobacco maybe, or anything the gods might like. Now go to sleep!”

Silence. Then, “Dad, don’t you think those tortoises will be nice pets at home?”

“I think they are ideal traveling companions; they neither talk in bed nor borrow my rifle! Go to sleep.”

All this time we have been traveling the perimeter of a circle about the area where Galpan thinks the caves are located, but the limestone hill has not been found. The area has not been completely exhausted, and Galpan once more says that a week longer would make the search successful. But our rations are consumed, the heavier rains are here, and if we do not return soon to the launch a search party will be sent.

it is the last night in the jungle. For the last time the kajangs have been laid, the cots placed, the nets hung, for the last time the coolies have stretched and scratched and smoked and coughed and laughed softly by the fire. For the last time we have cleaned our teeth in the drain and used the jungle as a latrine, squatting in the rain to hurry back to the fire wet and bitten by mosquitoes; and for the last time as we lie under shelter, the rain comes down in the protective, curtaining, cosy fashion that rain has when you’re out of it.

Home in a few nights, I tell myself. And am I glad? I’m supposed to be.

“Well, Mum, are you ever coming again?”

“Haven’t made up my mind.”

“She never is, but she always does,” says Harry.

Cold cream — I’ll have to use it every night when I get home, I am thinking — and it will take weeks to get my hands clean — not till a change of skin, I guess, and my hair is dank with sweat and dirt.

“Well, Mum? Coming?”

“ No.”

“But you might change your mind, Mum?”

“ Easily.”

“Good. Dad and I’ll change it for you.”

Later still comes George’s voice through the drips and rain. “Well, Dad, we didn’t find the caves.”

“No, George—but maybe it’s just as well. The natives say that the price of finding the caves is the sacrifice of the finder’s son.”

“Dad! You don’t believe that, do you?”

“Well — out here in the jungle in the rain, things make sense that don’t make sense at home.”