Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra13141884roya).pdf/286

 not well planted and were short in the staple. Some of the Dusun homesteads dotted about this Tawâran plain possessed quite a home-like air of tranquillity and repose about them. Nestling in the grateful shade of cocoa-nut groves, bowered in broad-leaved bananas, and girdled with green paddy fields, they had a pleasant look to the tired traveller's cye. Snowy paddy birds dotted the verdant pastures, huge adjutant birds few on lazy wing from point to point. The scene was not without its idyllic charms, nor were home-associations wanting in the familiar-sounding caw of the Bornean crow (Corvus validus) as it was borne to the ear on the breeze.

The district towards the mouth of the Tawaran is called the Timbalang country, and has a Bajau colony settled in it. Above this point the Dusun population prevails, though a Bajau house may be found here and there. The tribal designation of the Tawâran Dusuns is Latud, and it may here be mentioned that that of the Dusuns up the Tampassuk river further north, is Tindal; that of the Dusuns in the vicinity of the North Borneo Company's Station of Kudat, on the north coast, Memâgun (vide the late Mr. ); while that of the Dusuns up the Labuk river, on the east coast, is Tambenua.

Reaching at sunset the house of a Bajau named, who had settled down there and had taken a Tawaran Dusun maiden to wife, we put up for the night, our slumbers soothed by the potent influence of some tuak, or cocoa-nut toddy, pressed upon us by the proprietor of a neighbouring Dusun house. This district we were told was called Telîbong.

An early start on the morrow down the bank of the river, brought us to the village of Liong Liongan, the Tawâran at our starting point flowing from N.E. with a rapid current. The bed rock of this region is sandstone. Proceeding some distance further down stream we accomplished a perilous transit in a gobong, or dug-out canoe of the very slenderest dimensions. C'était un maurais quart d'heure, for neither of us could swim, and the river, swollen by flood water, resembled a boiling, eddying Maelström, but fortune was kind, and on safely reaching the right bank, a short walk brought us to the Sungei Damit, which we struck a few hundred yards above