Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait561880roya).pdf/173

 to the summit of some of their highest mountains, on account of the tigers which still, they say, lurk in the deepest recesses of the forest." Afterwards he again met with the same tradition among the Linbang Muruts, but in a different locality, where two rocks about thirty feet apart were known among the people as the "Tiger's Leap." says that he had heard of the existence of tigers on the North-East Coast also, but gives no reference.

In the year 1869, I happened to be staying at the village of the Singgi Dyaks in Sarawak, and there I lit upon a veritable tiger's skull preserved in one of the head-houses (pañggah). It was kept with other skulls of tree-tiger, bear, muntjac-deer, &c., in certain very ancient sacred dishes placed among the beans of the roof and just over the fire-place. It was so browned and discoloured by soot and dirt, and the Dyaks were so averse to my touching it, that I was unable to decide whether it was a fossil or a recent skull. All inquiries as to when it had been obtained met with the discouraging response: "It came to us in a dream,"—and they had possessed it so long that the people could not recall the time when it first came into the hands of the tribe. The dish on which it lay was of a boat-like form, and was of camphor-wood and quite rotten. The skull was $13 1⁄3$ inches long by $9 1⁄3$ inches in breadth, measured across the jugal arches. The lower jaw and all the teeth were wanting. The large sockets for the teeth, the strong bony occipital crest, and the widely-arched sygomatic [sic] bones indicated that the animal, to which the skull belonged, had been one of mature growth. On a second visit I made an attempt to purchase it, but the people were so horrified at the idea of its removal, that I reluctantly desisted. The chief of the village declared that, in consequence of my having moved the skull on my last visit, the Dyaks had been afflicted by heavy rains, which had damaged their farms; that once, when a Dyak accidentally broke a piece of the bone, he had been at once struck dead with lightning that its removal would bring about the death of all the Siñgghi Dyaks, and so forth. Afterwards the Rajah of Sarawak kindly endeavoured to persuade the Dyaks to part with it to him;