Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed According to Their Principle of Construction - Page 117

The natives of Borneo have some curious traditions about these birds. They reverence all kinds of birds, believing their ancestors to have been born from a native woman who married a spirit; but they have some singular legends respecting the Edible Swallow. One of these wild legends has been kindly furnished to me by C. T. C. Grant, Esq., formerly of the Sarawak Government Service.

A DYAK LEGEND.

“It was many, many years ago that a Dyak of Semabang (in Sadong) and his young son arrived, after a long journey through the jungle, at a village called Si-Lébor. The village was extensive, the Dyaks very numerous. On arriving, the chief of the tribe placed food before the older visitor, but to his young son they offered nothing. The little fellow, seeing this, and being very hungry after his journey, felt much hurt, and began to cry. ‘To my father,’ said he, ‘you have given food—the priok of rice is before him, the fatted pig has been killed—every thing you have given him. Why do you give me nothing?’ But the child’s appeal was useless. These strange Dyaks had hearts of stone; not a morsel was handed to the fatigued and hungry little wayfarer; so he wept on, and wept in vain.

“After a while the boy looked more cheerful; he had dried his tears, and was now engaged in catching a dog and a cat. These he put together on the mat, round which all the people were seated. The cat and the dog played, or more likely, as these animals will do, fought together; but, whatever it was, there was something so ludicrous in it all, while the boy sat over them and set them at each other, that the whole assemblage burst into immoderate laughter. The boy, it would seem, was working some spell—there was an object in what he had been doing. Perhaps he was in communication with evil spirits, or under their influence; there was something ominous about it, we know not what. But to proceed: presently the sky became overcast, and gradually great volumes of black clouds came sailing up, propelled by sudden gusts of wind. One by one they rolled along, and were heaped up one on top of another, or got all broken up, as it were, in their collision. The sky appeared one mass of confusion, looking blacker and more angry as the sun gradually disappeared in the darkness. At last the storm burst forth with a fury never known before; sharp flashes of lightning, followed by awful peals of thunder, succeeded one another, fast and furious; the very ground below shook as the palm-leaf quivered in the breeze: it seemed as if the great end of all things was at hand.

“Now commenced a gradual but awful change. Amid the rolling thunder and the dazzling lightning, which only served to make the awful darkness visible, the village, the houses, all began to dissolve, to melt away, as it were, into burning lava, and, with his works, man perishing likewise. There you might see the gray-headed chief starting up, with his grandson in his arms, but, ere reaching the door, being gradually hardened into stone. There mothers would be seen flying with their little ones, to escape the same dreadful fate, but all in vain. There a young and helpless maiden would be clinging to her brave warrior, to that arm which had always been the first to help her, which could surely save her now. Alas! that cruel transformation! The living light in those bright eyes is gone, the tender grasp of that warm hand is cold; from flesh and blood they too pass away into senseless petrifactions; while, mingling with the shrieks, and yells, and invocations of the men and the Borich, would still be heard the boom of the thunder and the crackling of the houses. Not a man, woman, or child—no, nor even visitor—at that fatal village, save only the neglected boy, was left alive to mourn the loss of his all. One after another they all melted, and were changed, when the heat of the storm was over, into solid rock. Houses, and all in them, succumbed beneath the fiery elements; and when the storm ceased, all lay, not a heap of charred ruins, but huge masses of smoking stone.

“A hill with precipices now marks the spot where this tragedy occurred; on the hill (itself the transformed village) are still pointed out, if people speak truth, the traces of the petrified houses. An upright rock is shown as the transformed figure of a Malay, an unhappy visitor on that awful day. There he stands with his hand still fixed on his sword-hilt, once a living soul, now a lifeless stone. The whole scene, indeed, is a standing monument at once of the crime of inhospitality and its fearful punishment. Gazing on his revenge, the youth retreated. He returned to his native village, Semabang; and time flew on, and ere he died he was the chief of his tribe, the gray-headed patriarch appealed to by the new and rising generation. Years, hundreds of years rolled away, fathers and mothers passed off the stage, and young children grew up to take their places, to attain manhood, to work, to become old, to die too; and so time went on, and children danced and played over the same ground that their ancestors had danced and played on for centuries before.

“At last, no great time ago, the tribe of Semabang having flourished, become populous and rich, a young chief, the lineal descendant of the little hungry boy, dreamed that great riches were in store for him and his tribe if they went to Mount Si-Lébor, the petrified village. The next day a party was organized, and they went there and searched. They at last discovered a magnificent cave. With lighted torches they entered, and found it to be very extensive, and full of the celebrated edible birds’-nests. ‘Ah!’ said they, ‘this is our portion, instead of that which was denied to our ancestor; his due was refused then, it has now been given to us, his descendants; this is our “balas” (revenge).’ Thousands and thousands of birds’-nests they brought out of the cave, which realized many reals to the discoverers. The Si-Lébor caves are now said to be the richest, and the tribes possessing them (the Semabang youth’s descendants) the wealthiest and most prosperous in Sadong.”

There are at least four species of swallow that make these curious nests, and the natives say that the entrance to the caves is always occupied by another kind of swallow, which makes a nest of mixed moss and gelatine, and which fights the valuable birds and drives them away. They therefore always attack the intruders, and endeavor to knock down their nests with stones. The nests are very small and shallow, and seem scarcely capable of accommodating either eggs or young birds. My own specimen is exactly two inches in length, one inch and three quarters in breadth at its widest point, and scarcely more than half an inch deep. Its internal shape is exactly that of a spoon-bowl, one third of which has been cut off abruptly near the handle.

None of the purely predaceous birds are remarkable for their skill in architecture, and the EAGLE (Aquila chrysaëtos) is no exception to the general rule. The nest of this magnificent bird is nothing more than a huge mass of sticks flung at random on some rocky ledge, and having a shallow depression in which the young can lie. In general shape, or rather in shapelessness, it is not unlike the nest of the osprey, which has already been described, and it is so rudely put together that the sticks seem to afford even a less commodious bed than the bare rock.

The portion that is occupied by the young is comparatively small, and the general platform of the nest serves as a sort of larder, on which are deposited the birds, hares, lambs, and other animals which the parents have killed and brought home. Sometimes the nest will be amply supplied with food, but sometimes the parent birds are obliged to hunt daily. Young eagles are voracious beings, and if there be no sheep-flocks within reach, the task of supplying them with food is a very heavy one, especially when they have nearly attained maturity. In feeding its young for the first few weeks of their life, the eagle tears the prey into little pieces, and impartially distributes the bleeding morsels to the gaping and screaming offspring. Afterward, however, when the young eagles have gained a stout beak, the prey is merely dropped near them, and they tear it to pieces for themselves.

Generally the nest of the Eagle is placed in some inaccessible spot, and the bird seems never to be so pleased as when it can find a rocky ledge situated about half way down a precipice, and sheltered from above by a large projecting piece of rock. This projection answers two purposes. It prevents the nest from being seen from above, and also guards it from being harried by persons let down by ropes. To take an Eagle’s nest is always a task of extreme difficulty, and one which tries to the utmost the nerves and endurance of the climber. It also makes considerable

The Eagle.

demands on his courage; for, if the parent birds should discover the intruder, they are sure to attack him, and may very probably dash him to the ground.

Should the bold cragsman succeed in reaching the nest, he does not find it a very pleasant locality. The nostrils of the Eagle are very useful for the purpose of respiration, but the bird has apparently little or no olfactory sensibilities. The stench that arises from an inhabited Eagle’s nest is quite beyond the power of description, for the young Eagles themselves are not the sweetest beings in the world, and their evil odor is supplemented by that which arises from the refuse food that is suffered to putrefy in the very nest.

THERE are very many sea-birds which hatch their young on the shelves of precipitous rocks, and of them I have chosen for an example the bird which is called the NODDY (Anous stolidus). It is a species of Tern, and has long been celebrated among sailors for the ease with which it can be captured, especially if the daylight has departed.

The Noddy.

The Noddy mostly chooses for its nesting-place some lofty precipice, and generally lays its eggs upon a shelf of the rock. Sometimes, but rarely, it takes a fancy to some low and thick bush, and in any case is but an indifferent architect. Often the nest is nothing more than a heap of sea-weed, on the top of which is excavated a very slight hollow; and in no case does the bird seem to exercise any skill in the disposition of materials. As it returns year after year to the same spot, and never clears away the old nest, it manages in time to accumulate a heap of sea-weed that is sometimes more than two feet in thickness, and of considerable width. The bird is gregarious in its nesting, the rocky ledges being crowded with the rude nests, and the odor that proceeds from them being absolutely intolerable to human nostrils. The eggs are rather pretty, being of an orange color, spotted and splashed with red and purple of different shades.

It is rare in England, but there are many British birds that build in a similar manner, such as the Solan goose, or gannet, the cormorant, the guillemot, and various gulls.

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