Note 10 — K

An important ethnographic fact, and one which is significant, is that the detailed description of tree-climbing by the Dyaks of Borneo, as given by Wallace,10 might have been written on the Ānaimalai hills, and would apply equally well in every detail to the Kādir. “They drove in,” Wallace writes, “a peg very firmly at about three feet from the ground, and, bringing one of the long bamboos, stood it upright close to the tree, and bound it firmly to the two first pegs by means of a bark cord and small notches near the head of each peg. One of the Dyaks now stood on the first peg and drove in a third about level with his face, to which he tied the bamboo in the same way, and then mounted another step, standing on one foot, and holding by the bamboo at the peg immediately above him, while he drove in the next one. In this manner he ascended about twenty feet, when the upright bamboo became thin; another was handed up by his companion, and this was joined on by tying both bamboos to three or four of the pegs. When this was also nearly ended, a third was added, and shortly after the lowest branch of the tree was reached, along which the young Dyak scrambled. The ladder was perfectly safe, since, if any one peg were loose or faulty, the strain would be thrown on several others above and below it. I now understood the use of the line of bamboo pegs sticking in trees, which I had often seen.”