The elders met us at this spot. One of them was dressed in an old military coat, which had belonged to the South Lancashire regiment. His legs and thighs were bare, and a large piece of turkey twill was twisted round his waist and fell in folds front and back. He held a long slender twig from which floated a diminutive Sarawak flag looking like the petals of a drooping flower. His black beard was well tended and he seemed very proud of it. His hair, long enough to reach below his waist, was tucked up in a chignon under a fillet made of calico bound round his forehead like a crown. The other old men wore long flowing robes of brightly coloured red or blue chintz, patterned over with flowers and birds. One of them wore a large turban, although he was not a Malay; another wore a red-and-yellow head-handkerchief, and two very old, almost toothless, men wore jaunty smoking-caps stuck at the side of their bald heads. These old men stood in a row behind the leader in the military jacket, each holding long thin sticks with a flag at the end, which they agitated gently when we appeared. The oldest chief took hold of my hand and led me over a series of notched poles and narrow trunks of trees, and across a deep muddy ditch leading to the village. The village lay in a green basin, scooped out of the side of a hill. Down a ravine on one side of the village, a little torrent, fed by daily rain, made a refreshing and gurgling sound day and night. Bamboo shoots led up the mountain-side to the uppermost houses on the hill, whence the people obtained water for household purposes, and where they also bathed many times a day.