The Lost Forest

by John Francis Kinsella

  Chapter 5

  A DISCOVERY AT BATANG AI

  Winston learnt from the Iban headman that there were caves in the nearby mountainous border region where the spirits of great headmen and warriors dwelt. Such caves had been held sacred for generations and Ennis knew that burial jars and other interesting artefacts had been found in similar caves.

  After studying the Finns’ map Ennis decided to continue upriver to a couple of isolated longhouses nearby the caves that the Tuay had described, close to the Indonesian border. If they caves yielded nothing of interest he remembered Erkki talking of Martabans and with a little luck he could perhaps make a good barter deal with one of the younger longhouse headmen. He never dwelt too long on the ethical arguments against such transactions; he knew only too well that it was either he or the Chinese dealers from Kuching who would end up with the heirlooms. It was a hard ride, almost six hours to the first longhouse, the river had become shallow and the swiftly flowing rapids greatly slowed their progress forcing them to advance on foot pushing the longboats knee deep through the swirling waters when the passage became too difficult.

  It was early in the afternoon when they arrived at the longhouse where the Tuay agreed to them spending the night in exchange for fuel and batteries. He led them into the ruai and invited them to be seated on the rattan mats making a sign to one of the Iban men who were watching, and who disappeared for a moment then returned with a bottle of tuak and several small glasses.

  The Tuay filled the glasses and handed them around to each of the guests. They toasted and drank.

  They talked in subdued voices as Winston enquired about the conditions up river and whether there were other longhouses further up the river. Then carefully he questioned the Tuay about the nearby hills that formed the vague the border area between Malaysia and Indonesia Kalimantan, asking if on their hunting forays his men had seen any signs of Indonesian army patrols. The Tuay merely nodded, then talked about the spirits that lived in the nearby hills.

  ‘He says there are caves here haunted by the spirits of ancestors.’

  ‘Spirits?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ask him which spirits.’

  ‘They believe in all kinds of spirits in the jungle, animals, plants and those of their ancestors. There are spirits and individuals of evil intent, like humans, who they believe can enter into a bilik through the front door. They protect themselves by carving powerful figures on the door of the bilik such as twin tailed crocodiles and twin pythons coiled along each side. Between the open fangs of the python and the head of the crocodile is carved a frog to serve as food for these spirits in the belief that should no food be provided, the hungry spirits could turn upon them and devour them. Crocodiles and pythons have great power in the Iban spirit world.’

  Another round of drinks was served.

  The discussion continued between Winston and the Tuay with the other Iban men joining in. It was an earnest discussion in low voices.

  Winston turned to Ennis: ‘He says there are ancestor’s spirits there and they cannot disturb them.’

  ‘Try offering him something.’

  They talked a moment and Winston nodded to Ennis, who dug into his rucksack took out a fine hunting knife. The Tuay took the gift and placed it to one side, then poured another round of tuak and toasted his visitors. They drank. The Tuay stood up and indicated them that he was ready to leave. Ennis looked at his watch, there were still three hours to nightfall, Winston understood the question and nodded to the Tuay in agreement.

  They would take two boats. Ennis took time to slip a powerful lamp into his rucksack before climbing into the second boat, as Winston joined the Tuay in the first. Kate decided to remain behind, she had enough of the river for the day and preferred to photograph the longhouse women and their children.

  After twenty minutes upstream the Tuay indicated a shallow bank of stones and pebbles near a bend in the river, they beached the boats. As the other men occupied themselves with hauling the boats up to a secure mooring point the Tuay pointed further along the bank at the end of the stony beach to a spot where a small stream cascaded out from a rocky gully into the river.

  The Tuay refused to venture any further than the mooring point as Winston followed by Ennis made their way forward to the cascade. They carefully clambered up the moss covered rocks making their way further into the gully where there was a water fall that ran down the face of a weathered limestone cliff. Urged on by shouts from the Tuay who had advanced a little further along the riverbank they made their way up towards the fall where they found a pool of fresh clear water. It was surrounded by a jumble of moss covered limestone slabs that had at some time been detached from the cliff. They continued having the choice between the slippery rocks and the vigorous vegetation at the foot of the surrounding cliff. Reaching the fall they could go no further than peering through the thick creepers that hung down forming a dense curtain.

  Winston made a sign and Ennis stood to one side as he hacked at the creepers with his pahang exposing a cleft in the face of the limestone cliff, then with more hacking and forcing the vegetation aside they climbed through the opening and found themselves under the rock overhang, where in the half-light they made out a dark hole, the entrance to a cave. They advanced cautiously along the slippery edge; to one side the curtain of water crashed down to the pool. Ennis pointed, indicating Winston should explore the other side of fall, as he, taking out his pocket lamp, stepped cautiously into darkness. Once inside the cave’s entrance the floor was wet and flat, he carefully made his way further inside pointing the beam first on the floor and then on the walls of the cave.

  It was not very large, more like a tunnel, the floor rose at a shallow angle and after a few metres he arrived in a small gallery filled with strange white limestone stalactites and stalagmites that glistened in the light of his lamp, the air was very much cooler. He searched in his sack and found a whistle and a ball of twine, part of the exploration kit that he had learnt to carry with him after a few alarming experiences in the forest and other strange places. The last thing he wanted to do was get lost, he attached one end of the twine to a stalactite to act as Ariane’s thread letting it unwind as he continued, following the beam of his torch lamp deeper into the tunnel.

  Ennis felt a slight current of air, he shone his lamp on the wall of another small gallery, on the left there was a breach in the rock, an opening that tapered up to the roof. He advanced carefully over the damp rock; he could now feel a current of air. A little further there was without any doubt a hole of some sort in the rock where air could enter from the exterior. Then the floor sloped downwards rather steeply, which explained the rise of the warm air to the other galleries. He moved down the slope about twenty metres shinning his lamp ahead until the beam was lost in what appeared to be a much larger gallery. He did not have very much more string and would have to retrace his steps after another few minutes.

  The floor of the gallery was relatively flat and dry. He swung the torch towards the roof, which at the point where he stood seemed to be about three or four metres high. It also appeared unusually dry. He directed the beam ahead and saw the roof rose indicting that it was indeed a large gallery.

  There were dense black traces on the roof just above him, a sign that previous visitors had used burning torches to find their way in the darkness. On closer inspection he saw that the soot was covered with a light crystalline structure...it was not recent.

  On the floor were the remains of rattan baskets and a pile of stones. There were scattered bones, the remains of long dead men, it was certainly a kind of burial ground and did not appear to have been visited recently.

  A little further on he heard the noise of running water, he swung his torch across the floor and saw a small stream of water crossing the gallery, it had cut a shallow gully in the floor that seemed to be composed of deposits accumulated over eons of time, earth and other debris carried by water or flooding, droppings of bats or other crea
tures that had inhabited the cave, or perhaps it was simply airborne dust and other matter drawn in by the air currents that ventilated the galleries. Ennis shone the torch over the stream’s irregular bed; a reflection caught his eye, a pale coloured stone embedded in bank just above the water.Ennis prodded it with his stick, it gave slightly and he pushed harder dislodging the stone which tumbled into the water. He stooped down and picked it up shaking the water off, it was a broad and flat, a little larger than a man’s hand, it was not heavy, perhaps it was bone or some kind of ivory. He pointed his camera at the floor and snapped the spot as a precaution, remembering mechanically that once an artefact had been removed from the spot where it was discovered, only the finder could know where it had come from, risking that any essential scientific evidence be lost forever. He wiped his find on his shirt he slipped it into his sack. If it was of interest and he could return the next day, he then started to wind up his ball of twine following it back to the water fall.

  Once back outside the damp heat hit him like a sauna. Winston was wearily sitting on a rock. It was just the moment to take a refreshing shower under the cascading water fall to cool off before returning to the boats. Once relaxed and feeling refreshed he realised that the cave may hide something interesting. On the beach he said nothing, making no sign that he had found anything special. Winston squinted at him through his thick lens he was now in a hurry to get to the longhouse to change and eat.

  When they retired to their bilik he took the bone from the knapsack and showed it to Kate who shrugged, it was just an old bone, nothing very interesting. He ignored her and under the dim light he turned it over inspecting it closely. It was not heavy and was covered with a thin layer of what appeared to be hardened earth or dust and filled on the inner concave surface with a thick gangue, he scrapped it with his thumb nail uncovering a greyish white surface. The outside surface had been worn smooth, the bone was no doubt from one of the many animals that had probably been pursued by predators into the caves, perhaps dragged there by tigers or other felines to be devoured, or had simply got lost in the dark and starved to death.

  As he turned it over he saw that it thickened into what appeared to be a heavy ridge under which were a pair shallow arcs about ten centimetres wide - orbital ridges! To the back was another thick edge that he recognised as the occipital ridge. It was a clearly a skull cap of some kind of an animal, perhaps an orang-utan or a honey bear. The dim orange light of the lamp they had hung from the bamboo ceiling was insufficient to provide him with any further information.

  The evening heat in the bilik was intense and heavy; the only noise was that of the tropical deluge that suddenly fell with full force and without any preamble on the roof of the longhouse, at that time of the year it came like clockwork every day coinciding with night fall. It stopped as suddenly as it had started and Ennis stepped out of the longhouse seeking relief from the stifling atmosphere. Though the rain had ceased heavy drops continued to fall from the canopy of the forest and a mist rose from the damp ground. The night insects started their infernal ballet, whirring, clicking and buzzing, attracted by the lamps, endless numbers seemingly seeking his tender skin as a likely source of nourishment.

  He returned to the bilik and lit another coil of mosquito repellent then crawled under the mosquito net onto the mattress next to Kate and fell into an uneasy sleep.

  He was awaked by the crowing of the longhouse cocks and the creaking of the bamboo floor as the Ibans began to stir preparing for their day. A child cried softly for his morning milk. A bird cry echoed from the surrounding jungle.

  It must have been six as the dawn light filtered though the flimsy walls of his bilik. The sun rose quickly on the equator, with no more than a quarter of an hour from night to full daylight.

  He rose and turning his back to Kate, who was still dozing, urinated into a plastic bucket, the longhouse was not the Kuching Hilton. He then washed his hands and face in a small basin of water which he then threw into the bucket that he then carried it from his bilik to the river, passing the elderly Iban women preparing the breakfast, who hardly lifted their heads. Outside the air had a certain freshness, he looked at the morning mist hanging heavily in the dense forest on the opposite side of the river, he made his way down to the water’s edge, past the pigs that had started nosing the ground in search of food, then past the boats tied to the jetty that swung gently in the current. He emptied the bucket from the end of the jetty into the fast flowing river on the downstream side of the longhouse, rinsing it carefully; hygiene in the jungle was not a luxury.

  He joined Winston Marshall squatting Iban style on the rattan mat for a breakfast of boiled rice, vegetables and eggs washed down with hot tea. Winston was speaking to the Tuay who explained that they were leaving to hunt in the forest after breakfast inviting Ennis to join them.

  ‘Well I’d like to go back to the caves after and explore a little further if you don’t mind.’

  ‘That’s no problem,’ said Winston, ‘I’ll get the Tuay to send a couple of the men with you.’

  Ennis was relieved by the thought he would be unhindered, two of the Iban men would ferry him to the caves, waiting whilst he made a little more exploration.

  After breakfast Marshall left with the Tuay, “a small expedition into the forest,” he said. Once he was gone they returned to the bilik where Ennis collected his things to return to the cave. To the amusement of Kate he took the skull from his knapsack and started to examine it, turning it around in his hands, it resembled a castanet with the wide ridges to the front and a smaller ridge to the back. It did not seem to be fossilised he thought, vaguely recalling what he had heard when Kate had dragged him off to the conference given by Michel Brunet in Paris a few weeks earlier; a fossil is a bone that is mineralised, over thousands of years under certain conditions, the bone tissue being slowly replaced by minerals whilst the form of the bone remained.

  It could have been the skull cap of an orang-utan but the form was too domed. It could not be that of a man either modern or very ancient. A modern human skull did not have those ridges and an ancient or prehistoric skull would be certainly fossilised.

  Ennis was puzzled, he would show it to Marshall and the Ibans when they returned, in the meantime he would explore the cave a little further.

  In the cave he had some difficulty to relocate the gallery where he had found the bone. He carefully inspected the floor as he searched through the tunnels, there were bird and bat droppings in the first part but as he penetrated the floor was less encumbered by guano. There were dead leaves and some feathers probably carried in by the wind, perhaps there were small rodents or the like who had made their home there.

  Birds did not go that far into caves and bats could only penetrate in numbers when the access was relatively easy. It was obvious that the entrance to the cave must have been blocked for a very long time

  When he found the large gallery he noted that the floor was fairly smooth on the surface there was no debris not even dust, it glistened in the light of the lamp as though covered with a thin film of humidity, the point where he had found the bone seemed to have been disturbed, probably by a flood stream that at some recent point in time had been diverted by a rock fall and had cut a channel into the soft floor. The stream had now slowed to a trickle at the bottom of the channel.

  He directed his lamp up stream of the channel as it turned towards the wall of the gallery, the ground became uneven and shadows danced as he made his way to a pile of rocks that had probably been detached from the roof in some distant time. He continued carefully for another fifteen or twenty metres turning to the left as he followed the stream. Then he saw a dim column of light that fell at an angle on a jagged mound of rock, part of the upper wall of the gallery had collapsed opening the way for a stream of water that trickled gently from above.

  There was no way to know when the flooding had occurred, underground streams like all flowing water follow the path of least resistance, if a rock fall occurs th
ey are diverted following the next easiest downhill path.

  The cave floor was made up of the accumulation of deposits, composed of dust blown in mixed with debris that had fallen from the roofs and walls. Sand and pebbles were carried in by the streams that formed over thousands of years with changes in the climate. Small animals such as mice or bats had left their droppings and bones. Bigger animals were much rarer but left the bones of their prey. All this debris had accumulated in layers from a few centimetres thick to several metres thick in place. It was a kind of breccia that formed, solidified, cemented together by mineralised water, drying and hardening with time. The action of the stream had cut into the breccia taking the path of least resistance through the more friable agglomerate. Here and there large stones or pieces of rock jutted out.

  Looking at the rough edges of the stream he figured that its present path must have been fairly recent, probably due to a collapse somewhere deep inside the hill. During the rainy season, or in heavy downpours, the stream had been transformed into a torrent, carrying debris and eroding a broader passage. The result was the rough edges along the banks of the stream. After a few moments he found the point where he had made his find and now noticed different layers of accumulated debris, stones, gravel, and compact earth. He prodded the spot where he had picked up the bone with his stick, dislodging smaller pieces of rubble, he picked up what at first appeared to be two small stones whose form, on closer examination he immediately recognised them - they were teeth.

  It was not exceptional that in the past men had lived in such caves or had used them as burial places, as was the case at Niah, just a few hundred kilometres to the north. Perhaps there had been cave dwellers who lived in cave in the recent past. He pocketed the teeth and decided to leave things as there were undisturbed, he would check out the skull cap once he was back in Kuching.

  Later that morning Winston returned from the hunt with the Ibans, they had killed a wild pig, whose bloody head lay on the floor of the longhouse. The animal had been shot, the days of hunting with bows and arrows or blow pipes were long gone even in those isolated areas, the authorities allowed the tribal peoples to own small calibre rifles for hunting.

  ‘So John, did you find anything interesting in your cave?’

  Winston Marshall’s instinct had told him that Ennis had something and wanted to ask him some questions.

  ‘Well, I’ve found a few bones.’

  ‘Let’s have a look then.’

  Ennis showed him the skull cap.

  ‘It looks like part of an orang-utan’s skull,’ he said turning it over. He handed it to the Tuay.

  ‘It’s not an orang-utan Sir, maybe a honey bear.’

  Winston wiped his brow with his bandana, giving a doubtful look at the object.

  ‘A funny looking bear to me, I’d personally go for an orang-utan.’

  The Tuay said nothing; it was not in the Iban culture to contradict an outsider.

  ‘Is that all you found?’ he asked Ennis a little disappointed.

  Back in Kuching Ennis summed up the meagre results of the expedition, they had collected one unextraordinary Martaban, a boat paddle and a sword, both in black iron wood, and three Iban krises. Winston sensing his disappointment proposed that if he had time before leaving for Singapore Ennis should visit one of his friends, a certain Sammy Kwok, an old trader who had accumulated a godown full of odds and ends in payment from the Ibans for goods he had delivered to them over the years when they were short of cash.

  In their suite at the Kuching Hilton Kate made an effort to console Ennis, telling him that she had enjoyed the expedition even though from the business point of view it had not been an extraordinary success. Perhaps the visit to Winston’s friend would turn up something interesting she said hopefully, without a response from Ennis.

  He then busied himself putting some organisation into his affairs, then coming across the skull cap he re-examined it carefully, he prodded the gangue with the point of a pencil, it was quite friable, there was something troubling about it. Of the two teeth, one he recognised as a molar and the other an incisor, they were small, and whilst he was no expert he concluded that they neither belonged to an orang-utan or a honeybear, perhaps they did not even belong to the skull, the cave had no doubt been the home to many animals, and those who had inhabited it, whether they had been men or carnivorous animals, had no doubt brought back a many different kinds of prey from their hunts.

  The next day Kate planned to return to the Sarawak Natural History Museum leaving Ennis with the morning free whilst she went about her work for the Art and Ethnology article she was preparing. He decided he would visit Sammy Kwok with Winston, then later he would join Kate at the museum where he could compare his find with the skulls of orang-utans and men he had seen there ten days previously. In the meantime he switched on his portable PC, as Kate took her shower and prepared herself for diner he could make a quick Internet search. After a few moments he connected to a specialised site, it was the anthropological department of the University of Wisconsin.

  At random he started to click away at the images of the skulls of human ancestors that appeared on the screen, he was surprised by the extraordinary quality of the pictures. He commenced with modern Homo sapiens. Their skulls were domed with a high almost vertical forehead and with ridges neither above the eye orbits nor at the nape of the skull.

  He then selected Homo neanderthalensis and was surprised to see there were some resemblances, the brows were heavier and forehead slanted, however it appeared too ‘human’ compared to the skullcap he had laid on the writing desk next to his PC.

  He then started to flip though the images: Peking Man, Homo ergaster and as he did so he felt a mounting excitement. He stopped at Java Man, to be precise a picture with the reference Homo erectus Trinil 2. He felt weak with excitement as he turned to his skullcap and turned it over and around in his hand. The similarity was incredible. He had found a prehistoric fossil a major find. He wanted to jump up and run around the room, open the door and shout into the corridor.

  He then came back to earth with a bump. His skull was not a fossil; there was not the slightest sign of mineralization. It was recent, maybe a few hundred years old at the most, nothing compared to the 1.8 million years of Java Man.

  He downloaded the images to his PC, copied them to a disc, switched off the computer and took his shower. A shower and clean towels in a luxurious modern bathroom was always a hedonistic pleasure after ten days in the jungle. Fifteen minutes later taking the lift down he stopped off at the business centre and asked the girl on duty to print out the images from the disc, asking her to have them delivered to his room.

  They dined in the hotel’s excellent Chinese restaurant and after took an evening walk through the nearby shopping complex, for once admiring the lights and the bustle of late shoppers and strollers.

  Back in the suite he found the envelope from the business centre. He took a beer from the minibar installed himself on the bed and spent ten minutes flipping through the pictures before Kate pushed them aside, she had other ideas on how to celebrate their evening back in civilisation in a clean soft bed.

  The next morning after Kate left for her appointment at the museum Ennis called Winston Marshall, who agreed to pick him up for a visit to Sammy Kwok’s, just a couple of kilometres outside of Kuching City. After a short drive they turned off the road and parked on an unsurfaced siding next to a dilapidated godown on the bank of the Kuching River.

  Sammy was a wrinkled Chinese of indeterminate age, he pumped Ennis’s hand welcoming him like an old friend.

  ‘So Winston has told you about my collection,” he laughed. ‘Come, I’ll show you.’

  They discovered a vast and disorderly stock of goods of every description mixed together in an incredible confusion. Sammy complained that he was too old, his family’s only thought was to get their hands on the site, demolish his godown and build an assembly plant for computer accessories. As Ennis made his way thro
ugh the disorganised piles of rattan furniture, he found sacks of rice and drums of cooking oil and old packing cases, he followed Sammy through a vague passage between the jumble to the end of the godown, where almost hidden from view in the dim light they came upon a vast dust covered assortment of junk that on closer inspection he saw consisted of jars, vases, Martabans, broken Chinese furniture and old textiles stacked along with jumbles of spears, wooden statues, tribal art and even a dugout, all disposed in a scene of total disorder.

  ‘It needs sorting out,’ said Sammy. It was a remarkable understatement thought Ennis.

  At first glance it appeared to be junk, but then experience told him to look closer and he soon realised that there were many pieces that could have a considerable resale value in Europe. He feigned disappointment and disinterest as though it was almost worthless and asked the once wily Sammy Kwok what he intended to do with it all. Sammy shrugged his shoulders, he was tired, his courage had waned, his only thought was retirement to a nice, modern, little house with a garden that his family had offered him in exchange for the godown and a little money each month to pay for his beer and mahjong with his friends.

  ‘He’d just like to unload it all as quick as possible,’ said Winston after a quick exchange in some dialect that Ennis did not recognise.

  ‘All of it?’

  Sammy nodded in agreement.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘You take it all?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘All.’

  ‘Maybe’

  They shook hands after coming to a deal, whereby Ennis would arrange immediate payment from his bank and with the help of his agent in Singapore would organize a local transport company to have all the material promptly moved to a godown near the Kuching Airport, where he would have one of his staff fly out to sort and have packed the interesting items for shipment to Europe. He confided to Winston the job of supervising the removal so as to ensure nothing would be pilfered or dissimulated, taking care to avoid unnecessary damage or breakage.

  That settled Winston then dropped Ennis off at the hotel, where he went to his room and picked up the skull cap, wrapping it in a plastic laundry sack marked ‘Kuching Hilton’. He decided he would go by foot to the museum heading along the river front to the colourful market place then on to the museum where he would join Kate. It was hot, like it is every day in Sarawak, the temperature hovers around thirty degrees every day of the year. He was feeling lighter, it wasn’t critical but the business aspect was definitely beginning to look a little more promising following his deal with Sammy, it was equally unexpected and quickly settled. He relaxed looking at the sparkling reflections of the brilliant equatorial sun on the Kuching River as he walked at an easy pace past the market towards the boat pier.

  His mind wandered back to the photos the business centre had printed-out, there was an eerie likeness with the Trinil skull but it was physically impossible. Homo erectus had disappeared from the face of the earth many thousand of years ago.

  The State Museum had two sections, the old colonial building which dated back a century or so, in a spacious park and the modern section constructed opposite on the other side of one of the city’s main avenues that ran right through the park.

  After a moments hesitation he decide not ask for Professor Nordin with whom Kate had her meeting but bought a ticket and made his way to the section where he found exhibits relating to the State’s wild life. Sure enough there was a skeleton and skulls of orang-utans as he had remembered. He immediately remarked that the brain case of an orang-utan was very much smaller than the skull cap.

  The only other skulls were those of modern humans that bore a somewhat closer resemblance to his find. It was a puzzle, he considered questioning Nordin on the subject but his possessive instinct got the better of him, from experience he realised that if the skullcap was of some special interest he would certainly be obliged to hand it over as an archaeological find.