With the Wild Men of Borneo

A couple of months ago, I bought this book from the internet:


"With the Wild Men of Borneo" sounds like an interesting book to read and that probably was the main reason when I bought it. There was a handwritten note inside the book, it was a gift to someone and the giver dated it June 1, 1924. The book written by Elizabeth Mershon was actually printed in 1922. This book is just about 90 years old. Elizabeth Mershon and her husband Pastor Mershon are missionaries and their writing is about how their work is changing the people in the 'far-off' region of Borneo.

I read the book and it was a very interesting description of places in North Borneo starting with their arrival in Sandakan and moving downwards towards Beaufort. Even though the title was of Borneo, not much else is written about the rest of Borneo. However there were a lot of old photographs in the book. I was very interested in the photographs in the book and there were a couple of photographs of Brunei scenes in it.

When I saw the photographs, I was quite surprised as I had posted these much earlier here in this blog. What the book does was to give the photos or rather postcards which I had much earlier the date of publication.

This is the photo in the book:
And this is the colour postcard which I had shown sometime last year which is being sold for around US$600 making this postcard the earliest Brunei postcard to be printed in colour:
There is another photograph in the book. I will save that for another blog.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Tuan Haji, the title "With the wild men of Borneo" struck a chord in me. When my mom went for her dental training in Penang in early 1950's,Brunei was still quite unknown to many of her international colleagues then. So when she met my dad, she told him that some of her kin folks still lived in tree houses and swung from tree to tree! Some still have to cut holes at the back of their pants to let their tail come through and have chairs with holes for the same reason!! so, in late 1950's when my dad came to Brunei for the first time, he asked my mom to show him where were the tree houses!!I wonder if the book had any mention of such wild men of Borneo that my mom described!!
Wednesday, August 01, 2012 8:32:00 AM
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