Baram

The Baram rises in the Kelabit Highlands near the Iran Mountains, where streams falling from the upland watershed form the Kelapang and Dappur rivers. It runs west through the rainforest of northern Sarawak and reaches the South China Sea through a broad delta. Annual rain is heavy, and the river carries sediment, timber and the runoff of a basin more than twenty thousand square kilometres in extent.

For Orang Ulu communities, the river organizes the country. Batang denotes a main channel, Ulu the upper reaches, and Kuala a river mouth or delta. A Long is a settlement at the meeting of tributaries, while Pa names a Kelabit village in the highlands. Kayan, Kenyah, Kelabit and related peoples travelled by boat between longhouses, swiddens, hunting grounds and exchange points. Rapids, shallows and tributary junctions required detailed knowledge of water levels.

Marudi became a focus in the middle Baram country about one hundred kilometres upstream from the sea, where routes from the interior met boats bound downriver. Trade moved jungle produce, cloth, metal and food between highland communities and coastal markets. The river remained the principal road across a dense forest: settlements followed its banks, and political influence depended on reaching the confluences that joined distant valleys to the coast. Its tributaries open separate valleys to settlement and exchange. These routes also carried forest produce.