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§ 6. Rights on Land and Water.
To supplement what precedes, we shall now make a few remarks on the origin, transfer and forfeiture of the possession of land and certain rights over waters containing fish.
Real primary jungle (rimba) suitable for clearing is scarcely to be met with anywhere in the lowlands, though there is plenty of it in the highlands. Here jungle produce of every kind, timber, damar, gětah, rattan, wild fruits, honey etc., may be collected by all alike free and without any supervision; nor is it limited to the inhabitants of the surrounding country, since the rimba is attached to no particular gampōng or mukim. The chase is also entirely free. The only tax is the usual impost levied by the ulèëbalang at the river mouth (kuala) which all must pass, on the products collected in the jungle and brought down for export. Where however a strip of virgin forest more closely adjoins a definite tract of inhabited country, the highland chiefs take toll of the jungle products gathered in their territory, the tax being levied previous to sale.
Rights over ladangs.Special rights to all that the rimba contains arise only through clearing; a fact which plainly shows that the country is too extensive for its inhabitants. The opening of cleared plantations (ladang) gives rise to rights of occupation, the duration of which is measured by that of the existence of the ladangs, which varies greatly according to circumstances. On these roughly cleared lands rice and maize are planted for from one to three years; vegetables of various kinds, betel-nut, cocoanut trees or other fruit trees for a much longer period.
The sole restriction on clearing consists in this, that whoever wishes to open ladangs, gardens (lampōïh), or wet rice-fields (umòng) in the immediate neighbourhood of land which already has an owner or occupier, must first obtain the permission of the chief of the territory to which this land belongs. Where a number of persons wish to join in undertaking a considerable clearing, they must obtain the permission of the chief in whose country they wish to settle, but this permission refers more to their immigration into his territory than to their occupation of the forest land.
The right to a given ladang is lost as soon as all traces of the clearing have disappeared, just as it originated when the ground was first marked out for clearing.
