Mohammedans nor Hindus, dispose of their
dead after their own fashion. They keep them
from four to eight days, and even longer: the
climate being hot, it must be remembered, and
decomposition rapid. After the first day they
put the corpse into a coffin scooped out of the
trunk of a tree, and carved more or less richly
according to the means of the family; day and
night lights are placed at each side of the
coffin, and if they chance to get extinguished it
is considered most unlucky; also, for four or
five days after the corpse has been removed,
torches are kept alight in the place where it
had laid. Before its removal a feast is
prepared, part of the food being given to the dead
body, while the relations eat the remainder.
When the body is taken away, although then in
a frightful state of decomposition, the women
hang about the coffin, pressing their faces
against it, and hugging it affectionately; and
this they do until it reaches its final destination
—a small wooden house or stage about twelve
feet high from the ground, supported on four
wooden posts. The tombs of the chiefs are
built of hard wood, supported by nine massive
posts from twelve to fourteen feet high, and all
elaborately carved. Flowering shrubs and
creepers are generally planted about these aërial
tombs, and soon grow up round the posts and
coffins, rendering decay beautiful and concealing
death by life.

The Balinese, on the contrary, being Hindùs,
burn their dead; and the widows may choose
between being burned with their departed lords,
or being killed by the dagger. The wives of
the rajahs, however, must be burned with their
dead husbands; and when a rajah dies some
women, if only slaves, are always burned with
him. The wives of the priests never kill
themselves. The description of the sacrifices is too
horrible to be given here. There is something
peculiarly ghastly in the mixture of beauty,
youth, and death; of flowers and incense, and
costly garments, with the flow of blood from
a triplet of death wounds, and the last cries
of the victim stifled by the scented smoke of
the funeral pyre. It is such an awful sacrifice
of young and vivid life for worse than nothing,
that we do not care to dwell on it.

Dyak, or more correctly Dayak, is the
generic term used by the Malays for all the
wild tribes of Sumatra and Celebes, but more
especially for those of Borneo, where they are
most numerous. It seems to be their
equivalent for our "savage." The various tribes
of Dyaks in Borneo are in different stages of
civilisation; some are nomads, living on fruits
and such wild animals as they can catch; others
have fixed dwellings—great barn-like huts
where many families live together—cultivate
corn and roots, rear the cotton plant, spin and
weave it, manufacture malleable iron and steel,
and breed swine, fowls, and dogs, but no beast of
burden. They know nothing of letters, for they
have neither invented alphabetic signs for
themselves, nor adopted those of others; and
into what tribes soever they may be
subdivided they are all of the one true Malayan race
—brown, short, and with lank hair. When they
go to war, they clothe themselves in the skins
of wild beasts, generally of the black bear; the
rajah having a tiger's skin as his version of the
royal purple. These skins are put over the
head, and effectually cover the breast and back,
leaving the arms naked. They are sword and
spear proof; also proof against the arrows of the
sumpitan, or the blow-pipe; and, with a shield
made of light wood covered with skin, are
tolerably good protection against native modes
of warfare. But these Dyaks fight like furies.
They have no idea of fear, and resist till they are
cut to pieces. The temper of their cutlasses is
such that an ordinary man can cut through a
musket barrel at a blow. In fighting they always
strike and seldom thrust; but, brave as they
are in their own way, the bravest among them
will shrink at the idea of firearms. They no
sooner hear the report of a musket than they
run deep into the jungle: if they are in their
boats they jump into the water and rush to
shore. The most rational have a superstitious
dread of firearms. Each thinks the bullet is
making directly towards him; and as they have
not the least notion of the range of firearms, so
long as they can hear the report they think
themselves in danger. If they are out with
Europeans on shooting parties, having advanced
so far on the way of wisdom as to understand
that aiming at monkeys is not aiming at
themselves, they will ask the sportsman to aim at
birds a mile distant, and think him ill-natured
if he refuses. If he fires, and they see the bird
fly away uninjured, they never consider it as a
miss, being sure that the bullet will follow and
eventually overtake it.

Their most valuable trophies are human
heads, which they preserve by smoking over a
fire, and which have all sorts of wonderful
powers and properties. They are not only signs
of prowess and victory, but they are necessary
adjuncts in the ceremonials at marriages and
funerals, and in births and in sickness.
Nothing can be done without fresh heads, which
propitiate the evil spirits of disease, specially
of small-pox. Physic is folly compared with
a human head, smoke-dried and brainless, for
the healing of pustules and the destruction
of fever; and there is no suffering and no
danger that a Dyak will not face for the reward
of a single head: male head be it understood,—
women and children count for nothing. Indeed
the women are seized as slaves by the victors,
and like slaves soon accommodate themselves
to circumstances, and take kindly to their
change of masters. These Dyaks are terrible
fellows for midnight attacks; and go down the
river in their long canoes as swiftly as birds
would skim on the water. If pulling up the
stream, they keep close to the bank, and as they
cover their paddles with the soft bark of trees
no noise whatever is made. After paddling all
night they pull up the boat among the
overhanging trees and jungle, so that there is no
trace or sign of their existence. Here they sleep