Fumess.] dlD |-j)ec. is, 



sage-way. On entering Tamabulan's room I was always in fear 

 lest in the darkness I should tread on a baby or a puppy or slip down 

 through the flooring. Once inside the room, however, and over near the 

 light, everything was all right, and Bulan, the eldest child of 

 Tamahulan, and from whom the chief takes his name, (in that country 

 the child is father of the man in cognomen) received us with all the 

 dignity befitting her station, for in point of birth she was a full-blooded 

 princess, although she did only wear one scant garment extending from 

 her hips to a little below her knee, and even this garment was split down 

 one side. She was certainly a most dignified girl, possibly about 

 eighteen, with a mild gentle look in her eyes which she opened and 

 shut with an impressive solemnity ; her teeth of course were blackened, 

 but well shaped and regular ; her hair was glossy black, parted in the 

 middle and brought down low over her forehead and kept in place by a 

 fillet of plaited rotan around her head ; her eyebrows had either been 

 shaved or depilated. The only blot upon her beauty was one of her 

 ears ; her over-ambitious parents had put in too heavy weights when she 

 was young, and, alas, one of her beautiful ear lobes had given way ; it 

 had been patched, but the patch showed plainly and an ugly lump re- 

 sulted. Indeed, how true in all climes is it that 11 faut souffrir pour 

 etre belle. I showed Her Highness, Princess Bulan, some pictures of Amer- 

 ican women in Harper's Weekly, which I had brought from Baram to 

 while away the hours in the boat, and she laughed much at the funny 

 custom of squeezing in waists, which I was obliged to tell her was done 

 by means of steel bands laced tightly about them. This seemed in- 

 comprehensible to her, and such sufi'ering intolerable. In every picture 

 I had to tell her which were the women when only the head and 

 shoulders were shown ; there seemed to be no difference to her in the 

 faces except of course where either beard or mustache marked the men. 

 The room in which the Tamabulan family lived was much like all the 

 rest ; it was large and square with three small closet-like rooms parti- 

 tioned off ; these were the sleeping apartments for the young girls and 

 for Tamabulan and his two Avives, and the third was for his slave and his 

 family ; they were not neat little rooms with warm tropical breezes 

 wafting in the delicate odors of orchids from the jungle, but black little 

 cubby holes, with nothing but a mat for a bed and the small smoking 

 coal-oil lamp made of tin, or a lump of damar gum sputtering and smok- 

 ing on a scooped-out stone, for a light. Bulan 's room was pathetic in 

 that she had made an attempt at making it a little more dainty by fasten- 

 ing a piece of bright calico upon the wall to relieve the monotony of the 

 darkened wood ; she had also arranged some pretty black and yellow 

 bead-work baskets in one corner ; these were her wealth. In the corner 

 between Tamabulan's room and that of his slave was the fireplace, 

 merely a flat cake of clay over a few stones laid down on the flooring. 

 There was no chimney and the smoke had to find its way up to the roof 

 or out of the window in the back wall of the house, where there was not 



