1896.] Oi-i [Furness. 



the continuous opening between the eaves and the floor as at the front 

 of the house, but where it was boarded up and light and air were admit- 

 ted eitlier through small windows or through the trap doors in the roof. 

 From most of the rooms there was also a door and a flight of steps, or 

 rather a notched log, leading down to the rice storehouses behind the 

 house, where the women were occupied every morning pounding the 

 husks oft' of the rice and winnowing the chafi". In all of the Kayan houses 

 the rice, or paddi, as they call it, is pounded in the house, but the fine 

 flying chafi" is not only irritating to the nostrils but sometimes produces 

 an itching eruption on the skin, so Tamabulan very wisely has all this 

 work done out of doors. Everywhere in the house roam most persist- 

 ently ravenous dogs of the most mongrel type ; no one seems to like 

 them and a chance is never neglected to thump them or hit them with a 

 stick. We were warned beforehand by Mr. Hose to tie our boots up to 

 the rafters at night lest the dogs sliould eat them. What their true use 

 is I never could find out. The men told me they were for hunting, but 

 I never saw them taken out in the jungle nor did they appear to have any 

 master in particular. Beneath the house where the boats, not in actual 

 use, are stored, pigs forage for any stray scraps of food which may 

 drop through the flooring above ; and at the back of the house where 

 the paddi is beaten out was always a flock of chickens, kept partly for 

 food and partly for sacrifice ; thus in most of the surroundings there is 

 an element of farm life. 



While we were off on a visit of five days to a Kayan chief on the 

 Apoh river, Tamabulan had a cozy little room partitioned ofl" for us, 

 arkd when we returned he led us up to it with pride and told us that he had 

 made the door to fasten, so that the children could not annoy us, but 

 even as he spoke there was a line of beady little eyes peering at us 

 through a crack, and we thought of the small boys -who lift the canvas 

 of the circus tent. The small boys were our chief friends, and head of 

 them all, although not by any means the oldest, was the rascally little 

 Adom. There was no feasting, there was no mourning, in fact no inci- 

 dent of interest, complete witliout the face of Adorn peering from his 

 perch on a rafter or beaming out from among the stack of long bamboo 

 water jugs standing in a rack in the corner. Like the mongoose, in 

 Kipling's Jungle Book, his motto seemed to be : " Run and find out ! " 



Let me finish by giving you an account of one day as a specimen of 

 all days spent beneath the hospitable roof of Tamabulan. Would that I 

 could only give it to jow with all the distinctness that the mere recount- 

 ing brings out in my mind ! 



We a-\voke with the first crow of the cock, which breaks the silence of 

 the night and dies away in the jungle without the far-oflf response from 

 neighboring farms, to w^hich we are accustomed in the country here 

 at home. Then a dog rouses up, yawns and stretches and shakes off 

 the ashes of the fireplace where it had been sleeping and begins the daily 

 round of quarrels witli its companions. Then the daylight gradually 



