ETHNOGRAPHY OF SARAWAK. 425 



during' the dance of the headfeast. The head hunting" custom 

 still exists on the borders of Sarawak and Dutch Borneo. 



The Dayak, however, does not restrict his collections to the 

 heads of his fellow-men for he has a mania for antiqtie pottery 

 and beads, and for brass in the form of gongs or guns, and he 

 is in fact a connoisseur in old Chinese pottery of a certain type. 

 All round the room of a well-to-do Dayak is arranged his wealth 

 in the shape of large brown jars decorated with a dragon in 

 raised design. These jars, though they are coarse and void 

 of beauty, are certainly of great antiquity, and each jar has a 

 fixed value, depending upon its age, the most valuable fetching" 

 a price of 500 dollars or more. 



The Dayaks have solved the marriage question in a very 

 simple way, for they marry " on approval." If they find an 

 incompatibility of temper, or if either -party has reason to 

 suspect or even merely to dream of unfaithfulness in the part- 

 ner, they separate and seek other partners. Young ladies 

 scarcely out of their teens vvill often confess without any shame 

 that they have had half-a-dozen husbands. It should be men- 

 tioned, however, that the bond of union is held far more binding" 

 as soon as children appear. A wedding" is the occasion for a 

 g"reat feast; the essential part of the ceremony is the splitting" 

 of a betel nut into two halves, one for each of the two individuals 

 concerned. The religion of the Sea Dayaks is highly interest- 

 ing, but as a fair treatment of the subject would take me be- 

 yond the limits of this sketch I shall give it very scanty treat- 

 ment, and for the rest must refer interested readers to the 

 excellent writings of my friend Archdeacon John Perham in 

 Ling Roth's book o nthe Natives of Sarawak. They believe in 

 a plurality of gods — a god of war, a god of fertility, etc., and 

 of one supreme being; their gods are eulogised in ancient 

 songs on feast days. Also they believe in a world of evil 

 spirits, who are the cause of all their misfortunes and all their 

 sicknesses. Medical practice consequently is in the hands of the 

 witchdoctor, the Manang. Like the Roman of old, the Sea Dayaks 

 observe the flight of certain birds, believing them to l^e carriers 

 of messages from the gods to mankind. The omen birds are 

 seven in number, and include the Brahminy kite, a trogon, a 

 kingfisher and a woodpecker; if a Dayak when out on the war- 

 path or at work in the padi field hears an unpropitious noise 

 made by one of these birds he will immediately stop all work 

 and may even consider it wise to remain at home idle for four 

 or five days. The Sea Dayaks are also firm believers in the 

 principles of sympathetic magic. About a year ago my wife 

 happened to be staying" in the neighbourhood of a large Dayak 

 community whose men were away on the warpath. In the 

 absence of their husbands the women observed certain tabus in- 

 tended to preserve the far-distant husband from all harm. For 

 instance the women refused to sleep during" the day time lest 

 their husbands should also become drowsy; they would not oil 

 the hair lest the men should slip when walking over the wet 

 tree trunks; they arose very early in the morning; otherwise 

 the men would oversleep themselves. They would not sew with 



