68 The Gardens of the Sun. [ch. iv. 



The Kadyans are very quick in selecting rich bits of 

 forest and in raising fine crops of rice, which forms the 

 main portion of their food. Eice and fish from the river 

 or sea, fruits from their gardens or the forest, and a few 

 simple vegetables are all the food they require. They 

 also collect gutta and caoutchouc, camphor and rattans, 

 from the forest, and the sale of these in Labuan, or to 

 the Chinese traders who visit the coast, enables them to 

 obtain cloth, muskets and ammunition, tobacco, and any 

 other little necessaries or luxuries of Chinese or Euro- 

 pean manufacture which they may require. Although 

 less active than the Muruts, yet there are some fine men 

 among them, and their women, as a class, are perhaps the 

 most refined and intelligent of all the aboriginals, some, 

 when young, being singularly attractive. The boys are also 

 bright fellows, with a keener sense of humour than is 

 common in other tribes. They live a free and easy life, 

 contented and happy, and I could not help contrasting 

 the peace and plenty enjoyed by these people with the 

 squalor and misery in which the poor of civilised lands 

 are often plunged. Here, in these sunny wilds, an all- 

 bounteous Nature, with a minimum of labour, supplies 

 their every want, and it would be difficult to find another 

 country where man is more truly the " monarch of all he 

 surveys " — more truly independent on his fellow-man 

 than here in Borneo. Although these people are nomin- 

 ally Mahomedans, still their women enjoy the greatest 

 freedom and are never secluded, as is the custom of 

 the Malays of the coast, indeed, many Kadyan houses 

 consist of one very large room only, there being no 

 private apartment of any kind. This is a rather singular 

 trait of these people, since even the Muruts and the 

 Dusan have one side of their houses partitioned off so as 

 to allow of a separate private room for each family, the 



