202 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



prises are regularly and frequently undertaken. 

 Occasionally a trader establishes himself in a 

 village for months together, driving a profitable 

 trade in hardware, cloth, tobacco, etc. These 

 traders usually travel in a small boat with a 

 company or crew of only two or three men, and 

 they are practically defenceless against any small 

 party of the natives who might choose to rob or 

 murder them. Such traders have now and again 

 been robbed, and sometimes also murdered, by 

 roving bands of Sea Dayaks, but we know of no 

 such act committed by Kayans or Kenyahs. The 

 trader puts himself under the protection of a chief 

 and then feels his life and property to be safe. 



It would not be true to say that the Kayans or 

 any of the other peoples are always strictly truth- 

 ful. They are given to exaggeration in describing 

 any event, and their accounts are apt to be 

 strongly biassed in their own favour. Nevertheless, 

 deliberate lying is a thing to be ashamed of, and 

 a man who gets himself a reputation as a liar is 

 regarded with small favour by his fellows. 



The Kayans, as we have said elsewhere, are not 

 coarse of speech, and both men and women are 

 strictly modest in respect to the display of the body. 

 Though the costume of both sexes is so scanty, 

 the proprieties are observed. The Kayan man 

 never exposes his genitalia even when bathing in 

 the company of his fellows, but, if necessary, uses 

 his hands as a screen. The bearing of the women 

 is habitually modest, and though their single 

 garment might be supposed to afford insufficient 

 protection, they wear it with an habitual skill that 

 compensates for the scantiness of its dimensions ; 

 they bathe naked in the river before the house, but 

 they slip off their aprons and glide into the water 

 deftly and swiftly ; and on emerging they resume 

 their garments with equal skill, so that they cannot 



