XX PECULIARITIES 221 



lamp for Tama Ruling, and smaller ones for the 

 other principal chiefs of the district : smaller lamps 

 again were sent for the heads of houses, and with 

 them a large stock of boxes of lucifer matches, which 

 were to be dealt out to the heads of the rooms of 

 each house. In this way the desired torch was 

 provided for every member of their communities. 

 With these symbols went a large horn of the 

 African rhinoceros, out of which Tama Kuling might 

 fashion a hilt for his sword.^ 



We were afterwards informed that, on the arrival 

 of these symbolic gifts, Tama Kuling called 

 together the chiefs of all the surrounding villages to 

 receive their share, and to discuss the advisability 

 of accepting the implied invitation to migrate into 

 the Baram. The proposition was favourably re- 

 ceived, and a large proportion of the population of 

 that region have since acted upon the resolution 

 then taken. 



To the disjointed collection of remarks which 

 make up this chapter we venture to add the follow- 

 ing observations. It has often been attempted to 

 exhibit the mental life of savage peoples as pro- 

 foundly different from our own ; to assert that they 

 act from motives, and reach conclusions by means of 

 mental processes, so utterly different from our own 

 motives and processes that we cannot hope to 

 interpret or understand their behaviour unless we 

 can first, by some impossible or at least by some 

 hitherto undiscovered method, learn the nature of 

 these mysterious motives and processes. These 

 attempts have recently been renewed in influential 

 quarters. If these views were applied to the savage 

 peoples of the interior of Borneo, we should char- 

 acterise them as fanciful delusions natural to the 

 anthropologist who has spent all the days of his life 



^ The horn of the small and rare Bornean rhinoceros is the most highly- 

 valued of the various substances out of which the sword hilts are carved. 



