CHAPTER IV 



MATERIAL CONDITIONS OF THE PAGAN 

 TRIBES OF BORNEO 



With few exceptions, the main features of the 

 dress, adornment, and weapons of all the peoples 

 are similar, showing only minor differences from 

 tribe to tribe and from place to place. The essential 

 and universal article of male attire is the waist-cloth, 

 a strip of cloth about one yard wide and four to eight 

 yards in length (see Frontispiece). Formerly this 

 was made of bark-cloth ; but now the cotton-cloth 

 obtained from the Chinese and Malay traders has 

 largely superseded the native bark-cloth, except in 

 the remoter regions; and here and there a well-to-do 

 man may be seen wearing a cloth of more expensive 

 stuff, sometimes even of silk. One end of such 

 a cloth is passed between the legs from behind 

 forwards, about eighteen inches being left dependent; 

 the rest of it is then passed several times round 

 the waist, over the end brought up on to the belly, 

 and the other end is tucked in at the back. The 

 man wears in addition when out of doors a coat 

 of bark- cloth or white cotton stuff,^ and a wide 

 sun-hat of palm leaves, in shape like a mushroom- 

 top or an inverted and very shallow basin, which 

 shelters him from both sun and rain ; many wear 

 also a small oblong mat plaited of rattan-strips 



^ The Sea Dayak is exceptional in this respect ; he wears a coat of coloured 

 cotton fibre woven in various patterns by the women. 



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