MATERIAL CONDITIONS 53 



Alongside the inner wall of the gallery stand 

 the large wooden mortars used by the women in 

 husking th^ padi. Above these hang the winnowing 

 trays and mats, and on this wall hang also various 

 implements of common use — hats, paddles, fish- 

 traps, and so forth. 



The gallery is reached from the ground by 

 several ladders, each of which consists of a notched 

 beam sloping at an angle of about 45°, and furnished 

 with a slender hand-rail. The more carefully made 

 ladder is fashioned from a single log, but the wood 

 is so cut as to leave a hand-rail projecting forwards 

 a few inches on either side of the notched gully or 

 trough in which the feet are placed. From the 

 foot of each ladder a row of logs, notched and 

 roughly squared, and laid end to end, forms a foot- 

 way to the water's edge. In wet weather such a 

 footway is a necessity, because pigs, fowls, and 

 dogs, and in some cases goats, run freely beneath 

 and around the house, and churn the surface of the 

 ground into a thick layer of slippery mire. 



Here and there along the front of the house 

 are open platforms raised to the level of the floor, 

 on which the padi is exposed to the sun to be dried 

 before being husked. 



Under the house, among the piles on which it 

 is raised, such boats as are not in daily use are 

 stored. Round about the house, and especially on 

 the space between it and the brink of the river, are 

 numerous padi barns (PI. 40). Each of these, the 

 storehouse of the grain harvested by one family, is 

 a large wooden bin about 10 feet square, raised on 

 piles some 7 feet from the ground. Each pile carries 

 just below the level of the floor of the bin a large 

 disc of wood horizontally disposed, and perforated at 



lower edge of a long plank, each being attached by a rattan passed through a 

 hole in the vertex. Many of the Klemantans hang them in a similar way to a 

 circular framework, and the Sea Dayaks suspend them in a conical basket 

 hung by its apex from the rafters. 



