200 LABOUR OF DYAK MEN. 



pleasing and instructive to the beholder. But while 

 so many employments and labours fall to the lot of 

 the women, the men, unlike those described as the 

 inhabitants of the South Sea, and other more eastern 

 islands of Polynesia, do not dissipate their time in 

 debauchery or indolence, but are equally active and 

 industrious with their weaker helpmates. The heaviest 

 labours of the farm, the management of their trade 

 with the Malays, building and repairing their houses 

 and boats, making their implements of husbandry and 

 war, employ all the time remaining from their expe- 

 ditions of hunting and piracy. It is very probable 

 that, from the number of slaves in their possession, 

 the sea-Dyaks, particularly those of the Sarebas and 

 Sakarran tribes, do not personally labour so heavily as 

 those of the hills ; this may account for their finer ap- 

 pearance, which has been constantly observed by the 

 residents at Sarawak. Not being stunted by hard 

 work, and frequent scarcity of food, their limbs more 

 freely develope themselves than those of the poor and 

 hitherto oppressed hill-Dyaks, who, having lost their 

 only assistants by their children being carried into 

 captivity, where they perform for their enemies those 

 services which had otherwise assisted them, are com- 

 pelled themselves to toil from day to day for the 

 subsistence of such as remain, and to endeavour 

 to procure money to purchase back the absent. The 

 slaves of the sea-Dyaks do not in general appear 

 to be hardly treated, as in their wars only such as 



