CAPTIVE DYAK CHILDREN. 201 



are young are taken captive ; these, after living with 

 their captors for some years, lose the remembrance 

 of their families, or, perhaps, only recollect that they 

 were destroyed, and consequently fall into the customs 

 and practices of the people amongst whom they live, 

 and from whose power they soon lose all hope of de- 

 liverance. In many instances children, who have 

 been taken from the land-Dyaks, become so endeared 

 to their conquerors, that these latter adopt them as 

 their own, and they are then admitted to all the pri- 

 vileges of the free-born of the tribe, and inter-marry 

 with the sons and daughters of the other inhabitants 

 of the village. Instances are not uncommon when 

 children thus treated have forgotten their parents, 

 and expressed, when the opportunity of returning 

 to their tribe has presented itself to them, an un- 

 willingness to avail themselves of it, thus causing 

 to the parents who had so tenderly cherished the 

 remembrance of them, infinite agony ; but, when 

 they have once arrived at their native village, and ex- 

 perienced all the kindness of parental affection, these 

 impressions soon wear away, and they are always 

 finally glad that they had been restored. In the 

 villages the slaves are not distinguishable from their 

 masters and mistresses, as they live all together, and 

 fare precisely the same, eating from the same dish, and 

 of the same food ; this, as has been before observed, 

 is principally of a vegetable nature, though no super- 

 stitious observance prevents them from partaking of 



