A MONTH WITH THE DYAKS. 413 



"We climbed the notched sapling which served as a ladder at 

 the end of the house, and received the customary Dyak greeting 

 of cheeiy smiles and pleasant words of welcome, while one of the 

 girls skuriied off to fetch the clean mats. We were not sorry to 

 have reached our journey's end, and Ah Kee, never too tired to get 

 up the best meal the larder afforded, set to work, without a mo- 

 ment's delay or waiting to be told, and soon had ready a fine cup 

 of tea with buttered toast accompaniment, and a plate of rice 

 adorned with butter and sugar. Ah Kee was the prince of good 

 servants, and I would that every traveller who knows how to treat 

 a servant could have one like him. He was marked with small-pox 

 and was not what an esthete would call handsome, far from it, but 

 in the jungle, his cheerful and efficient sei'%'ice condoned every ph^-s- 

 ical defect. 



The next morning the Dyaks turned out in force and carried 

 up our luggage, of which there were seventeen loads, at thirteen 

 cents per load. We took the three kadjangs which formed our 

 boat-roof and with them made a veiy cosy room, about twelve feet 

 square, at one end of the long haU. 



We bought of the Dvaks enough mats to cover the floor, ar- 

 ranged our boxes to the best advantage to serve as furniture, and, 

 with a very handy fii'eplace constructed by Ah Kee, we were com- 

 fortably fixed. One side of the room was entirely open and looked 

 out on the jungle. As soon as we had got fairly settled, all the 

 people of the house came in to pay us a ^dsit, The floor of my 

 room was quite filled with half-naked men, women, and children 

 sitting upon their hams and enjoying the novelty of calling uj)on a 

 "tuan." The men were fine, healthy-looking fellows, the women 

 were mostly rather ill-favored in personal appearance ; and the 

 children were, without exception, very dirty, but all were good- 

 natured and polite. One little girl had ichthyosis and was exceed- 

 ingly repulsive, but, happily, she did not belong to our village, and 

 I soon saw the last of her. 



Keeping Dobah with me, I pnid the other Malays and sent 

 them back to Simujan with the large boat, to return for me at the 

 end of a month. Being comfortably settled in a house which was 

 really very clean and habitable, we immediately began to collect. 

 I set Perara at work shooting and skinning birds, while I devoted 

 my attention to mammals in particular, and evei-ything else in gen- 

 eral. I encouraged the Dyaks of the settlement — there were two 

 other villages not far away — to set snares for animals of all kinds, 



