A 3I0NTH WITH THE DYAKS. 433 



would certainly hear one cry on the right hand when starting to 

 the field on a ' show day,' and at least twice a week in the autumn 

 months, when the young prairie chickens were flocking around. 

 The lazy school-boy would listen eagerly for them as soon as the 

 strawberries and cherries ripened ; and a little later, in melon time, 

 when the days were awfully hot, he would hear an omen bird call- 

 ing to him from every fence-post on the right as soon as he started 

 off to school. The omen bird would supply a long-felt want, and 

 no true American farmer's boy would be without a flock of them. 

 No other bird would be so safe from harm, or protected with such 

 tender solicitude. Had omen birds been as plentiful as blackbirds 

 on the Iowa prairies, I might have remained a farmer boy much 

 longer than I did ; but without them, life on the farm was unen- 

 durable. 



" A Chinese trader came to the village to-day, to trade rice for 

 gutta-percha, wax, etc. The Dyaks are either very stupid, very 

 lazy and shiftless, or all three together. Instead of taking their 

 gutta down to Kuehing, where they could sell it at 60 cents per 

 cattie (1^ pound), and buy rice at ten to eleven gantongs for a 

 dollar, they loaf around the \illage until a sharp Chinaman comes 

 along and takes their gutta at 37^ cents per pound, in exchange for 

 rice at five gantongs to the dollar, and cheats them in the weight 

 of both ! 



" Ah Kee took his wooden steelyards and showed me how a 

 Chinaman can cheat in weighing an article. By the insertion of a 

 tiny wooden peg beside the stiing which holds the weight at the 

 place where the end passes through the beam, it is easy to make an 

 article weigh too much or too little, as the weigher chooses. He 

 assured me most solemnly that Chinese traders nearly always cheat 

 ten per cent, in everything they weigh, when deahng with simple 

 people hke the Dyaks. 



"November 21th. — Went with Gumbong to see how he col- 

 lected gutta. A mile from the house he found a gutta tree, about 

 ten inches in diameter, and, after cutting it down, he ringed it 

 neatly all the way along the stem, at intervals of a yard or less. 

 Underneath each ring he put a calabash to catch the milk-white 

 sap which slowly exuded. From this tree and another about the 

 same size, he got about four quarts of sap, which, on being boUed 

 that night for my special benefit, precipitated the gutta at the 

 bottom in a mass like dough. The longer it was boiled, the harder 

 the mass became, and at last it was taken out, placed upon a 

 28 



