453 TWO TEARS IX THE JUXGLE. 



fastened to the body by a cord made of blue cotton cloth. Thia 

 weapon and its sheath are figured in the group of weapons and 

 utensils given elsewhere, Nos. 5 and 4 respectively. 



The villages of the Hill Dyaks are composed of a number of 

 houses of good size, elevated on posts of course, and each inhabited 

 by several families, instead of the one continuous structui'e, or long- 

 house, peculiar to the Sea Dyaks. The departure from the typical 

 long-house is rendered necessary by the fact that theii' villages are 

 usually on mountains or hills where the surface is too rugged and 

 broken to accommodate one continuous structure several hundred 

 feet long by forty or fifty wide. Each Hill Dyak village contains 

 a pangah, or head-house, a circular structure with a steep and 

 high conical roof. That at Peninjau was about fifty feet in diam- 

 eter, with a firejilace in the centre, and a broad bench running all 

 the way around the room next to the wall, directly above Avhich 

 the skulls which had been taken by the community had been sus- 

 pended in a row. Here and there a square section was cut in the 

 roof and fixed so as to be pushed out at the bottom and propped 

 open to admit light and air. The pangah is the purgatoiy to which 

 the boys of the village are sent to lodge from the time they arrive 

 at puberty until they marry. All strangers are lodged in it, and 

 councils are held there also. 



I do not know much of the social life of the HiU Dyaks ex- 

 cept what was told me by Mr. St. John and the late A. K. Haugh- 

 ton, Esq. ; but I consider their testimony of higher value than even 

 the personal observations of a stranger and brief sojourner, and 

 therefore I give it unhesitatingly. 



The people of this tribe are morally the most highly developed 

 of any in the island of Borneo, if not in the whole archipelago, 

 which, in view of the extent of the influence Hindooism foi'merly 

 exerted over them, is all the more surprising. Although they are, 

 as a tribe, wholly without religion or any of its restraining influ- 

 ences, their moral principles M-ould put to the blush the children of 

 Israel in their best days. It is claimed that adultery is an uncom- 

 mon crime (except in the case of the people of Peninjau and 

 Serambo) among them, and there are several large villages in 

 which the oldest men do not remember a single oflfence of the kind. 

 Under no circumstances does a Dyak woman attempt to produce 

 an abortion, the common and unjireventable crime of civilization 

 in its highest state. But one wife is allowed, except in rai-e in- 

 stances, where a chief is permitted two. 



, 



