22 BRITISH BORNEO. 
and who would become the father of a new race. The pro- 
phecy of the spirit was in due time fulfilled.” 
It somewhat militates against the correctness of this history 
that the Buludupihs are distinguished by the absence of 
Mongolian features. 
The general appellation given to the aborigines by the 
modern Malays—to whom reference will be made later on—is 
Dyak, and they are divided into numerous tribes, speaking 
very different dialects of the Malayo-Polynesian stock, and 
known by distinctive names, the origin of which is generally 
obscure, at least in British North Borneo, where these names 
are mot, as arule, derived from those of the rivers on which 
they dwell. 
The following are the names of some of the principal North 
Borneo aboriginal tribes:—Kadaians, Dusuns, Ida’ans, Bi- 
saias, Buludupihs, Eraans, Subans, Sun-Dyaks, Muruts, 
Tagaas. Of these, the Kadaians, Buludupihs, Eraans and one 
large section of the Bisaias have embraced the religion of 
Mahomet; the others are Pagans, with no set form of religion, 
no idols, but believing in spirits and in a future life, which 
they localise on the top of the great mountain of Kina-balu. 
These Pagans are a simple and more natural, less self-con- 
scious, people than their Mahomedan brethren, who are ahead 
of them in point of civilization, but are more reserved, more 
proud and altogether less ‘jolly,’ and appear, with their 
religion, to have acquired also some of the characteristics of 
the modern or true Malays. A Pagan can sit, or rather squat, 
with you and tell you legends, or, perhaps, on an occasion 
join in a glass of grog, whereas the Mahomedan, especially the 
true Malay, looks upon the Englishman as little removed from 
a “Kafir’—an uncircumcised Philistine—who through ignor- 
ance constantly offends in minor points of etiquette, who eats 
pig and drinks strong drink, is ignorant of the dignity of repose, 
and whose accidental physical and political superiority in the 
present world will be more than compensated for by the very 
inferior and uncomfortable position he will attain in the next. 
The aborigines inhabit the interior parts of North Borneo, 
and all along the coast is found a fringe of true Malays, talk- 
