142 THE KA.YANS OF THE NORTH-WEST OF BORNEO, 
Kanawit, who, in habits, closely assimilate to the Dyaks of all 
Saribas whose neighbours they are. The tribes Punan, Sa- 
kapan and Kajaman are the chief collectors of camphor and 
bird’s nests. They are next in locality to the Kayans, with 
whom they partially agree in customs, especially in that of the 
disposal of the dead. Those only of Bintulu and Till an 
adopt the Malay saluar as an article of dress, but are not 
Islamites; all their dialects widely differ, but are easily traced to 
a common origin. Their numbers average from about five to 
six hundred each tribe. Of the above named tribes the Ba- 
katan and Lugat are the most predatory and mischievous. 
Gipsey-like, having no settled abode, they roam at will through 
the jungle, subsisting on its produce, and on what they pro¬ 
cure by theft from the other tribes. They are the slave 
merchants af the country, stealing the members of one tribe 
to sell them to the next. They are elaborately tatooed from 
bead to foot, and are the chief manufacturers of the sumpitan, 
the boring of which by a skilful hand is performed in a day. 
The instrument used is a cold iron rod, one end of which is 
chisel pointed, and the other round. The Bakatans are said 
to excel all the other tribes in preparing the poisoned arrows. 
The head hunting mania, so extravagantly spoken ot by Sara¬ 
wak historians, does not exist among the Kaykn people, nor are 
the heads of their enemies more valued by them than were 
such trophies by the warriors of Europe during the reign of 
feudalism, and heads if taken in battle are merely considered 
as trophies as were scalps byThe North A merican Indians. 
That we have heard so much of the imputed horrors of head¬ 
hunting, and still know so little ot the people of the interior of 
Borneo, might be accounted for by their having been malig¬ 
ned by foreigners, by tbe atrocious Malays of the coast, who 
have described them as being savage headhunters and canni¬ 
bals, and also by a German missionary who has slanderously 
reported them as being in part a nation of prostitutes. The 
object of the Malays is obvious, as they mainly derive their 
subsistence by cozening the people ot the interior ot their 
industriously collected produce, and know that were Europeans 
to have intercourse with the interior their trade would decline, 
but it is not so easy a i atter to comprehend toe intention 
of the German missionary, in making so notoriously unfounded 
a report.* 
* We presume Mr Burns alludes to what is stated by Mr Low, we believe 
on the unexceptionable authority of Mr Hup£, respecting tbs aborigines on tbe 
river Banjer. Mr Low says, “1 cannot imagine these observations,” which 
accuse them of worse than female prostitution, “ to be correct,” but on refer¬ 
ring to the passage (Sarawak, p. 326) we find that a most accurate and trust- 
