MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES, CONTRIBUTIONS 
AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
MR BURNS’S PAPER 0N THE KAYANS OF THE 
N. W. OF BORNEO. 
Sarawak, 2Rh Apiil, 1849. 
Truth and justice alike demand the following 
strictures on Mr Burns’s paper on the Kayans of the North 
W est Coast of Borneo which appeared in your journal of 
last February. 
Extended enquiry has gone to prove that the aboriginal 
tribes of the interior of Borneo differ greatly one from 
another, and it is stated in Captain Keppel’s work vol. 2 p. 
104, that a as they differ not only in name but in customs 
and manners, we will in the first instance mention the 
various distinct nations, the general locality of each and 
some of their distinguishing peculiarities.” 
Mr Burns, however, with this sentence before him, accuses 
a virtuous and truthful gentleman and divine, of ec slander” 
because he had made some statements (proved to be correct) 
on the Kajans of a distant part of Borneo which differed 
from the observations made by Mr Burns himself. 
The authority of Mr Hupe you have remarked in your 
note is unexceptionable, and surely, Sir, the friends of that 
gentleman may justly and publicly demand the retraction 
of a charge so rashly and groundlessly advanced, or retort 
the term, and regret that your valuable journal should be 
made the medium of personal abuse.* 
Mr Burns has himself differed from Mr Dalton on various 
subjects, and your next hasty and petulent contributor 
will doubtless accuse this gentleman of a gross dereliction 
off moral principle because some people in some part of 
Borneo differ from the people visited by Mr Burns. 
|Mr Burns is not content however with imputing 
i( slander” to an innocent person and correct observer, but 
proceeds likewise to attack others in the following passage: 
— <c the head hunting mania so extravagantly spoken of 
by Sarawak■ historians does not exist among the Kayan 
people, nor are the heads of their enemies more valued by 
* We not only declared Mr Hupe's authority to he unexceptionable but 
greatly modified Mr Burns’ remarks, and supplied the corrective, by citing 
Mr Wilier in confirmation of Mr Hupe’s statement.—E d. 
Vol . III. No, VI. June , 1849. 
