OCCUPATION 
259 
forest, and sometimes returns with large pieces of venison, but 
sometimes with nothing; and on such days they go to sleep with¬ 
out supper. This is the ordinary evening work; when the sun is 
near setting. In the day time they remain at home where they pre¬ 
pare arrows and the weapons, the matter with which they poison 
their arrows, they cook and eat the animals caught the day before, 
and build or repair their houses etc. Many of them cultivate plan¬ 
tains, yams, which they call klades, and several other vegetables. I 
have seen amongst the Jakuus of Joliore some who had large fields 
of rice; They cultivate this grain in the following way: they choose 
in the forest a place where the ground appears to be favorable for such 
a purpose, they cut all the trees, in a space more or less large ac¬ 
cording to the number of persons and the quantity of rice they in¬ 
tend to plant; they put fire, and burn all these trees that are fallen 
pell-mell; when the branches are burnt the fire ceases, and some 
time after the rice is planted, it grows up amongst all the trunks of 
the fallen trees, and other larger branches which were not destroyed 
by fire: after the harvest the place is abandoned, and another is se¬ 
lected for the next year.* 
In several places in the interior of the forest are found durian 
trees, always in a body together to the number of about ten or twelve 
trees: such places are for the Jakuns an object of great attention, 
and a matter of work, They cut with great care all the other trees 
which surround the durians, that these by receiving more air may 
grow up more easily, and give finer and greater quantity of fruit ; 
they build there a small house of which I will hereafter speak, and 
they then return to their ordinary habitation, which is sometimes 
distant from such places one or two days journey. The Jakuns who 
have no taste for cultivating rice, or who are not acquainted with 
the manner of doing so, are generally very miserable; they are then 
obliged to look to the Malays, to provide for their livelihood: they 
traverse the Jungle all the day seeking after ratan, dammar, garu 
wood, and several other articles of commerce; the next morning, they 
f See vol. i."p. 255, 320’ 
