MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES, &C* 
xxiii 
been living 1 upon Sago and other forest-food, and still can do so un¬ 
til the opening of February furnish his own garners from the har¬ 
vest-field, but with the trifle of money he may earn lie will secure at 
all hazards the only vegetable he really values when a choice is open. 
To the credit of the Dayak I must state my belief that grain thus 
dearly bought is chiefly for the more advanced in life, while justice 
to the vending harpies requires the statement that the price here is 
nearly Jive fold that which obtained at Pontianak on the 20th. ult. 
It may illustrate the adjective “ ungrateful” if I mention that men 
who have been employed by me, and received as part of their wages 
(by request) rice at sea board i. e. Ponttanak rates, have done their 
work more idly than usual: nor have I been surprised at the cool¬ 
ness of able-bodied men who have proposed to borrow grain (bought 
at famine prices) on the guarantee of their individual veracity that 
a strictly equal quantity, by measure, should be returned to me af¬ 
ter the gathering of their crop ! On the subject of interest I may 
perhaps have spoken in the letter of last month ; it is its duplication 
of a debt which hears so devouringly upon the Dayak, who is fatally 
prone to incur obligation : a debt of two rupees formed a year ago 
needs no other increment than that which results from neglect to 
pay, in order to reach, by January 1850, the sum of sixteen rupees, 
the creditor having the right of levying on the property, time or per¬ 
son of his debtor. As many are always in debt, and thus liable to 
be called into temporary and ill-paid service by a capitalist who may 
or may not be “ seized” of an estate to the value of two to three 
crowns English, and as a rajah may, at any moment, summon half 
the male population to labor without limit other than his caprice, a 
D&y&k can never feel that he is master of a day for his own purposes. 
The taxation upon purse and harvest is, relatively and absolutely, 
light when compared with the case of other people and regions, but 
pretexts are made for the grossest abuses. Perhaps a semi-idiotic 
but titled lecher demands Si the pride of the village,” with the al¬ 
ternative of money-redemption ; or an equally worthy fellow in rank 
deposits in the hall of a “ radang”, with a price of shameless exor¬ 
bitance affixed, a basket of tobacco, which no lover of that weed 
