MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES, &C. 
XXV 
deserted wife; he paid the usual moderate fine and rejoined his fami¬ 
ly, after vainly proffering a request at Oto for employment by the 
year. 
A few words as to a Ddydk funeral. The death of an acquaint¬ 
ance is very commonly spoken or heard of with a smile of levity and 
some jocose remark ; and, though these readily give way to rebuke, 
and are followed by a sufficiently serious manner of listening to re¬ 
marks npon the solemnity of the event and its connection with an 
endless future, the belief is cherished that, if they are to “live again,’ 3 ’ 
Sabalatn will be the scene. Of this “ heaven” of the Dayak I can 
give no reliable account; he has ever been chary of revelations touch¬ 
ing his religion, and, since the exposure of what he did make known 
as vain and guiltful, has sensitively avoided explanation. A funeral 
occurs, if practicable, on the day that witnessed the death—in con¬ 
sequence, no doubt, of the universal dread of “ amot” or ghosts. 
An infant may be still living at 3 o’clock p. m., and, before 5 o’clock 
of the same afternoon, you shall see its yet flexible form borne by 
your door, in the arms perhaps of a grimly-smiling grandfather, and 
committed, in its bark wrapper, to the earth. It is but a few weeks 
since a case of this precise character occurred, and every ac¬ 
cessory—the cold, pitiless rain falling at the moment—the miry state 
of the soil—-made the act abhorrent. It was like the burial of a 
dog, the witnesses barely two in number. If an infant have attain¬ 
ed an age at which it interests the indolent relatives—as when it 
can attempt to stand or talk—the loss is more appreciated; and in 
whatever ease, a boy is more lamented than a girl; indeed if a pa¬ 
rent who has borne several female children lose her only son—es¬ 
pecially when the infant has p’assed the first year—the grief, perhaps 
the blasphemy, Is earnest and sore. An adult is buried with rather 
less of unseemly haste, but, as a rule, if circumstances favour, i. e. 
if the weather be not very inclement, and friends to assume the dig- 
mg of a grave be at hand, night finds his body absent from its recent 
home for ever. The corpse covered with a white cloth and wrap¬ 
ped in bark, is borne upon the shoulders of the eldest son or 
nearest friend to the distant burial-place, and, if the grave be not 
