Otherwise, However, These Natives Were Kindly Disposed And More Attractive Than Either Of The Two Tribes Last Visited.

In husking rice the Penyahbongs, Saputans, and Penihings have the same method of gathering the grains back again under the pestle with the hands instead of with the feet, as is the custom of the Kenyahs and Kayans.

All day there were brought for sale objects of ethnography, also beetles, animals, and birds. Two attractive young girls sold me their primitive necklaces, consisting of small pieces of the stalks of different plants, some of them odoriferous, threaded on a string. One girl insisted that I put hers on and wear it, the idea that it might serve any purpose other than to adorn the neck never occurring to them. Two men arrived from Nohacilat, a neighbouring kampong, to sell two pieces of aboriginal wearing apparel, a tunic and a skirt. Such articles are very plentiful down there, they said, and offered them at an astonishingly reasonable price.

Malay is not spoken here, and we got on as best we could - nevertheless the want of an interpreter was seriously felt. The chief himself spoke some and might have served fairly well, but he studiously remained away from me, and even took most of the men from the kampong to make prahus at another place. I was told that he was afraid of me, and certainly his behaviour was puzzling. Three months later I was enlightened on this point by the information that he had been arrested on account of the murder by spear of a woman and two men, a most unusual occurrence among Dayaks, who, as a rule, never kill any one in their own tribe.

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