Our Friend The Vaccinateur Was Already Busy Inside The Building, Vaccinating Some Fifty Dayaks From The Neighbouring Hills And Mountains Who Had Responded To His Call.

When I entered, they showed timidity, but their fears were soon allayed, and I made myself at home on the raised floor, where I had a good camping-place.

Although these Bukits, among whom I travelled thereafter, are able to speak Malay, or Bandjer, the dialect of Bandjermasin, they have preserved more of their primitive characteristics than I expected. As I learned later, at Angkipi especially, and during a couple more days of travel, they were less affected by Malay influence than the Dayaks elsewhere on my route. The kampong exists only in name, not in fact, the people living in the hills in scattered groups of two or three houses. Rice is planted but once a year, and quite recently the cultivation of peanuts, which I had not before observed in Borneo, had been introduced through the Malays. Bukits never remain longer than two years at the same house, usually only half that time, making ladang near by, and the next year they move to a new house and have a new ladang. For their religious feasts they gather in the balei, just as the ancient Mexicans made temporary habitations in and near their temples, and as the Huichols and other Indians of Mexico do to-day.

The natives of Angkipi are stocky, crude people. Several had eyes set obliquely, a la Mongol, in a very pronounced manner, with the nose depressed at the base and the point slightly turned upward.

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