The Bamboo Is One Of The Most Wonderful And Most
Beautiful Productions Of The Tropics, And One Of Nature's Most
Valuable Gifts To Uncivilized Man.
The Dyak houses are all raised on posts, and are often two or
three hundred feet long and forty or fifty wide.
The floor is
always formed of strips split from large Bamboos, so that each
may be nearly flat and about three inches wide, and these are
firmly tied down with rattan to the joists beneath. When well
made, this is a delightful floor to walk upon barefooted, the
rounded surfaces of the bamboo being very smooth and agreeable to
the feet, while at the same time affording a firm hold. But, what
is more important, they form with a mat over them an excellent
bed, the elasticity of the Bamboo and its rounded surface being
far superior to a more rigid and a flatter floor. Here we at once
find a use for Bamboo which cannot be supplied so well by another
material without a vast amount of labour - palms and other
substitutes requiring much cutting and smoothing, and not being
equally good when finished. When, however, a flat, close floor is
required, excellent boards are made by splitting open large
Bamboos on one side only, and flattening them out so as to form
slabs eighteen inches wide and six feet long, with which some
Dyaks floor their houses. These with constant rubbing of the feet
and the smoke of years become dark and polished, like walnut or
old oak, so that their real material can hardly be recognised.
What labour is here saved to a savage whose only tools are an axe
and a knife, and who, if he wants boards, must hew them out of
the solid trunk of a tree, and must give days and weeks of labour
to obtain a surface as smooth and beautiful as the Bamboo thus
treated affords him.
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