Sometimes The
Dry Season Was The Hindrance; More Frequently Residence In A Town
Or Village Not Close To Virgin Forest,
And surrounded by other
houses whose lights were a counter-attraction; still more
frequently residence in a dark palm-thatched
House, with a lofty
roof, in whose recesses every moth was lost the instant it
entered. This last was the greatest drawback, and the real reason
why I never again was able to make a collection of moths; for I
never afterwards lived in a solitary jungle-house with a low
boarded and whitewashed verandah, so constructed as to prevent
insects at once escaping into the upper part of the house, quite
out of reach.
After my long experience, my numerous failures, and my one success,
I feel sure that if any party of naturalists ever make a yacht-voyage
to explore the Malayan Archipelago, or any other tropical region,
making entomology one of their chief pursuits, it would well repay
them to carry a small framed verandah, or a verandah-shaped tent
of white canvas, to set up in every favourable situation, as a means
of making a collection of nocturnal Lepidoptera, and also of obtaining
rare specimens of Coleoptera and other insects. I make the suggestion
here, because no one would suspect the enormous difference in results
that such an apparatus would produce; and because I consider it one
of the curiosities of a collector's experience, to have found out
that some such apparatus is required.
When I returned to Singapore I took with me the Malay lad named
Ali, who subsequently accompanied me all over the Archipelago.
Charles Allen preferred staying at the Mission-house, and
afterwards obtained employment in Sarawak and in Singapore, until
he again joined me four years later at Amboyna in the Moluccas.
CHAPTER VI.
BORNEO - THE DYAKS.
THE manners and customs of the aborigines of Borneo have been
described in great detail, and with much fuller information than I
possess, in the writings of Sir James Brooke, Messrs. Low, St. John,
Johnson Brooke, and many others. I do not propose to go over the
ground again, but shall confine myself to a sketch, from personal
observation, of the general character of the Dyaks, and of such
physical, moral, and social characteristics as have been less
frequently noticed.
The Dyak is closely allied to the Malay, and more remotely to the
Siamese, Chinese, and other Mongol races. All these are characterised
by a reddish-brown or yellowish-brown skin of various shades, by jet-
black straight hair, by the scanty or deficient beard, by the rather
small and broad nose, and high cheekbones; but none of the Malayan
races have the oblique eyes which are characteristic of the more
typical Mongols. The average stature of the Dyaks is rather more than
that of the Malays, while it is considerably under that of most
Europeans. Their forms are well proportioned, their feet and hands
small, and they rarely or never attain the bulk of body so often seen
in Malays and Chinese.
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