The Dayak Women Can Hardly Be Considered Good-Looking.

I saw one or two that were rather pretty, but they were very young and unmarried.

Dubi fell madly in love with one of them and she with him, and when I left there were two broken hearts. Many of the little girls of about five and six years old would have been regular pictures if they had only been cleaner. I made the discovery that some of my Dayak friends were addicted to the horrible habit of eating clay, and actually found a regular little digging in the side of a hill where they worked to get these lumps of reddish grey clay, and soon caught some of the old men eating it. They declared that they enjoyed it. All my empty tins (from tinned meats, etc.) were in great demand, and so to save jealousy I actually demoralized the Dayaks to the extent of introducing the raffling system among them. Great was the excitement every evening when I raffled old tins and bottles. Dubi would hand the bits of paper and they would be a long time making up their minds which to take. One night Dubi overheard my Chinese cook telling some of the Dayaks that "the white tuan had no use for these tins himself, that is why he gives them to you."

This cook, whom I used to call Cookie, was a great nuisance to me, but he was the most amusing character I ever came across, and he was the source of endless delight to the Dayaks, who enjoyed teasing him and jokingly threatened to cut off his head, until he was almost paralyzed with fright and came and begged me to leave, as we should all have our heads cut off.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 196 of 217
Words from 53097 to 53393 of 59060