and puts it in a similar shallow pan, where she
separates the rice from the husk by a peculiar movement
of the pan, accompanied with a jerk. Long
practice has made the women perfect at this, and
the men are equally perfect at doing nothing.
The -women use their left hand with equal facility to
their right, and indeed make no distinction. They
are covered with brass wire, the legs from the
ankles to the knees, and from the wrists to the
elbows, also wearing a collar of brass wire round the
neck.7
Every time they hammer the bracelets jingle, and at
night by the light of the burning resin (damar), which
casts a lurid glare round the rooms and passages of
the curious long low house, the whole scene was
peculiarly picturesque and fascinating. I had to bend
almost double to walk about, as the house is built
for Dusuns and not for white men. The roof was
covered with the smoke and dust of ages, there
being no chimneys or any attempt to conduct the
smoke from the cooking-fires away. I t therefore curls
up and hangs about the house, and finds its way out
through holes in the roof.. Here a man died during
the night, and the grief of the friends was very
genuine and deep. I wonder some epidemic does not
break out amongst these people, as the dirt beneath
the house is terrible. Pigs, fowls, cattle, dogs, and
other animals all accumulate their filth below the
7 Hero the original diary finishes. The remainder of the notes are
part of an official report and “ extracts from diary ” furnished to
the Governor. The original‘diary, so far as it goes, is written in
an ordinary folio half-hound hook, and it was evidently continued
in a similar volume, which is not forthcoming.