The main food product is rice, of which two distinct
races are grown. One kind only prospers in the rich
alluvial deposits of the valleys near the streams, where it
can be irrigated at particular stages of its growth. The
other kind, or “ liill-rice,” will grow on the hills up to
3000 feet elevation, and prospers in dry red earth, and
when growing it closely resembles a barley-field at home.
One of the most important of the women’s duties is to
clean and prepare daily the “ padi” or rice in the husk,
which, with fish and fruit, forms the main food supply of
these islanders. The “ padi” is placed in large wooden
mortars and beaten with wooden pestles a yard or more
in length. This beating or pounding separates the husk
from the white grain within. It is a very pretty sight to
see the girls of the villages inland thus engaged. As
many as three may sometimes be seen beating the rice in
one of these large wooden mortars. With one hand they
grasp the pestle about the centre, while the other hand is
rested on the hip. One woman commences to beat the
rice with a steady, regular stroke, then another one joins
her, and then a third. Of course, the most exact time
has to be observed, and the graceful motions of their
slightly-draped figures, the dancing pestles, and the
regular thudding sounds produced, are very interesting to
a stranger. After the rice has been sufficiently beaten,
one of the girls scoops it out of the mortar with her little
hands into a shallow tray of closely-woven rattan work of
circular form and about two feet in diameter. Standing
on the verandah or platform between the houses so as to
catch the breeze, the rice is sifted, and now and then
dexterously thrown up into the air so that the chaff and
refuse is blown away, but the rice falls back into the
tray. When finished the rice is as clean and as white as
that dressed by the finest machinery in England. Two
or three girls will soon clean the day’s supply, and by the.
laughing and gossip indulged in one may infer that the
task is not a very unpleasant one to them.
The farther one proceeds inland the more extensive
are the clearings devoted to rice culture. This is accounted
for by the fact that near the coast rice is often
imported in exchange for jungle produce, but far inland
the natives are obliged to grow all the food they require,
and in some cases as in the district to the south of Kina
Balu most of the hills up to 3000 feet are either under
rice culture, or are lying fallow, covered with low brushwood
or jungle. Virgin land or old forests are rare here,
unless on the slopes of the great mountain itself. The
clothing of the aboriginals is in most cases very scanty,
now and then “ sarongs ” and white calico are obtained
from the coast in return for wax, gutta, tobacco, or other
produce of the hills, but, as a rule, the clothing of the
native tribes of the north of Borneo inland is a short
“ sarong ” made of a strong indigo-dyed cloth, which is.
woven by the women from the strong fibres of the
“ Lamba ” ( Curculigo latifolid), a yellow-flowered broadleaved
weed, often seen in great abundance on old
cultivated plots near the houses. Many of the men,
especially those of the Murut tribes, who are perhaps the
most primitive of all the northern Borneans, wear
nothing but a strip of bark-cloth or “ chawat ” around
the loins, and I have no doubt but that this was the first
clothing ever worn by the natives of the island. This
bark-cloth is the produce of Artocarpus elastica, a tall
tree with a trunk two feet in diameter, and leaves closely
resembling those of the bread-fruit, but rough instead of
glossy. The inner bark is stripped off and soaked in
water, being afterwards beaten to render it soft and
pliable. Of this “ chawats ” or loin-cloths and jackets