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 g 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. Again, if a temporary
house is wanted, either by the native in his plantation or
by the traveller in the forest, nothing is so convenient as
the Bamboo, with which a house can be constructed with
a quarter of the labour and time than if other materials
are used.
As I have already mentioned; the H ill. Dyaks in the
interior of Sarawak make paths for long distances from
village to village and to their cultivated grounds, in the
course of which they have to cross many gullies and
ravines, and even rivers; or sometimes, to avoid a long
circuit, to carry the path along the face of a precipice. In
all these cases the bridges they construct .are of Bamboo,
a n d so admirably adapted is the material for this purpose,
that it seems doubtful whether they ever would have
attempted such works if they had not possessed it. The
DYAK CROSSING A BAMBOO BRIDGE.
Dyak bridge is simple but well designed. It consists
merely of stout Bamboos crossing each other at the roadway
like the letter X, and rising a few feet above it. At
the crossing they are firmly bound together, and to a large
Bamboo which lavs upon them and forms the only path- «*
way, with a slender and often very shaky one to serve as a