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 Coleóptera 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 Saráwak and in Singapore, till he again joined me four
years later at Amboyna in the Moluccas.
CHAPTER VI.
BORNEO— T H E DY AKS .
mHE 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