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Updated: August 31, 2025
His own men he hastened to their posts in his prahu that they might be ready to pull swiftly away the moment that he and the captive were aboard. The Dyak warriors presented an awe inspiring spectacle in the fitful light of the nearby camp fire.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, surprised. "I have nearly stepped on your tray. Am I a Dyak that you should hide at my sight?" "I was weary, and I slept," whispered Taminah, confusedly. "You slept! You have not sold anything to-day, and you will be beaten when you return home," said Babalatchi. Taminah stood before him abashed and silent.
In character the Dyak is mild and tractable, hospitable when he is well used, grateful for kindness, industrious, honest, and simple; neither treacherous nor cunning, and so truthful that the word of one of them might safely be taken before the oath of half-a-dozen Borneons.
That was my first glimpse of the life of tragedy through which a half-breed woman of the Orient has to go. I met them in the Philippines, with Spanish and American blood running in their veins; I met Malay girls whose fathers had been German or English; I met Dyak girls whose fathers had been Dutch; and Javanese girls whose fathers had been either American, English or Dutch.
The years they have passed in oppression may account for this, as also the continual state of poverty and sickness in which they exist, their villages being seldom entirely free from dysentery or small-pox, while nearly all are more or less afflicted with korrip, a loathsome skin disease peculiar to the Dyak.
"I heartily applaud your sentiment," said Nigel, with a laugh, as he helped himself to some of the food which the Dyak youth and Moses had prepared, "and if Van der Kemp will give me leave of absence I will gladly keep you company." "Zank you. Pass round zee victuals. My appetite is strong. It always vas more or less strong. Vat say you, Van der Kemp?" "I have no objection.
There are some differences in the ceremonies connected with the admission into each of these three grades, but in all of them the aspirant sits in the verandah of the Dyak house, and a number of witch doctors walk round him singing incantations during the whole night.
Their ferocity of disposition is proverbial in the East. It is said that when a Dyak has promised a head a human head to the woman he loves, he will obtain it at any cost. Whether he strikes down friend or foe he cares not, so long as he secures the ghastly gift; and his eye being as sure as that of the tiger, his arrow never misses its aim.
But this is so far from being the case, that, when their demand has been enforced, dozens of inferior wretches extort and plunder in turn, each according to his ability; and though the Dyak is not wanting in obstinacy, he can seldom withstand these robberies, for each levy is made in the name of the rajah, or some principal Pangeran; and the threat of bringing the powerful tribe of Sakarrans or Sarebus to deprive them of their heads and wives and families, generally reduces them to obedience.
"Having no hope, and without God in the world," describes the mental state of a heathen Dyak. In 1856, we were living for a few weeks on a hill called Peninjauh, some miles from Kuching, where the Rajah had built a cottage as a sanitarium after illness. The cool freshness of the mountain air, and the glorious view from See-afar Cottage, were indeed conducive to health.
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