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Every man without exception carries a kris, stuck behind into the large waist-cloth which all wear, and it is generally the most valuable piece of property he possesses. A few days afterwards our long-talked-of excursion to Gunong Sari took place. Our party was increased by the captain and supercargo of a Hamburg ship loading with rice for China.
On the other hand, by merely wearing a waist-cloth, and taking constant sea baths, I suffered scarcely at all from the scorching tropical sun. I now devoted all my energies to the wreck of the Veielland, lest anything should happen to it, and worked with feverish energy to get everything I possibly could out of the ship.
A scanty waist-cloth of home-made bark-cloth, or equally scanty skirt for the woman, strings of small beads round wrists or ankles or both, numbers of slender bands of plaited palm-fibre below the knees and about the wrists, and sometimes a strip of cloth round the head, make up his costume for all occasions. All his belongings are such as can easily be transported.
Down we go, and there stands Don Lopez with a dozen choice friends, all the raggedest, dirty villains in the world; and they saluting us, we return their civility with a very fair pretence and take the seats offered us they standing until we are set. Then they sit down, and each man lugs out a knife from his waist-cloth.
Now he saw a second man, and the two dark figures, both naked save for a waist-cloth, crept slowly towards him under cover of the bushes. They were a couple of Panthay wood-cutters, felling teak trees on the edge of the ravine. At present the ravine was dry, but in the rainy season an ample flood of water roared along the hollow, a flood which would carry the teak logs down to the big river below.
The man was dressed in the native costume of the lower class of Arab, and his features were peculiarly regular for the colour of his skin details which George was not slow to note. The fellow was armed with the usual long knife stuck in his waist-cloth, and looked the picture of the unscrupulous mercenary so frequently found abroad at the time.
There stood the woman, while the bullets whistled round her, laying the gun as coolly as though she had served in the Royal Artillery, and with her was the head-man, Peter. Peter was shot through the waist-cloth and a ball cut its way through Soa's grizzled hair, but neither of them seemed to notice these trifles.
This thin cord is used as a support for their waist-cloth, and is rarely taken off, but is fastened so tightly that I have seen it appear completely buried in the flesh, just as if the wearers had an idea that they ought to make themselves look as much like an insect as possible.
Pets, in the form of birds and the smaller mammals, especially hornbills, parrokeets, squirrels, porcupines, are kept in wicker cages. About the age of ten years the Kayan boy begins to wear a waist-cloth his first garment his sister having assumed the apron some two or three years earlier; we are not aware of any ceremony connected with this.
The lieges wear European shirts, stuffed into a waist-cloth of cheaper material, calico or domestics; This Tanga, or kilt, is, in fact, an article of general wear, and it would be an airy, comfortable, and wholesome travelling costume if the material were flannel.
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