trees, which must be as rough and uncomfortable as it is ugly. These
people, being Milanows, have peculiar burial customs. They lay the dead
in a boat, with all his property and belongings, and send it out to sea;
for they imagine that in some way a man's possessions may be of use to
him in another world, if no one claims them on earth.

"In this case there was no corpse to bury. The clothes were so disposed
on the bier as to represent a figure, and laid beside it were handsome
gold cloths and ornaments, gold buttons, krises,[5] and breastplates,
and weapons of Javanese manufacture, representing some hundreds of
dollars. There were also gongs and two brass guns. Of course the fate of
such boat-loads, sent adrift in a tidal river, is generally to be
capsized and lost in the water. But if Malays encounter them they do not
hesitate to appropriate the effects. Palabun knew this, so he did not
send his brother's boat away until our fleet had departed." (Bishop's
Journal.)

[Footnote 5: A kris is a Malay dagger.]

I remember our once meeting one of these boats. It had been caught by
branches from the bank, and swayed idly to and fro in the stream. We
could only see a heap of coloured clothes inside it, but there was a
weird, ghastly look about the boat which made us shudder. An unburied
corpse, left to the winds and waves, without a prayer or a blessing! how
could it be otherwise? Even if we could delude ourselves into fancying
the Dyaks happy during their lives without Christianity, there can be no
doubt of their being miserable when death comes. They all believe dimly
in a future state, but their dread of spirits is so great that they can
have no ideas of happiness unconnected with their bodies. "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. On the hillsides lived several villages of Land Dyaks, and I had
a woman as nurse to my baby who belonged to one of these villages. The
cholera was in the country at that time, and three men had died of the
Sebumban Dyaks. Every night the most mournful wailing arose above the
trees--a sad sound indeed, rising and falling on the wind as the friends
of the dead w