ike, making it quite their home: it is what very few people could do
day after day." This is the trial of Dyak teaching. You cannot appoint
specific hours for instruction. People come when they can, sometimes
long distances. They can never be denied, except you are actually at
meals, and then they sit down and wait till the eating is over. Here is
a programme of a day at Banting:--

By seven in the morning Mr. Chambers goes to one or another Dyak house
to teach. These houses contain many families under one roof. The people
understand now that teaching is the sole object of Mr. Chambers' visit,
so, when he enters, all who are at leisure gather round him. He returns
home to eleven o'clock breakfast. After breakfast his school of boys
occupies him for the afternoon; but every party of Dyaks who come in
must be listened to, and, if they are willing, instructed, taught a
prayer, a hymn, a parable, or some Scripture lesson. This goes on till
five o'clock, when the bell calls them to daily prayers, and they all
walk together down the beautiful jungle avenue to the pretty church. A
short service, in which the Dyaks respond heartily, and a catechizing
follows, during which they are allowed to ask questions of their
teacher. Then an hour's rest before dinner. But immediately after dinner
more Dyaks, sometimes a whole house, _i.e._ forty or fifty persons, come
in, and have coffee, and pictures, and a lecture. All this does not
happen every day, but most days during what we call the working season,
from March till October, and no doubt so much talking and so little
leisure is very fatiguing. But then comes the harvest, and afterwards
the wet monsoon, and the schools fall off, and the Dyaks no longer come
from a distance to be taught. It is sufficiently dull and lonely then in
the jungle stations. The sea runs too high for boats to bring mails, or
books, or provisions; the rain falls heavily, and with little
intermission, and food becomes scarce. Mrs. Chambers told me that the
prayer for daily bread, which seems to us to relate to the daily needs
of our souls for the bread and water of life, bore a literal meaning to
them in the north-east monsoon, when the day's food was by no means
certain. Rice they had, it is true; but English people get nearly
starved upon rice alone, without fish, meat, or bread. It was therefore
with sincere thankfulness that they welcomed a chicken, however skinny,
in that season.

After the Banting expedit