he carries heavy burdens, and paddles her boat on the river. All
these are her duties, and in performing them she quickly loses her
smooth skin, bright eyes, and slender figure. It is only the young girls
who can boast of any beauty, but the old women are very important
personages at a seed-time or harvest festival. They dress themselves in
long garments embroidered with tiny white shells, representing lizards
and crocodiles. With long wands in their hands, they dance, singing wild
incantations. They have already prepared the food for the
feast--chickens roasted in their feathers; cakes of rice, spun like
vermicelli and fried in cocoa-nut oil; curries, and salads of bitter and
acid leaves; sticks of small bamboo filled with pulut rice and boiled,
when it turns to a jelly and is agreeably flavoured with the young
bamboo. It is the women also who serve out the tuak, a spirit prepared
from rice and spiced with various ingredients, tobacco being one. The
men must drink at these feasts; they are very temperate generally, but
on this occasion they are rather proud of being drunk and boasting the
next day of a bad headache! The women urge them to drink, but do not
join in the orgies, and disappear when the intoxicating stage begins. I
trust that this description belongs only to the past; at any rate, we
know that in those places where the missionaries have long taught, their
people follow a more excellent way of rejoicing in the joy of harvest,
and, after their thanksgiving service in church, pour out their
offerings of rice before the altar to maintain the services, and
minister to the sick and needy.

[Illustration: A DYAK GIRL.

_Page_ 74.]

For many years, however, the women were opposed to a religion which
cleared away the superstitious customs which were the delight of their
lives, their chief amusement and dissipation, and a means of influencing
the men. It was not until the year 1864 that Mr. Gomes asked us to visit
Lundu and welcome a little party of women, the first converts to the
faith which their fathers and husbands had long professed. This is a
long digression from the history of the Lundus' visit to Kuching in
1855, which was at the time a great event. I find the following passage
in my journal: "Every evening, before late dinner, the Lundus go up to
Mr. Gomes's room to say their prayers, and sing, or rather chant, their
hymns. There is something very affecting in this little service--the
Dyak voices singing