Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
During my residence among the Hill Dyaks, I was much struck by the apparent absence
of those causes which are generally supposed to check the increase of population, although
there were plain indications of stationary or but slowly increasing numbers. The conditions
most favourable to a rapid increase of population are, an abundance of food, a healthy cli-
mate, and early marriages. Here these conditions all exist. The people produce far more food
than they consume, and exchange the surplus for gongs and brass cannon, ancient jars, and
gold and silver ornaments, which constitute their wealth. On the whole, they appear very
free from disease, marriages take place early (but not too early), and old bachelors and old
maids are alike unknown. Why, then, we must inquire, has not a greater population been
produced? Why are the Dyak villages so small and so widely scattered, while nine-tenths of
the country is still covered with forest?
Of all the checks to population among savage nations mentioned by Malthus—starvation,
disease, war, infanticide, immorality, and infertility of the women—the last is that which he
seems to think least important, and of doubtful efficacy; and yet it is the only one that seems
to me capable of accounting for the state of the population among the Saráwak Dyaks. The
population of Great Britain increases so as to double itself in about fifty years. To do this it
is evident that each married couple must average three children who live to be married at the
age of about twenty-five. Add to these those who die in infancy, those who never marry, or
those who marry late in life and have no offspring, the number of children born to each mar-
riage must average four or five; and we know that families of seven or eight are very com-
mon, and of ten and twelve by no means rare. But from inquiries at almost every Dyak tribe
I visited, I ascertained that the women rarely had more than three or four children, and an
old chief assured me that he had never known a woman have more than seven. In a village
consisting of a hundred and fifty families, only one consisted of six children living, and only
six of five children, the majority appearing to be two, three, or four. Comparing this with the
known proportions in European countries, it is evident that the number of children to each
marriage can hardly average more than three or four; and as even in civilized countries half
the population die before the age of twenty-five, we should have only two left to replace
their parents; and so long as this state of things continued, the population must remain sta-
tionary. Of course this is a mere illustration; but the facts I have stated seem to indicate that
something of the kind really takes place; and if so, there is no difficulty in understanding the
smallness and almost stationary population of the Dyak tribes.
We have next to inquire what is the cause of the small number of births and of living chil-
dren in a family. Climate and race may have something to do with this, but a more real and
efficient cause seems to me to be the hard labour of the women, and the heavy weights they
