Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
constantly carry. A Dyak woman generally spends the whole day in the field, and carries
home every night a heavy load of vegetables and firewood, often for several miles, over
rough and hilly paths; and not unfrequently has to climb up a rocky mountain by ladders,
and over slippery stepping-stones, to an elevation of a thousand feet. Besides this, she has
an hour's work every evening to pound the rice with a heavy wooden stamper, which viol-
ently strains every part of the body. She begins this kind of labour when nine or ten years
old, and it never ceases but with the extreme decrepitude of age. Surely we need not wonder
at the limited number of her progeny, but rather be surprised at the successful efforts of
nature to prevent the extermination of the race.
One of the surest and most beneficial effects of advancing civilization, will be the ameli-
oration of the condition of these women. The precept and example of higher races will make
the Dyak ashamed of his comparatively idle life, while his weaker partner labours like a
beast of burthen. As his wants become increased and his tastes refined, the women will have
more household duties to attend to, and will then cease to labour in the field—a change
which has already to a great extent taken place in the allied Malay, Javanese, and Bugis
tribes. Population will then certainly increase more rapidly, improved systems of agriculture
and some division of labour will become necessary in order to provide the means of existen-
ce, and a more complicated social state will take the place of the simple conditions of soci-
ety which now obtain among them. But, with the sharper struggle for existence that will
then occur, will the happiness of the people as a whole be increased or diminished? Will not
evil passions be aroused by the spirit of competition, and crimes and vices, now unknown or
dormant, be called into active existence? These are problems that time alone can solve; but
it is to be hoped that education and a high-class European example may obviate much of the
evil that too often arises in analogous cases, and that we may at length be able to point to
one instance of an uncivilized people who have not become demoralized and finally exterm-
inated, by contact with European civilization.
A few words in conclusion, about the government of Saráwak. Sir James Brooke found
the Dyaks oppressed and ground down by the most cruel tyranny. They were cheated by the
Malay traders, and robbed by the Malay chiefs. Their wives and children were often cap-
tured and sold into slavery, and hostile tribes purchased permission from their cruel rulers to
plunder, enslave, and murder them. Anything like justice or redress for these injuries was ut-
terly unattainable. From the time Sir James obtained possession of the country, all this was
stopped. Equal justice was awarded to Malay, Chinaman, and Dyak. The remorseless pirates
from the rivers farther east were punished, and finally shut up within their own territories,
and the Dyak, for the first time, could sleep in peace. His wife and children were now safe
