This room serves several purposes. It serves as a kitchen, and in one corner there is a fireplace where the food is cooked. This fireplace is set against the wall of the veranda, and resembles an open cupboard. The lowest shelf rests on the floor, and is boarded all round and filled with clay. This forms the fireplace, and is furnished with a few stones upon which the pots are set for cooking. The shelf immediately above the fireplace is set apart for smoking fish. The shelves above are filled with firewood, which is thoroughly dried by the smoke and ready for use. As the smoke from the wood fire is not conducted through the roof by any kind of chimney, it spreads itself through the loft, and blackens the beams and rafters of the roof.
This room also serves as a dining-room. When the food is cooked, mats are spread here, and the inmates squat on the floor to eat their meal. There is no furniture, the floor serving the double purpose of table and chairs.
This bilik also serves as a bedroom. At night the mats for sleeping on are spread out here, and the mosquito-curtains hung up.
There is no window to let in the air and light, but a portion of the roof is so constructed that it can be raised a foot or two, and kept open by means of a stick.
Round the three sides of this room are ranged the treasured valuables of the Dyaks—old jars, some of which are of great value, and brass gongs, and guns. Their cups and plates are hung up in rows flat against the walls. The flooring is the same as that of the veranda, and is made of split palm or bamboo tied down with cane. The floor is swept after a fashion, the refuse falling through the flooring to the ground underneath. But the room is stuffy, and not such a pleasant place as the open veranda. The pigs and poultry occupy the waste space under the house.
From the bilik there is a ladder which leads to an upper room, or loft (sadau), where they keep their tools and store their paddy. If the family be a large one, the young unmarried girls sleep in this loft, the boys and young men sleeping outside in the veranda.
Both men and women are industrious and hard-working. With regard to the paddy-planting on the hills, the work is divided between the men and women in the following manner. The men cut down the jungle where the paddy is to be planted. When the timber and shrubs have been burnt, the men and women plant the grain. The roots of the trees are left in the ground. The men walk in front, with a long heavy staff in the right hand of each, and make holes in the ground about a foot apart. The women walk behind them and throw a few grains of seed in each hole.
When the paddy has grown a little, the ground has to be carefully weeded; this work is done by the women. When the crop is ripe, both men and women do the reaping. They walk between the rows of standing grain, and with a sharp, oddly-shaped little knife they cut off the heads one by one, and place them in their baskets, which are tied in front of them. The carrying home of the paddy thus reaped is mostly done by the men, who can carry very heavy loads on their backs, though the women help in this to some extent. The next thing is to separate the grain from the little tiny stems to which it is still attached. This is done by the men. The grain is put on a large square sieve of rattan fixed between four posts in the veranda of the Dyak house, and the men tread on it and press it through the sieve. The paddy that falls through is taken and stored in the loft in large round bins made of bark.
