There was also a very rich old man, Simoulin by name, who was baptized at this time. His wife had opposed his conversion with all her might; indeed, she declared she would leave him and carry half the property with her. Simoulin said quietly, "If she will she must: she is only a woman, and her judgment in the matter is not likely to be good." Christianity had strong opponents in the women of all the Dyak tribes. They held important parts in all the feasts, incantations, and superstitions, which could not be called religion, but were based on the dread of evil spirits and a desire to propitiate them. The women encouraged head-taking by preferring to marry the man who had some of those ghastly tokens of his prowess. When Sir James Brooke forbad head-taking among the tribes in his dominions, it was the women who would row their lovers out of the rivers in their boats, and set them down on the sea-coast to find the head of a stranger. When heads were brought in, it was the women who took possession of them, decked them with flowers, put food into their mouths, sang to them, mocked them, and instituted feasts in honour of the slayers. The young Dyak woman works hard; she helps in all the labours of sowing, planting out, weeding, and reaping the paddy. She beats out the rice in a wooden trough, with a long pole, or pestle. She grows the cotton for clothing, dyes and weaves it. She 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.
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 of Christ's second coming with His holy angels, and rejoicing that He came once before for their salvation; then praying for holy, gentle hearts to receive Him. I always feel on these occasions as if I heard these precious truths afresh when they are spoken in a tongue till lately ignorant of them. Indeed, there can scarcely be a more joyful excitement than such passages in the life of a missionary; they are worth any sacrifice. After English morning service, Mr. Gomes has prayers in church for his Dyaks. He then instructs them in the baptismal service. This makes five daily services in church, two English, two Chinese, and one Dyak. We clothed all the candidates in a new suit of cotton garments with a bright-coloured handkerchief for their heads. It would be considered very irreverent for Easterns to uncover their heads in church. I taught the school-children to sing 'Veni, Creator Spiritus' at this baptism, while the clergy were arranging the candidates and sponsors round the font. The font was wreathed with flowers by my children. There was quite a full church, for the Chinese Christians all came to see the Dyaks baptized, and all the English of the place were present. Mr. Gomes baptized, and my husband signed them with the cross. They all spoke up bravely in answering to their vows: may God give them grace to keep them."
This baptism took place on Whit Sunday. On Thursday of that week, Mr. Gomes, his Dyaks, and Frank, went off to Linga for a week to visit Mr. Chambers, and Mr. Horsburgh at Banting, that the converts of both tribes might become friends. The Balows and Lundus had always been united in their efforts against the pirate tribes, and in their fealty to the Rajah's Government. On this account they had a right to the services of the first missionaries who came from England to teach Dyaks. The visit to Banting had another object besides the mutual friendship of the converts. A controversy had arisen in the mission about the right word to be used in translations for Jesus. Isa is the name the Malays use, and the Dutch translations of the Bible employ this name; but there happened to be a bad Malay man owning the name of Isa, well known to the Balows, and Mr. Chambers feared some confusion would arise in the minds of converts in applying the same name to our Lord. It was therefore necessary to have a meeting of the clergy to decide this and many other religious terms to be used in hymns, catechisms, and in general teaching, that there might be unity in the mission: it would not do to have any divisions in the camp on such a subject. There are fifty miles of sea to cross from the Sarawak River to the Batang Lupar, then a long pull from the fort at Linga up to Banting. The journey took three nights and two days.
The mission-house at Banting is most romantically placed on the crest of a hill overhanging the river about three hundred feet, and stands in a grove of beautiful fruit-trees. The view from it is enchanting. The river branches at the foot of the hill, and each branch seems to vie with the other in the tortuousness of its course through the bright green paddy-fields. About a mile off rises Mount Lesong[3] with a graceful slope, about three thousand feet, and then terminates abruptly in a rugged top. The four clergymen who met at Banting looked almost as wild as their people—wide shady hats, long staffs, long beards, not a shirt among the party, and but one pair of shoes, belonging to my husband, who never could walk barefooted. They spent several days together, and had much consultation about religious terms. The most intelligent of the Dyak Christians were present, as it was necessary, not only to choose words they could understand, but such as they could easily pronounce. On Trinity Sunday there were several services in the large room of the house, for the church was not yet built. The Lingas sang their hymns with great energy to one of their own wild strains, but when they heard the Lundus' melodious chant they were ashamed to sing after them, and begged them to teach them. The Dyaks love music and verse. Mr. Gomes and Mr. Chambers wrote them hymns, and the Creed in verse, which they readily commit to memory and understand better than prose. Pictures are also used in their instruction: a parable or miracle is read, then a picture of it produced and explained, the Dyaks repeating each sentence after the teacher, to keep their attention.
The baptized alone join in the Litany and Holy Communion. The afternoon was spent in visiting the sick and giving medicine. Several women came to the house for instruction, and seemed to take great interest in Mr. Chambers, teaching; but it was not until Mr. Chambers was married that any women were baptized. At breakfast the next morning came an old chief, called Tongkat Langit—the Staff of Heaven. His son Lingire was one of the most pleasing converts, and Tongkat was wavering—had not leisure at present! The necessity of forswearing the practise of head-taking deters the old men from becoming Christians: they fear to lose influence with their tribe. The little party then fixed upon the spot where the church should be built, a permanent bilian chancel to which a nave could be added when the additional room was required. Twenty-five pounds from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was all the money then in hand to begin with; but very soon more was collected, and when I visited Banting in 1857 there was a lovely little church standing on the hill overlooking the village, and surrounded by beautiful trees. The walk to it from the mission-house was just like a gentleman's park, the green sward and groups of trees with lovely peeps of hill and valleys and winding streams between. Again in 1864 we went to Banting, that the Bishop might consecrate the church. The nave was then built. Every stick in the church was bilian. The white ants walked in as soon as the workmen left. In one night they carried their covered ways all over the inside of the roof, the walls, the beams, and rafters; and finding nothing they could bite, they walked out again, leaving their traces plainly marked. Since then a coloured-glass window, representing our Lord's Resurrection, has been added at the east end of the church; and, what is better far, the church is full of Dyak Christians every Sunday, and from this living Church many branches have been planted, so that the Banting Mission now includes seven stations, where there are school-churches built by the natives themselves, and many hundreds of Christian worshippers.
In 1854, six years having passed away since a little band of Sir James Brooke's friends founded the Borneo Church Mission, the funds of the Society came to an end; and the mission would have collapsed also, had not the venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts consented to become responsible for it. As the missionaries and catechists increased in number, and fresh stations were added to the church, they opened their arms wider to receive them, until they set apart £3000 a year for Borneo. Under their fostering care the mission flourished, as it could not have done under the management of any private society.