This tribe lives on the south-eastern coast of Borneo, and is remarkable for the superb costumes of the men, who have about them an air of barbaric splendor, which they are exceedingly fond of displaying. Wearing, in common with all Dyaks, the chawat or waist cloth, they take a pride in adorning themselves with short tunics made of tiger or leopard skin, or rich and embroidered cloth; while on their heads they wear magnificent caps made of monkey-skin, and decorated with the beautiful feathers of the Argus pheasant, two of the largest feathers being placed so that one droops over each ear. All these Dyaks have a very singular profile, in consequence of their habit of filing the teeth and so reducing their bulk, those who have concave teeth presenting the most curious outline.
(1.) ILLINOAN PIRATE AND SAGHAI DYAK.
(See [page 1112].)
(2.) DYAK WOMEN.
(See [page 1118].)
Comparatively slight and feeble as the Dyaks look by the side of the stalwart and muscular European, their strength is really wonderful, and enables them to perform tasks which the powerful white man could not by any possibility achieve. On a journey, when an European has fallen from sheer fatigue, a Dyak has taken the burden with which the fallen man was laden, and added it to his own, without seeming to display any particular sense of having increased his own labor; and when the stranger, in spite of the relief, has lain down in absolute inability to move, a little wiry Dyak has picked him up, put him on his back, and proceeded on his journey with perfect ease.
The Dyaks are in the habit of crossing the swamps with which Borneo abounds by means of primitive bridges, called batangs. These are the very simplest form in which the principle of the bridge can be carried out. If the reader wishes to obtain a correct idea of a batang, he can do so easily enough. Two bamboo poles are driven into the ground so as to cross one another near the top, like an X with the lower limbs much developed. They are then lashed together at the intersection, just like the supports between which a modern rope dancer stretches his cord. At about thirty feet distance, another pair of poles are fixed in a similar way, and a horizontal bamboo laid upon them.
In fact, the whole apparatus looks just like a rope dancer’s apparatus, a bamboo taking the place of the rope. Beyond the second supports others are added and connected by horizontal bamboos as far as the marsh extends; and so fond are the natives of these very primitive bridges that they will make them a mile or more in length, and extend them over gorges of terrible depth.
To tread these extraordinary bridges is a task that would tax the powers of a professional rope dancer, and yet a Dyak has been known to take a heavy white man on his back, and carry him a mile or more over these slippery batangs, when, in many places, a false step would be certain destruction for both. He does not seem at all fatigued by this extraordinary feat of muscular power, but rather has a sort of boyish exultation in his strength, and a decided delight that he is able at all events in one respect to prove himself the superior of the white man, whom he regards with the most profound respect as a being of supernatural wisdom and power.