The end of the passage opens directly into the middle of the room, where the floor is better laid and made more comfortable by the addition of mats. The whole room is perhaps twenty-five feet square, but this space is diminished by two or three little sleeping-closets for the parents or for the grown daughters. In the right-hand corner, near an opening under the eaves, the floor is raised a few inches, where the sons or the male slaves sleep at night, and where the women work at their bead-stringing or mat-making during the day; it is the lightest and pleasantest place in the room. Against the partition that divides the veranda from the room is the fireplace, which is merely a hearth of clay and large flat stones, as in the veranda, except that in the centre are three stones whereon the cooking pots rest; above is a rack, just beyond the reach of the flames, where firewood is kept dry, ready for immediate use, and where scraps of pork may be preserved by the smoke. Here and there, on the walls, on hooks made of deer horn or of the twisted branch of a tree, hang all sorts of implements for farming, fishing, and hunting, little hoes for weeding the rice-fields, home-made axes called ‘biliong,’ scoop-nets for catching fish when the streams are poisoned with Tuba root, paddles, spears, large round sun-hats, basket-like holders for the few but valuable china plates used only on feast-days, and sometimes, as a mural decoration, the warrior’s coat and shield are displayed; these personal adornments, however, are usually kept in the little sleeping-closets, or else in a wooden case attached to the wall of the veranda just outside the room.
A FAMILY-ROOM, OR LAMIN, IN ABUN’S HOUSE ON THE BARAM.
BEYOND THE MAN SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR, IS THE FIRE-PLACE; ABOVE IT, A RACK WHEREON WOOD IS KEPT DRY, READY FOR USE. ON THE LEFT OF THE FIRE-PLACE IS A DOORWAY OPENING INTO ONE OF THE SMALL SLEEPING-CLOSETS FOR THE MARRIED PEOPLE OR FOR THE UNMARRIED GIRLS. LEANING AGAINST THE WALL IS A BAMBOO WATER PITCHER WITH A COVER OF PALM-LEAF MATTING; ABOVE, HANGS A BASKETWORK CASE FOR HOLDING CHINA PLATES. ON THE WALLS OF THE ALCOVE ARE HANGING SEVERAL LARGE, FLAT, PALM-LEAF HATS, A SCOOP-NET, AND A FLAT SIEVE OF SPLIT RATTAN. THIS ALCOVE, WITH ITS SLIGHTLY RAISED FLOOR, IS THE SLEEPING-PLACE FOR THE UNMARRIED MEN OF THE FAMILY, OR FOR THE MALE SLAVES.
These sleeping-closets, partitioned off for married couples or for unmarried girls and widows to sleep in, are as dark and stuffy as closely fitting planks can make them, and the bed is merely two or three broad and smooth planks whereon a fine rattan matting is spread; sometimes a roll of matting or a bundle of old cloth serves as a pillow, but more often there is nothing but the flat boards. On one occasion, I was ushered into the bedroom of a Chief’s daughter who was ill with the grippe and had asked for medicine; it was almost pathetic to note the attempt that this poor ‘first lady’ had made to adorn her little boudoir. By the light of a sputtering lump of damar gum, burning in an earthen dish and disseminating mainly an aromatic smell and dense smoke, and only incidentally a flickering light, I could see that there had been fastened on the walls bright pieces of gay-colored cloth, and over in one corner, in a sort of pyramid, were her ‘ladyship’s’ best bead-work baskets; even ill as she was she called my attention to them. She was tossing in fever on the most uncomfortable bundles of coarse cotton calico, (sadly in need of washing,) which she had crumpled in folds to counteract the unevennesses of her bed of planks. Grippe is intolerable enough when the patient is surrounded with every comfort, on a soft clean bed and in an airy room, but the lowest depth of discomfort is reached when to the fever are added a sweltering tropical heat in a dark closet, the air dense with damar smoke and soot, a bed of hard boards, and never a drop of ice-water. Yet in the midst of all these, the girl, fortunate in her ignorance, was dignified and uncomplaining.
On all ordinary occasions, the family eat together, usually only twice a day, morning and evening, in the family room. In the centre of the room is placed a large wooden dish piled high with boiled rice, and then, as a plate for each member of the family, is set a piece of fresh banana leaf, whereon are a little salt and a small quantity of powdered dried fish, highly odorous; this is the usual bill of fare, but it may be supplemented with a sort of mush or stew of fern-frond sprouts and rice, or with boiled Caladium roots and roasted wild yams. When there is a feast and guests from neighboring houses come to dine, the meals are spread in the veranda and the menu is enlarged with pork and chicken, cooked in joints of bamboo, which have been stoppered at both ends with green leaves, and put in the fire until they are burnt through, when the cooking is done to a turn.
All hands are plunged into the common dish of plain boiled rice, and it is ‘excellent form’ to cram and jam the mouth as full as it will hold. It is, however, remarkable how deftly even little children can so manipulate the boiled rice before conveying it to their mouths, that hardly a grain is spilt; it always filled me with shame when dining en famille with the Kayans or Kenyahs to note what a mess of scattered rice I left on the mat at my place, while their places were clean as when they sat down; to be sure, I did not follow my hosts’ example in carefully gathering up and devouring all that had fallen on the unswept floor. Whenever I apologized for my clumsiness, their courtesy was always perfect; the fault was never attributed to me, but rather to their poor food and the manner in which it was served.
The long intervals between their meals and the unsubstantial quality of their food give them such an appetite and force them to eat so voraciously that the usual welcome by a Kayan host to his guests is, ‘Eat slowly,’ and this admonition is unfailingly given. They seem to regard their family meals as strictly private, and would always announce to us that they were going to eat,—possibly to give us warning not to visit them at that time, and they were also quite as punctilious to leave us the moment that our food was served.
When any member of a family is ill and calls in the services of an exorciser, or, as they call it, a ‘Dayong,’ the room is placed under a taboo, or permantong, and only members of the family may enter, and even they are under certain restrictions, for instance, to refrain from singing or playing musical instruments, and they are debarred from eating meat. The sign of a taboo is a bunch of green leaves or a flat basket used in winnowing rice tied to the door-post. If, by accident, a man should violate this taboo, he must pay a fine to the owners of the tabooed room; this fine is usually a few cheap beads or a china plate. They seem to regard this custom with such reverence that we availed ourselves of its privileges whenever we wished for privacy, and although the natives laughed at our adoption of their customs, they left us nevertheless strictly alone when we tied a basket or a bunch of leaves in front of our little apartment in the veranda.
