Among the Dyaks dwelling on the hills morality is of a higher standard. Single men are obliged to sleep in a separate building, and the girls are not allowed to approach them. Marriage is contracted at a very early age, and adultery is almost unknown. Polygamy is not allowed, but some of the chiefs indulge in a concubine, for which they are generally blamed. There are certain degrees of consanguinity within which marriage is unlawful. One man shocked public feeling by marrying his granddaughter, and the people affirm that ruin and darkness have covered the face of the sun ever since that act of incest. As they marry constantly within their own tribe, the whole commonwealth is in time united by ties of blood, and to this is ascribed the insanity common among them, a conclusion warranted to some extent by the imbecile state of well-known royal families condemned to perpetual intermarriages.
It is said that many prostitutes may be found among the people of the South, but this rests on doubtful testimony, and in the Dyak language there is no word to express the vice.
The Sibnouan females are neither concealed from strangers nor shy before them. They will bathe naked in the presence of men. The unmarried people sleep promiscuously in a common room, but married couples have separate apartments. The labor of the household is allotted to females, who grind rice, carry burdens, fetch water, catch fish, and till the ground. They are not so degraded as in other barbarous nations. They eat with the men, and take part in their festivals as well as their labor.
Among the Mohammedan Malays there is more civilization and more corruption. They are polygamists, indulge in concubinage, encourage prostitutes, and ill use their wives. An English physician lately received a message from the wife of a chief appointing a secret meeting. He was punctual to the assignation, and met the lady, who asked him for a close of arsenic to poison her husband, as he ill-treated her. Report says that the Englishman was disappointed in the nature of the interview, but firmly refused to grant her request.
The rich Malays allow their wives to keep female slaves, and the jealousy of the mistress renders their situation any thing but pleasant. They sometimes serve as concubines, in which case the law renders them free, but many refuse to avail themselves of this advantage.
We have no definite account of prostitutes in sea-port towns, but they appear to be of several classes: those who cohabit temporarily with the Malays, those who prostitute themselves indiscriminately to all comers, and those who are supported by sailors and profligate Chinese, who invariably create such a class wherever they settle. It is certain that women of this class exist in considerable numbers in Borneo.
CHAPTER XXXI.
SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS.
Persia.—Afghanistan.—Kashmir.—India.—Ceylon.—Ultra-Gangetic Nations.—Celebes.—China.—Japan.—Tartar Races.—Circassia.—Turkey.—Northern Africa.—Siberia.—Esquimaux.—Iceland.—Greenland.