The headpiece is of similar
construction.

There are no Negritos in Borneo, although they exist in the Malay
Peninsula and the Philippines, and our explorers have failed to obtain
any specimens of the "tailed" people in whose existence many of the
Brunai people believe. The late Sultan of Brunai gravely assured me
that there was such a tribe, and that the individuals composing it were
in the habit of carrying about chairs with them, in the seat of each of
which there was a little hole, in which the lady or gentleman carefully
inserted her or his tail before settling down to a comfortable chat.
This belief in the existence of a tailed race appears to be widespread,
and in his "Pioneering in New Guinea" Mr. CHALMERS gives an amusing
account of a detailed description of such a tribe by a man who vowed _he
had lived with them_, and related how they were provided with long
sticks, with which to make holes in the ground before squatting down,
for the reception of their short stumpy tails! I think it is Mr. H. F.
ROMILLY who, in his interesting little work on the Western Pacific and
New Guinea, accounts for the prevalence of "yarns" of this class by
explaining that the natives regard Europeans as being vastly superior to
them in general knowledge and, when they find them asking such questions
as, for instance, whether there are tailed-people in the interior, jump
to the conclusion that the white men must have good grounds for
believing that they do exist, and then they gradually come to believe in
their existence themselves. There is, however, I think, some excuse for
the Brunai people's belief, for I have seen one tribe of Muruts who, in
addition to the usual small loin cloth, wear on their backs only a skin
of a long-tailed monkey, the tail of which hangs down behind in such a
manner as, when the men are a little distance off, to give one at first
glance the impression that it is part and parcel of the biped.

In Labuan it used to be a very common occurrence for the graves of the
Europeans, of which unfortunately, owing to its bad climate when first
settled, there are a goodly number, to be found desecrated and the bones
scattered about. The perpetrators of these outrages have never been
discovered, notwithstanding the most stringent enquiries. It was once
thought that they were broken open by head-hunting tribes from the
mainland, but this theory was disproved by the fact that the skulls were
never carried away. As we kno