, which he may have received as a gift or bought
from some hunting friend. His wife wraps up his midday meal for him in
the spathe of a Pinang palm, and he goes to his work of cutting down
the jungle for planting, returning home in the evening.

There are days when he does not go to work on his paddy farm, but spends
his time in getting firewood, or mending things in his room, or in
sitting about in the common verandah chatting with his friends.

When the paddy is planted and has grown a little, and the time of
weeding draws near, the family remove to the little hut put up in the
paddy farm. When the weeding is done, the family return to the long Dyak
house and remain there for about two months. Then they go back to their
hut to watch the ripening paddy, and guard it against attacks of birds
and beasts.

Paddy planting is the chief occupation of every Dyak, but he has plenty
of time for other things, and his life is not quite so monotonous as may
be supposed. The actual work of paddy planting, and everything connected
with it, such as the building of farm huts, and the getting ready of
farming implements, takes up seven or perhaps eight months of the year.
The Dyak has therefore a certain amount of time during which he can
visit his friends, make boats, or earn a little extra money by hunting
for such jungle produce as canes, gutta, or camphor.

[Illustration: GIRLS WEAVING]

The ordinary boats of the Dyaks are cut out of a single log. Some of my
schoolboys, under the guidance of the native schoolmaster, once made a
small canoe for their own use, so I saw the whole process. A tree having
a long straight stem was felled, and the desired length of trunk cut
off. The outside was then shaped to take the desired form of the canoe.
Then the inside was hollowed out. The next thing to do was to widen the
inside of this canoe. This was done by filling the boat with water and
making a fire under it, and by fastening large stone weights on each
side. When the shell had been sufficiently opened out, thwarts were
placed inside, about two feet from each other, to prevent the boat
getting out of shape when the wood dried. The stem and stern of the
canoe are alike, both being curved and pointed, and rising out of the
water.

This is the usual type of Dyak boat, and the method of making a smaller
or larger canoe is exactly the same. Even a war-boat, ninety feet long,
is made from the trunk of one tree. In the longer boats planks o