Orang Poonan, a forest race near the territory of the Mahomedan sultan of Koetei. Their tribes, like the Veddabs of Ceylon, pass day and night entirely in the open air, with no other shelter than a mat. They keep up fires all night. They wear a head-dress and a waistcloth of bark, and eat monkeys and game, which they kill with the sumpitan or blow-tube and poisoned arrows. The women are fairer than the Dyaks, but very dirty in their persons. They welcomed Mr. Bock by asking for beads and tobacco.
Mr. Carl Bock, writing in 1881, mentions his visit to a chief of the cannibal Dyaks, who had just slaughtered, and, with his followers, eaten up seventy victims. I le allowed himself to be sketched, and presented the author with two crania and a shield, in return for rice, beads, and twenty-four yards of calico. A high priestess of these savages stated that the seams of the hand were considered the best eating. A war-dance was executed by a Dyak, with mach shouting, stamping, and flourish ing of a sword. A Dyak is never without his sword, and his basket for betel and tobacco. Generally he wears a cloth or piece of bark round his loins, and a covering for the head of the same material. The lobes of their cars are hideously enlarged by artificial means ; and when a warrior has secured a good many skulls, he is allowed to deck his ears with the canine teeth of a leopard. The Dyak, in their physical and social characteristics, resemble the Tarajah of Celebes.
The Idaan, occupying the northern parts of Borneo, suspended human skulls in their houses. The dominant Malay and the colonists of China are an active and industrious but turbulent and itttractable part of the population (Revue do deux Mendes, ii.).
The Orang Du-son villagers of the north are agricultural ; the Marna in the inland parts of Braunai ; the Kodiaus of the same country, are industrious, peaceful nations, valuable for thoao qualities.
The Kyun are more numerous, more powerful, and more warlike than any other in Borneo. They are an inland race, inhabiting a district extending from about sixty miles up the interior from Tanjong Barram to within a similar distance on the eastern shore. Fierce, reckless of life, and hot-blooded in their nature, they are nevertheless represented to be hospitable, kind, and faithful to their word, and honest in their dealings. The Kyan, on the Kapuns, aro said to have been cannibals, eating the flesh of their enemies. They prize heads like the Dyaks.
They carry spits in the scabbards of their swords. The Dyaks of Jangkang also are said to be can nibals. They live between Sangow and Sadong on the Sakiam, a branch of the Sadong river. The Jangkang people eat Malays or Dyaks or any one else whom they kill in war, and they kill their own sick if near death, and eat them. Whilst a party of this people were staying at Sangkang, one of them fell out of a mango tree and broke his arm, besides being otherwise much hurt, and his companions cut his throat and ate him up. The Jangkang Dyaks are said to eat only the tongue, brain, and muscles of the leg. The men of this tribe file down their front teeth to a point, like the teeth of a saw. They cut off their beards.
The Takla, Balinian, and Kanawit have dialects of their own, and are wild and savage in their manners. Nino vocabularies have been collected, the most extensive by Mr. Robert Burns, and it is that of the most numerous, advanced, and powerful tribe in the island, the Kaynn or Kyan, whose possessions extend from the northern to the southern coast. No native tribe of Borneo has ever invented letters. Mr. Crawford had seen the names of at least sixty of these small nations who have no common name by which to distinguish themselves from the people of other regions. The many languages of this island belong to the same class of languages as the Malay and Javanese ; and the aboriginal inhabitants of Borneo are all of the same race with the Malays and Javanese.
La 1821, out of the forty wild tribes In its interior, eight had adopted Mahone:darn/an and the Malay language. Amongst the were the Dyak race of Sugalane who long since abandoltal the crud practice of heatl-litintieg. Theru are eleven tribtat located between the Malay of the coast and the Kyan, namely the Kauawit, Bakatate Lugat, Tan-yong, Tatau, Balinian, Punan, Mogan, ' ICajatnan, Bitittilu, and Tilian, the majority of whom are tributary to the Kyan. The its firm. ineutioned are till more or law tattooed, both male and female, and certainly have all sprung from , the one called Kanawit, who in habits closely assimilate to the Dynk of all Saribna, whose neigh. boors they are. The tribes Punan, Sakopan, awl Kajantan are the chief collectors of camphor and birds' ne.sts. The trees, which produce excellent timber, amount to upwards of sixty species.