My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

——178 MY LIFEIn another letter referring to the Dyaks, I say :" The old men here relate with pride how many'heads ' they took in their youth ;and though theyall acknowledge the goodness of the present rajah,yet they think that if they were allowed to take a fewheads, as of old, they would have better crops. Themore I see of uncivilized people, the better I think ofhuman nature on the whole, and the essential differencesbetween civilized and savage man seem todisappear. Here we are, two Europeans, surroundedby a population of Chinese, Malays, and Dyaks. TheChinese are generally considered, and with someamount of truth, to be thieves, liars, and reckless ofhuman life, and these Chinese are coolies of thelowest and least educated class, though they can allread and write. The Malays are invariably describedas being barbarous and bloodthirsty ; and the Dyakshave only recently ceased to think head-taking anecessity of their existence. We are two days'journey from Sarawak, where, though the governmentis nominally European, it only exists with the consentand by the support of the native population. Yet Ican safely say that in any part of Europe where thesame opportunities for crime and disturbance existed,things would not go so smoothly as they do here.We sleep with open doors, and go about constantlyunarmed ; one or two petty robberies and a littlefighting have occurred among the Chinese, but thegreat majority of them are quiet, honest, decent sortof people."In my next letter, a month later, I gave thefollowing account of an interesting episode :" I must now tell you of the addition to my householdof an orphan baby, a curious little half-niggerbaby, which I have nursed now more than a month.