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

——THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGOi8iquiets it immediately. From this short account youwill see that my baby is no common baby, and I cansafely say, what so many have said before with muchless truth, ' There never was such a baby as my baby,'and I am sure nobody ever had such a dear little duckof a darling of a little brown hairy baby before."In a letter dated Christmas Day, 1855, I gave myimpressions of the Dyaks, and of Sir James Brooke,as follows :" I have now lived a month in a Dyak's house,and spent a day or two in several others, and I havebeen very much pleased with them. They are a verykind, simple, hospitable people, and I do no.t wonderat the great interest Sir James Brooke takes in them.They are more communicative and more cheerful thanthe American Indians, and it is therefore more agreeableto live with them. In moral character they arefar superior to either the Malays or the Chinese, forthough head-taking was long a custom among them,it was only as a trophy of war. In their own villagescrimes are very rare. Ever since Sir James Brookehas been rajah, more than twelve years, there has onlybeen one case of murder in a Dyak tribe, and that wascommitted by a stranger who had been adopted intothe tribe. One wet day I produced a piece of stringto show them how to play ' cat's cradle,' and wasquite astonished to find that they knew it muchbetter than I did, and could make all sorts of newfigures I had never seen. They were also veryclever at tricks with string on their fingers, whichseemed to be a favourite amusement. Many of theremoter tribes think the rajah cannot be a man.They ask all sorts of curious questions about himWhether he is not as old as the mountains ; whether