The floor of the Dyak house is clean enough because all the dirt falls through on to the ground underneath; consequently this is covered with rubbish, and perpetually wet from the water thrown down from the floor above, and, being the favourite resort of the pigs and fowls of the long Dyak house, often smells horribly. CHAPTER IV DYAK BABIES AND CHILDREN A Dyak baby is much like any other baby in being a little helpless human thing that spends most of his time in sleeping and feeding, worrying its mother with its constant wants, but yet loved greatly by her, and as it grows up, making its parents proud of it, and amusing them by its cunning little ways. Its colour varies from a light brown with a tinge of yellow to a dark chocolate, and it wears no clothing at all until it is five or six years old. Until a civilised government interfered to prevent such cruel murders, there used to be a custom among the Dyaks that if the mother died when her child was born, the poor babe should pay the penalty and be buried with the mother. The reasons given for this cruel act was that the child was the cause of the mother's death, and that there was no one to nurse and care for it. No woman would dare to nurse such an orphan, lest it should bring misfortune upon her own children. Therefore the poor child was often placed alive in the coffin with the dead mother, and both were buried together. That was the old cruel Dyak custom, but I am glad to say it is a long time since it has been carried out. I have myself known many cases among the Dyaks where the mother has died, and the orphan has been adopted and brought up by some friend or relative. When a child is born a fowl is waved over it as a kind of offering to the gods and spirits. This fowl is then killed, cooked, and eaten by the parents, and any friends that may be present. During the first three days the child receives its bath in a wooden vessel in the house, but on the fourth day it is taken to the river. Some curious ceremonies attend its first bath in the river. An old man of some standing, who has been successful in his undertakings, is asked to bathe the child. He wades into the river holding the child in his arms. A fowl is killed on the bank, a wing is cut off, and if the child be a boy this wing is stuck upon a spear, and if a girl it is fixed to the slip of wood used to pass between the threads in weaving, and this is fixed on the bank, and the blood allowed to drop into the stream, as an offering to propitiate the spirits supposed to inhabit the waters, and to insure that, at any rate, no accident by water shall happen to the child. The remainder of the fowl is taken back to the house and cooked and eaten.