Having thus given a brief account of Dayak ceremonies, and feastings, and omens, I may conclude with a remark, that, of all the feasts and ceremonies, the most beneficial in its influence is the “Head Feast.” The object of them all is to make their rice grow well, to cause the forest to abound with wild animals, to enable their dogs and snares to be successful in securing game, to have the streams swarm with fish, to give health and activity to the people themselves, and to ensure fertility to their women. All these blessings, the possessing and feasting of a fresh head are supposed to be the most efficient means of securing. The very ground itself is believed to be benefited and rendered fertile, more fertile even than when the water in which fragments of gold, presented by the Rajah, have been washed, has been sprinkled over it; this latter charm, especially when mixed with the water which has been poured over the sacred stones, being, next to the possession of a newly acquired head, the greatest and the most powerful which the wisdom of the “men of old time” has devised for the benefit of their descendants. It may, therefore, be understood what importance Orang Kaya Mita attached to his request that permission should be given to him to seek another victim, and what influence he would have gained with the tribe had they secured these blessings by his means. _Language._--The vocabularies printed in the Appendix will, as Mr. Chalmers observes, show that there is a great affinity betwixt the Dayaks of Sarawak, Sadong, and some Sambas tribes. This connection is not so visible in the dialects of others, as, for instance, the Silakau tribe, who formerly lived on a stream of the same name between the Sambas and Pontianak. In the dialects of the Sea Dayaks, there are perhaps a few words radically the same as their correspondents in Land Dayak, but only a few which are not derived in common from Malay. In the dialect of the Dayaks of Banjermasin, I have also noticed words the same in form and meaning, but they are not very frequent.