Their priests have little or no knowledge of medicine, but trust, in most cases, to their occult sciences. In ordinary sickness the relatives are attentive, but not so, as I have said, when there is a sweeping epidemic, as small-pox; in such cases they think it to be useless striving against so formidable a spirit. When cholera was in the country, the Dayaks lost comparatively few, as they healed those taken with it by rubbing and warmth; but the Malays appeared to have done everything they should not have done--drinking, when in health, nothing but hot water, taking no exercise, and only eating a little rice; the consequence was they were too weak to strive against the complaint when seized. The most successful system practised by the natives appears to be to rub the stomach and limbs with cajput oil (kayu putih oil), and administer a strong dose of spirits immediately the first symptoms are perceived. It is said a few drops of the oil are also given with success. When the cholera, after committing great ravages in the capital, appeared among the Muruts and Bisayas of Limbang, they all fled from their villages, retiring to the hills and the depths of the forest; their loss was very slight. The women manufacture a coarse cloth; making and dyeing their own yarn, beating out the cotton with small sticks, and, by means of a spinning-wheel, running it off very quickly. The yarn is not so fine as what they can buy of English manufacture, but it is stronger, and keeps its colour remarkably well; and no cloth wears better than Dayak cloth. Their agricultural pursuits are limited in number, and with little labour the soil yields sufficient crops to supply their wants. They plant rice once a year; those who live on dry and high land have also cotton and tobacco. They grow enough sugar-cane for their own eating, not for making sugar; and they are so eager for gain, that it would not be difficult to induce them to plant crops requiring only ordinary superintendence. They sow the cotton-seed after the rice harvest. Their agricultural instruments are strong swords, made by themselves from imported iron, used for cutting grass or young jungle; and a kind of small axe and adze in one, by turning the iron in its socket. This instrument they use in shaping out planks for boats, and for felling the larger trees; and, in their hands, it brings down the timber as fast as an English axe would in the hands of a backwoodsman. One method they adopt for getting rid of old jungle is this:--first of all, they clear away the underwood and the branches near the ground, then with their axes they cut the larger trees more than half through; at last, choosing some giant of the forest, they fell it completely: in its fall it drags all the others after it, as they are connected together by twining creepers of great size and strength. It is a dangerous practice, and requires care to avoid the wide-spread fall, that comes to the earth with an awful crash.