My followers looked very eagerly at me, ready at my desire to enter on this slave hunt. I quietly declined joining in the attack, as we had never been injured by their enemies. To this they replied that I should certainly be attacked on my journey home, as these people would have heard of my arrival, and would lie in ambush. I told the Orang Kaya that I would prefer waiting till that event took place; if it did I would turn back, and join them in driving their enemies out of the country. They were disappointed at my determination, and perhaps my men had indulged themselves with the idea of getting a slave apiece. If true, this story of the village of escaped captives is very curious; but it may have been invented to induce me to join in an attack on a tribe of their enemies. _21st._--Many of the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages are coming in to see the stranger. The women are remarkably ill favoured--broad flat faces and extremely dirty, but with many head ornaments, and some of them are tattooed about the arms and legs. Many of the men and women wear round flat pieces of metal or of wood in the holes of their ears instead of earrings, while others have heavy pieces of lead, dragging the ear down to the shoulder, like the Kanowit tribe, I suppose to enlarge the holes to the proper proportions. It is curious to notice the very old look that many of the boys and girls have, especially the latter: it requires a glance at the bosom to discover whether they are young or not. Their petticoats are of the shortest, sometimes not eight inches broad, and are scarcely decent. The Bengal civilian’s exclamation on seeing the Sarawak Dayaks, “It strikes me that these people are rather devoid of drapery,” would apply better to the Adang ladies. We have purchased rice for twenty days at extremely moderate rates, bartering with beads. Our guide continues absent on a visit to his relations, which is the cause of our remaining so quiet. The atmosphere around us is filled with smoke from the burning plantations, rendering it quite unpleasant for mouth, nose and eyes: the clearings are very extensive in many places, and as yet not half burnt. Their cultivation is very slovenly--the regular Dayak custom of felling a large extent of jungle, then, when dry, burning all that can be easily burnt, thus leaving the trunks and large branches, and planting rice between them. I have observed but few tobacco-plants; they smoke what appeared to me a kind of moss, but in reality tobacco badly cured. They are all anxious for goods, but they have nothing to sell; neither goats nor honey, and but few fowls or vegetables, nor do they appear to have wax, camphor or birds’-nests; rice is their only commodity, and that they have in abundance.