The women and young girls sat near me, one of the latter, whose name was Madu (meaning honey), being very pretty indeed. Her petticoat of coarse dark cotton was narrow and hardly reached her knees, and over this she wore a dark blue cotton jacket, fastened at the neck with gold buttons as big as small saucers. Her eyes were dark, beautiful and keenly intelligent, and her straight eyebrows drooped a little at the outer corners. The high cheek-bones, characteristic of her race, gave her a certain air of refinement and delicacy, in spite of her nose being flat, her nostrils broad, and her lips wide and somewhat thick. Her hair was pulled tightly off her forehead, and lay in a coil at the nape of her neck; it seemed too heavy for her, and as she carried her head very high, the great mass looked as though it dragged it backwards. Her hair, however, had one peculiarity (a peculiarity I had never seen in Sarawak before); it was streaked with red, and this made Madu unhappy, for Malays and Dyaks do not like the slightest appearance of red hair, some of the tribes shaving their children’s heads from early infancy until they are seven years old, in order to avoid the possibility of such an occurrence. The little creature looked pathetic, as she sat nursing her sister’s baby, around whose wrist was tied a black wooden rattle, like a small cannon-ball. The baby was about two months old, and appeared to be healthy, but a sudden kick on its part removed a piece of calico, its only article of clothing, when I saw that the child’s stomach had been rubbed over with turmeric, to prevent it from being seized by the demon of disease. The chief told his daughter to leave the child to its nurse, when a very old lady rushed forward and took it away. Refreshments were then handed round. We had glasses of cocoa-nut milk, cakes made of grated cocoa-nut and of rice flour, intensely sweet. There were large trays of pumeloes, cut in quarters, together with oranges, bananas, and mangosteens. Glasses of gin, much diluted with water, were handed to the male guests, and after refreshments a place was cleared right down the room, the chief’s native friends sitting on mats on the floor, leaning against the walls.