The Dyak is cheerful and contented with his life. If his lot is a hard and uneventful one, he is ignorant of any other, and is quite satisfied with it. He knows little of the outside world. He reads no books or newspapers. The scope of his conversation is limited to matters of farming or of boat-building, varied perhaps by some local Dyak scandal, or some experience he may have gone through when, in his younger days, before he settled down as a sober married man, he went out gutta-hunting in distant lands. He has no wish to improve himself. His father and grandfather lived in long Dyak houses, and what was good enough for them is good enough for him. Why should he worry himself about building better houses, or farming in some new and improved way? He will not meddle with matters that are too high for him; and yet, notwithstanding this calm and even existence that he leads from childhood to the grave, those who are most interested in the Sea Dyak must feel that his life is not what it ought to be, that it shows few signs of progress, and is too stagnant to be healthy. They do not suppose him to be a “fortuitous aggregation of atoms that will shortly be dispersed throughout space.” They believe that there is something Divine in him holding those fleeting atoms together, and making them one, and that he is journeying through a world of tragic meaning to the significance of which he seems to be for ever blind. They long to see him brought under the elevating and purifying influence of Christianity.