[Footnote 5: A kris is a Malay dagger.] I remember our once meeting one of these boats. It had been caught by branches from the bank, and swayed idly to and fro in the stream. We could only see a heap of coloured clothes inside it, but there was a weird, ghastly look about the boat which made us shudder. An unburied corpse, left to the winds and waves, without a prayer or a blessing! how could it be otherwise? Even if we could delude ourselves into fancying the Dyaks happy during their lives without Christianity, there can be no doubt of their being miserable when death comes. They all believe dimly in a future state, but their dread of spirits is so great that they can have no ideas of happiness unconnected with their bodies. "Having no hope, and without God in the world," describes the mental state of a heathen Dyak. In 1856, we were living for a few weeks on a hill called Peninjauh, some miles from Kuching, where the Rajah had built a cottage as a sanitarium after illness. The cool freshness of the mountain air, and the glorious view from See-afar Cottage, were indeed conducive to health. On the hillsides lived several villages of Land Dyaks, and I had a woman as nurse to my baby who belonged to one of these villages. The cholera was in the country at that time, and three men had died of the Sebumban Dyaks. Every night the most mournful wailing arose above the trees--a sad sound indeed, rising and falling on the wind as the friends of the dead walked all through the jungle paths near their homes, now near to our cottage, now far off. One night I found my little ayah seated in the nursery when she ought to have been in the cook-house getting her supper. "What is the matter, Nina? Are you ill, that you are eating no supper?" "No, I am not ill, but I dare not go to the cook-house to-night." "Why?" "I fear to meet the spirits who are abroad to-night in the jungle." "The spirits of the dead men?" "No, the spirits who come to fetch them." After three days the bodies of these Dyaks were burnt, for this was the custom of the Sebumbans. The dead man is laid on a pile of wood, and they all sit round watching. Nina said, that when the fire has burnt some time the dead man sits up for a moment, whereupon they all burst into renewed waitings of sorrow and farewell. I am told that the heat swelling the sinews of the dead body may cause this curious phenomenon; but could there be a more mournful, hopeless story of death?