"Their boats are built very long, raised at the stern, and the largest pulling as many as sixty paddles; but I should not think them fast, and any boat with a swivel might cut them up. The least average I could give the hundred boats is twenty-five men per boat, making, as already observed, 2500 in all. We counted ninety, and there were others down the reach we could not see; and they themselves stated their force to be 140 boats and 4000 men. The manners of these Dyaks toward us were reserved, quiet, and independent. They stole nothing, and in trading for small quantities of rice, bees-wax, cotton, and their cloths, showed a full knowledge of the relative value of the articles, or rather they priced their own at far above their proper worth. I may indeed say of all the Dyaks I have seen, that they are anxious to receive, but very loth to give; and when they have obtained cloth, salt, copper, beads, &c. to the amount of two or three dollars as a present, will bring in a bunch of plantains or a little rice, and ask you _to buy_. The Sibnowans are the chief exceptions to this, and they are my pet tribe. The language of Sakarran and Sarebus is the same as the Sibnowan; and with all the word God, the _Allah Talla_ of the Malays, is expressed by _Battara_, from which we may infer that their notion of the Deity, as probably was all the religion of these regions, was derived from the Hindoos. "When this force of Dyaks was, contrary to the assurance given to me, sweeping up the river, I had just finished a late dinner. I was _angry enough_, and resolved instanter to leave the house, when who should come in, _as if by pure accident_, but Pangeran Budrudeen, the rajah's brother. I controlled myself, spoke strongly withal but civilly, and sent him away wishing he had not come near me; and the boat being ready, I retired from the house to the Royalist. Their immediate recall was the consequence; for the rajah having denied his permission, those who fathered the act dared not persist in it when I told them it was an act of disobedience. They tried to frighten me with the idea that the Dyaks would attack us; but as I felt sure we could blow them away in ten minutes, it had not the desired effect. They had in the mean time reached Leda Tanah, whence they were brought down again sulky enough, and did show a slight inclination to see whether the people on board the Swift were keeping watch; for several of their boats dropped close to her, and one directly under the bowsprit, as silently as death; but on being challenged, and a musket leveled near them, they sheered off, and the next day finally departed. The poor Dyaks in the interior, as well as the Chinese, were in the greatest state of alarm, and thence I gained some credit among them for my interference on their behalf. The very idea of letting 2500 wild devils loose in the interior of the country is horrible; for though they have one professed object, they combine many others with it,