and most beautiful productions of the tropics, and one of nature's most
valuable gifts to uncivilized man.
The Dyak houses are all raised on posts, and are often two or three
hundred feet long and forty or fifty wide. The floor is always formed
of strips split from large Bamboos, so that each may be nearly flat and
about three inches wide, and these are firmly tied down with rattan to
the joists beneath. When well made, this is a delightful floor to walk
upon barefooted, the rounded surfaces of the bamboo being very smooth
and agreeable to the feet, while at the same time affording a firm hold.
But, what is more important, they form with a mat over them an excellent
bed, the elasticity of the Bamboo and its rounded surface being far
superior to a more rigid and a flatter floor. Here we at once find a use
for Bamboo which cannot be supplied so well by another material without
a vast amount of labour--palms and other substitutes requiring much
cutting and smoothing, and not being equally good when finished. When,
however, a flat, close floor is required, excellent boards are made by
splitting open large Bamboos on one side only, and flattening them out
so as to form slabs eighteen inches wide and six feet long, with which
some Dyaks floor their houses. These with constant rubbing of the feet
and the smoke of years become dark and polished, like walnut or old oak,
so that their real material can hardly be recognised. What labour is
here saved to a savage whose only tools are an axe and a knife, and who,
if he wants boards, must hew them out of the solid trunk of a tree, and
must give days and weeks of labour to obtain a surface as smooth and
beautiful as the Bamboo thus treated affords him. Again, if a temporary
house is wanted, either by the native in his plantation or by the
traveller in the forest, nothing is so convenient as the Bamboo, with
which a house can be constructed with a quarter of the labour and time
than if other materials are used.
As I have already mentioned, the Hill Dyaks in the interior of Sarawak
make paths for long distances from village to village and to their
cultivated grounds, in the course of which they have to cross many
gullies and ravines, and even rivers; or sometimes, to avoid a long
circuit, to carry the path along the face of a precipice. In all these
cases the bridges they construct are of Bamboo, and so admirably adapted
is the material for this purpose, that it seems doubtful whether they
ever would have attempted such works if they had not possessed it. The
Dyak bridge is simple but well designed. It consists merely of stout
71