of stationary or but slowly increasing numbers. The conditions most
favourable to a rapid increase of population are: an abundance of food,
a healthy climate, and early marriages. Here these conditions all exist.
The people produce far more food than they consume, and exchange the
surplus for gongs and brass cannon, ancient jars, and gold and silver
ornaments, which constitute their wealth. On the whole, they appear very
free from disease, marriages take place early (but not too early),
and old bachelors and old maids are alike unknown. Why, then, we must
inquire, has not a greater population been produced? Why are the Dyak
villages so small and so widely scattered, while nine-tenths of the
country is still covered with forest?
Of all the checks to population among savage nations mentioned by
Malthus--starvation, disease, war, infanticide, immorality, and
infertility of the women--the last is that which he seems to think least
important, and of doubtful efficacy; and yet it is the only one that
seems to me capable of accounting for the state of the population among
the Sarawak Dyaks. The population of Great Britain increases so as to
double itself in about fifty years. To do this it is evident that each
married couple must average three children who live to be married at the
age of about twenty-five. Add to these those who die in infancy, those
who never marry, or those who marry late in life and have no offspring,
the number of children born to each marriage must average four or five,
and we know that families of seven or eight are very common, and of ten
and twelve by no means rare. But from inquiries at almost every Dyak
tribe I visited, I ascertained that the women rarely had more than three
or four children, and an old chief assured me that he had never known a
woman to have more than seven.
In a village consisting of a hundred and fifty families, only one
consisted of six children living, and only six of five children, the
majority of families appearing to be two, three, or four. Comparing this
with the known proportions in European countries, it is evident that the
number of children to each marriage can hardly average more than three
or four; and as even in civilized countries half the population die
before the age of twenty-five, we should have only two left to replace
their parents; and so long as this state of things continued,
the population must remain stationary. Of course this is a mere
illustration; but the facts I have stated seem to indicate that
something of the kind really takes place; and if so, there is no
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