Seventeen years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo; a ... - Sabrizain.org

MO THE FUTURE OF THE
improving, and that he will at no very distant time
reach the stage of progress to which most of the Malays
in the country have attained ;
that his means of earning
a livelihood then will not be confined to paddy-planting
and occasionally working jungle produce, but that he
will work sago, and also engage in fishing and boat-
building on a large scale. Others, however, mutter dark
things concerning the Sea Dyak's primitive methods of
farming and his unwillingness to give them up, and they
paint a dismal picture of villages crowded in the distant
future by half-starved men and women, living on wornout
land which will not bear abundant crops, as in the
old days, a weakly and sickly race, debilitated by insuffi-
ciency of food.
Whatever may be the ultimate fate of the Sea Dyak,
that events will move on certain lines in the immediate
future seems to be fairly probable. The Sea Dyak will
go on living in the same kind of house as his ancestors
had—much the same kind of life year after year. He
will go on farming in his present primitive way till the
soil around is worn out ; then he will ask leave of the
Government, as has been done in many cases lately, to
remove to some new and uncultivated country, and to
be allowed to cut down the jungle on the hills there.
Enormous tracts of lowland jungle exist in the lower
reaches of the rivers on whose banks the Sea Dyaks live ;
but though they are industrious enough to plant their
paddy on swampy soil which was cleared of jungle
generations ago, they do not seem to care to cut down
lowland jungle and prepare such land for planting. No
doubt the reason is that it is harder work, and that after
the trees are felled, it is six or seven years before the roots
have rotted, and the soil has settled, and the land is fit