Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalof404219041905roya).pdf/242

 wet weather. Rice will grow and ripen in a sufficiently warm, sunny climate provided there is enough water on the land, either from irrigation or continual showers.

In Borneo there is usually rain all round the year in magnificent quantity. It is not according to the rainiest season, but according to the driest that the farmer regulates his work. For the jungle is felled and left to dry before being burnt, and the success of the crop depends largely on the completeness of the clearing. The best crop will be generally obtained on land burnt off at the driest season.

How are these illiterate tribes to find out when a particular season has arrived? In England this is simple enough; we have almanacks galore, we have clocks which can tell us the length of time from sunrise to sunset. The native does not know how many days there are in a year, and would not take the trouble to keep count if he did. He may know how many moons there are, but like the Malays he would probably get about eleven days wrong every year, and eleven days is a large error of itself. In two or three years the crops would be planted far too early. Unfortunately, too, the length of the day varies very little in the tropics, and the native has no means of observing that variation. He is therefore obliged to have recourse to the stars or the sun to tell the time of year.

The Dayaks and many of the less important tribes look to the stars to guide them. Every day, as they know, these bodies rise a little earlier, and some wise man is appointed to go out before dawn to watch for the Pleiades. Dayaks use the Malay expressions "bintang tiga" for Orion's belt, and "bintang banyak" or Apai andau (the father of the day) for the Pleiades. When the "seven stars" rise while it is yet dark, it is time to begin.

Two of the house are sent into the jungle to find omens, while the others wait. In two days perhaps, or a fortnight, or at most a month, the favourable indications will appear, and then an end is made both of science and superstition and the Dayaks set to work on the forest. If they are so late that Orion's belt rises before daybreak, they must make every effort to regain lost time or the crop will be poor. What kind of land they will choose depends on circumstances: in any case it will have lain two or three years fallow and will be thickly covered with vegetation.