The Home-Life of Borneo Head-Hunters, Its Festivals and Folk-lore

Excerpt: ?While to scenery, it is distance,?and photography,?which lends enchantment, it is, on the contrary, propinquity which, in my experience, lends to the Borneo Head-Hunters and to their Home-life, a charm which cannot be wholly dispelled even by the skulls hanging from the rafters of their houses. After living among them, for months at a time, an insight is gained into their individualities and peculiarities which a casual sojourn can never disclose. Some, of course, are ill-tempered, crotchety, selfish; others, again, are mild, gentle, generous. The youths have their languishing loves, which they are eager to confide to sympathetic ears. The maidens are coy, or demure, or bashful, when their lovers are near, and delight in teasing and tormenting. The Bornean mothers and fathers think their babies the prettiest that ever were born; and the young boys are as boyish as school-boys here at home, and are quite as up to all mischief.