increase of population, although there were plain indications 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 difficulty in understanding the smallness and almost
stationary population of the Dyak tribes.
We have next to inquire what is the cause of the small number of births and of
living children in a family. Climate and race may have something to do with this,
but a more real and efficient cause seems to me to be the hard labour of the