A feature of Kelabit life is the presence both of irrigated wet padi (sawah) cultivation and of the shifting, jungle-clearing (ladang) dry method. None of the surrounding lowland and riverine peoples practises the sawah method, although over their vast area there are many suitable places. On the coastal plain a wet system, less elaborate than that of the Kelabits, is practised. Kelabits irrigate from small streams over long distances, and by the use of a large number of subdivisions within the sawah—up to 500 in an acre—have good control over basic
- 93
drainage, surplus spilling and close irrigation in case of drought. They claim to have made such sawahs since “time immemorial;” there are at least half a dozen valleys not inhabited within Kelabit memory which show clear evidences of previous extensive irrigation.
In this and other ways (e.g., catch-crops, fruit planting, tobacco growing) the Kelabits are quite advanced agriculturists by any local standards, and also breeders of buffalo and cattle. They use neither beast nor plough in cultivation. At the same time, they are keen hunters, both with blowpipe and with dogs, including—until its extinction—the rhinoceros for its alleged aphrodisiac value to the Chinese. They are good trackers, and parties of men like to make long and arduous journeys into uninhabited mountain areas.
