The Sakais are nomadic for two reasons: first, because when they have exhausted, by their prodigality, the edible treasures that the forest soil produces for them without need of toil, in the tract of land within reach of their settlement, they change their residence to a fresh quarter where this uncultivated product is for a long time in superabundance; secondly, because when somebody of their number dies they believe that an evil spirit has entered their village and that to free themselves from its malignant influence it is necessary to fly to another part.
Well, more than once I have made a point of sleeping in a hut lately visited by death to show them how absurd the idea is. At first they stood afar, looking at the forsaken spot and believing that I, too, was dead, but afterwards finding, to their immense wonder, that I was still alive and well, they began to doubt their own superstition and to build their huts a little more solid so that they might be of greater durability.
Overthrown in a definite manner one of the motives of their wanderings the other would cease to exist from the moment they were taught to work the ground. With this scope in view, from time to time, I make a distribution of padi or maize and am glad to see that little by little the miserable plots once rudely sown with corn are now becoming ample fields.
Like the old philosopher I found in the forest, the other Sakais have never thought, or rather let themselves think, what a boon it would be for them to grow the things they like best, around their huts, instead of feeling obliged to get it from others, and they evidently shared his dislike to torturing the earth with iron, for before my advent and sojourn amongst them they simply burnt the pith of the trees and plants they felled and into the bed formed by the ashes they cast indiscriminately bulb and grain, covering up both with their feet or with a piece of wood, and afterwards they took no more care of it.
But this pretence of cultivation was nothing less than a greedy caprice and did not in any way help their domestic economy. The products of the planting which had cost them so little fatigue was deemed surplus food and they would eat up in a few days what might have lasted them for months, inviting friends even lazier than themselves (who had not taken the trouble so much as to imitate this rudimental mode of agriculture) to take part in the gorging feast.
It would be a real blessing to those Sakais who have already begun to cultivate their fields, to work with me in the plantations I am making, to help me in gathering in jungle produce and to apply themselves to some simple industry, if a few good-hearted, thrifty families of European agriculturists were to come and dwell amongst them. In this way my forest friends would make rapid and immense progress for they have already shown their aptitude and ability and the British Government would in a very short time have a flourishing colony by thus bringing them into direct contact with a wholesome civilization consisting of kindness, rectitude and honest work without their losing any of their characteristic integrity through the contaminating influence of spurious evolutionary principles.
It is true that the wide dominions of England claim an immense amount of care and energy but her rulers display sufficient activity and wisdom for the need and would have no cause to regret, but rather rejoice, if they were to extend their beneficence to the far off worthy tribes of Sakais now wandering over Perak and Pahang.
Returning to the character of my no-longer new friends I must really repeat that we should be fortunate if we could find similar traits in many of the persons belonging to civilized society.
Whether I am prejudiced by the sympathy I feel for this people amongst whom I live, and who have granted me hospitality without any limit, I will leave you to judge, kind reader, you who have the patience to peruse these modest pages written, not from an impulse of personal vanity, but in all sincerity, and whose only aim is to do good to the poor Sakais, unknown to the world in general and slandered by those who know them and who are interested in preventing any sort of intercourse with other outsiders besides themselves.