Footnotes:

[11] Sĕlâdang = wild buffalo of the Peninsula.

IN A CAMP OF THE SĔMANGS

The paths are rough, the trails are blind
The Jungle People tread;
The yams are scarce and hard to find
With which our folk are fed.
We suffer yet a little space
Until we pass away,
The relics of an ancient race
That ne'er has had its day.

The Song of the Last Sĕmangs.

The night was closing in apace as I and my three Malay companions pushed our way through the underwood which overgrew the narrow wood path. We were marching through the wide jungles of the Upper Pêrak valley, which are nearer to the centre of the Malay Peninsula than any point to which most men are likely to penetrate. Already the noisy crickets and tree beetles were humming in the boughs above our heads, and the voices of the bird folk had died down one by one until now the monotonous note of the night-jar alone smote upon our ears. The colour was dying out of the leaves and grasses of the jungle, and all things were assuming a single sombre shade of black, the trees and underwood becoming merged into one monstrous shapeless mass, bulking big in the gathering darkness.

We had been delayed all day, by constantly going astray on the innumerable faint tracks, which, in this part of the country, begin nowhere in particular, and end nowhere at all. The jungle-dwelling tribes of Sĕmang, who alone inhabit these woods, guard their camps jealously, for, until lately, they were often raided by slave-hunting bands of Malays and Sâkai. To this end they do all that woodcraft can suggest to confuse the trails which lead to their camps, making a very maze of footpaths, which serve but as a faint guide to strangers in these forests.

The Sĕmang are the survivors of a very ancient race of negrits, remnants of which are still to be found scattered over Eastern Asia, and may be supposed to be the first family of our human stock that ever possessed these glorious lands. In appearance they are like African negroes seen through the reverse end of a field-glass. They are sooty black in colour; their hair is short and woolly, clinging to the scalp in little crisp curls; their noses are flat, their lips protrude, and their features are those of the pure negroid type. They are sturdily built, and well set upon their legs, but they are in stature little better than dwarfs. They live by hunting, and have no permanent dwellings, camping in little family groups, wherever, for the moment, game is most plentiful, or least difficult to come by.