94 



THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



These peculiar Semangs, who have hitherto succeeded in maintaining their independence, 

 have a weird legend of a mysterious nation of great Amazons destined one day to come and 

 smite the faithless Sakai people, who have gone over to the enemy's camp, and now join with 

 them in tracking and hunting flown their own kinsfolk. These female warriors who dwell 

 in the depths of the dark woodlands beyond the Gunong Korbu heights, and are stronger, 

 taller, bolder, and of paler colour than any men have even been seen, and their bows and 

 blow-pipes also, larger and truer and better carved than any others, are found now and then 

 in the deep recesses of the forests. A Semang chief tells how, 'many months ago,' he and 

 his two brothers, when following the trail of a wounded stag, found it lying by a brook, killed 

 by a larger arrow than theirs, and that instant, looking up, on hearing a loud threatening cry 

 in a strange tongue, he beheld a gigantic pale-skinned woman breaking through the jungle, 



I'hoto bij Mr. E. J. 



[Singapore. 



A GROUP OP NEGRITOS. 



and then his elder brother fell pierced by an arrow. He escaped by flight, and alone lived 

 to tell the tale, for the two brothers were never seen again. Mr. Clifford, who relates this 

 story (' In Court and Kampong,' 1897, page 179 sq.), and has perhaps been more intimately 

 associated with the Orang-utan (Wild Men), as the Malays often call them, than any other 

 white man, describes those of the Plus Kiver Valley as '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 pure Negroid type. They are sturdily built and well set upon their 

 legs, but 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." 



Professor Keane goes on to say: "All the faculties are sharpened mainly in the quest 

 for food, and of means to elude the enemy now closing round their farthest retreats in the 



