1916.] i. H. N. Evans: Upper Perak Aborigines. 



213 



floor stringers, and many of the supplementary posts were 

 all of bamboo, and sheet bamboo was used for the floors, 

 walling, and for covering the bamboo sleeping benches or 

 platforms. The height between floor and the cross beams 

 (about four feet) was so little that in walking about it was con- 

 stantly necessary to dodge under timberings. Most of the 

 sleeping platforms were arranged along the walls, but some 

 jutted out at right angles. There was, however, sufficient room 

 left to allow passage from one end of the house to the other. 

 The dwelling contained four earth hearths, these being built 

 close to the sleeping platforms. As far as I could find out, 

 there were no very definitely allotted sleeping places, but the 

 unmarried of either sex were kept apart. The Hill Sakai are 

 hard workers, and, for an aboriginal tribe very good agricultur- 

 alists. Each community has several large clearings planted 

 with different ciops, but padi does not seem to be grown on the 

 Perak side of the main range. The headman of the village at 

 which I stopped told me that his people had four clearings in 

 use at the time of my visit, one planted with sengkuai (millet), 

 two with ubi kayji (tapioca) and one with a mixed crop of kaladi 

 (caladium) and keledek (Convolvulus batatas). It appears that 

 the work of clearing and planting is performed by the whole of 

 the settlement in common, and the crops are also common 

 property. 



I had imagined, chiefly owing to the size of the house I saw, 

 that the Sakai w^ould probably only have watching huts on the 

 other clearings, and w^ould go to and return from them the 

 same day; hence I omitted to ask them whether they had any 

 kind of dwellings on them, but after my return to Temengoh, 

 the Malay Gembala Sakai * Pak Lebai Ishak, informed me that 

 they usually had a large communal house in each clearing and 

 the whole community moved from one abode to another when- 

 ever there was any necessity for doing so. 



The tribe plants a fair amount of tobacco, for though I 

 did not com.e across any growing I saw a considerable quantity, 

 cut into shreds, drying on rectangular frames made of loosely 

 plaited strips of beniban. These were placed on the low cross 

 beams above the fire places. The Sakai told me that the 

 tobacco was generally smoked as soon as dry, but occasionally 

 they stored it in joints of bamboo to mature. 



With regard to weapons, blow-pipes were of the usual 

 Upper Perak type, i.e. weapons with a one-piece outer tube 

 consisting of a single internode. The mouth pieces, which 

 were of wood, were oblately spheroidal. The outer tube 

 was never sufficiently long to enclose the whole of the inner, 

 which is of course the important part of the blow-pipe, the 

 reason probably being that bamboos of sufficient size and 

 with internodfts long enough for the purpose could not be 

 obtained. To get over this difficulty a cylindrical piece of 



• Herdsman of the Sakai, a name frequently given to any Malay who has 

 gained authority over the aborigines. 



