24 Journal of the F.M.S. Museums. [Vol. VII, 



extent in contact witli Malays and Chinese, they were much 

 less civilized than the Sakai living closer to Gopeng. Si Busu 

 the headman of the settlement, which consisted only of one 

 small house, gave me a good deal of interesting information 

 about customs and beliefs, and I also had with me a 

 Sumatran Malay named Dana; he had a Sakai wife who told 

 me a good deal about aboriginal affairs, though I did not 

 accept his statements before verifying them by questioning 

 the Sakai themselves. 



Si Busu's settlement consisted of a rather small house, 

 roofed and walled with palm leaves, which stood in a consider- 

 able clearing planted with tapioca. Access to the dwelling was 

 gained by a bamboo ladder. The doorway could be closed 

 with a sliding door of sheet bamboo, and on the left of this 

 there was built ^out a small room, occupied by an old man; 

 this had a window to the outside and another and a door 

 opening into the house. A single large room occupied the 

 rest of the space below, but above this, built out towards the 

 back of the house and supported on high poles, was an upper 

 room which was entered from below by means of a bamboo 

 ladder. The co >king place, with its earthen floor, was built 

 rather to one side of the large room and over it was a 

 framework with shelves for storing firewood, cooking utensils, 

 etc. The dart quivers belonging to the men of the house were 

 hung against the uprights supporting the shelves. One or 

 two store-bins for padi, made of tree-bark, were placed 

 near the walls, while a space in one corner of the room, walled 

 in to a height of about two and a half feet with tree-bark, but 

 empty at the time of my visit, had also been used for holding 

 padi grain. I spent a good deal of time in the house and was 

 interested to notice that, unless asleep, the Sakai were never 

 without occupation of some sort. Their appetites were 

 insatiable, and shortly after a hearty meal of rice, gourd, and 

 frogs or some other such delicacy, they would start roasting 

 Indian corn or tapioca in the ashes of the fire. The consump- 

 tion of Indian corn and tapioca, if the Sakai were at home, 

 went on - intermittently all day long. Apart from eating, the 

 men occupied themselves in making stocks of blow-pipe darts 

 and snares for small game, or in repairing their casting nets; 

 the women devoted themselves to the manufacture of mats 

 and carrying baskets or the cutting and drying of tobacco, 

 previously rolled leaves of the plant being shredded with a 

 sharp sliver of bamboo on a billet of wood. This was placed 

 on the slant, one end resting on the floor, the other against a 

 wall of the house. 



The clearing in which the house was situated had been 

 planted in the previous year, the Sakai's custom being first to 

 sow a new clearing with rice and then to plant tapioca, a 

 much slower growing crop, among the rice. Thus, after the 

 rice harvest is over, and most of the crop consumed, they are 

 able to fall back on their tapioca, which by that time is 

 sufficiently far advanced to be dug up. 



