IN SUMATRA. 245 



face, the flat forehead, owing to absence of all glabellar and 

 superciliary ridges, the slight sub-glabellar nasal depressions, 

 and the nomadic life they lead, are all highly characteristic of 

 the Mongolian race. 



" The frizzle in the hair seen in the drawings on pages 234 

 and 244 is probably to be accounted for by their having at 

 some remote period intermingled slightly with the Negrito 

 people, possibly during their migration southward. There is, 

 however, evidence that they have for a long period been iso- 

 lated from the other surrounding inhabitants of the island, 

 and that by absence of infusion of fresh blood they have come 

 to resemble one another so closely that they now possess 

 certain definite characteristics of a more or less stable nature." 



Prom the prison the Magistrate brought a thief who was 

 waiting to be sentenced, on whom ou his apprehension there 

 had been found a bag with the chief paraphernalia of his trade, 

 in order that he might explain to me their use. In it was a 

 bunch of keys of various sizes, a little sack with rice-grains for 

 alluring fowls ; a package of arsenic for more subtle bipeds ; a 

 tube of soporific powder, whose recipe he was confiding enough 

 to give me : Take of the Gadung (a species of Arum whose un- 

 cooked roots induce a sort of intoxication) a few scrapings of 

 the skin where the stem joins the tuber ; of white Katjuhung 

 (^Datura) the seeds of seven fruits ; the excreta of seven mice ; 

 of arsenic a sufficient quantity. When dried, pounded, and 

 sifted through a cloth, to be thrown on the rice, or into the 

 cigarette of the victim, or to be blown towards him as occasion 

 offers. The thief admitted that he had tried its effects and 

 produced sleep on two men, and stolen from them many cloths 

 and gold dust to the value of several hundred rupees. In 

 addition to the somniferous compound there were two other 

 tubes of " medicine," one for curing pain in the stomach, the 

 other a bright scarlet substance like vermilioh which was a 

 deadly poison, he said, producing vomiting of blood, followed 

 by a terrible and incurable cough, if death did not at once 

 supervene. Its composition he did not know ; he had bought 

 it in the Djambi country. In order, however, that its virtue 

 should not be lost it required to be set near the heart of a 

 buffalo or of a fowl at frequent intervals. It had besides the 

 valuable characteristic of preventing any harm from poison to 



