120 PROFESSOR STR W. TURNER ON 



been captured by the Malays as a child, and had been circumcised and brought up as 

 a Mahommedan. His skin was dark, approaching black ; the forehead was almost 

 vertical, the nose was short, with a low flattened bridge and wide alee, the upper lip 

 was thick and prominent, the facial configuration was negroid, but the hair, instead 

 of being woolly or frizzled, was straight, and apparently three or four inches 

 long. 



In March 1891 I received from my former pupil, the late Dr W. Duncan Scott, an 

 imperfect skeleton, which he believed to be that of a Sakai, with a letter giving an 

 interesting account of the people. Dr Scott had accompanied his chief, Mr Abraham 

 Hale, in his visit to a tribe of Sakais inhabiting the hill-tops above the Kintah river at 

 a place called Tanjang Keukong. Dr Scott is the officer referred to by Mr Hale in 

 the appendix to his account of these people.* Dr Scott writes as follows : — The Sakais 

 occupy the hill country in the Malay peninsula as far south as the north end of Johore. 

 The skull and bones were found in a valley watered by the Kampar river, a tributary of 

 the Kintah river, about 25 miles from Batu Gajah. The hills are inhabited by scattered 

 groups of Sakais. The bones were found on a rude platform, about 6 feet from the 

 ground, in a lean-to hut under the shelter of a hill. The hut was made of boughs of 

 trees, and the bones were further protected by a sort of cage of branches.! 



The Sakais, he says, were an active, well-proportioned people, with stout muscular 

 limbs, and of a sturdier make than the Malays. Their stature was probably on the average 

 about 5 feet 2 inches, though some may be 5 feet 3 or 4 inches. The skin was lighter 

 in colour than in the Malay, and but little deeper in tint than in the Chinese, though 

 rather brown than yellow, and those who lived in the hills were lighter than those who 

 occupied the low ground. The features, on the whole, were broad, but not markedly so, 

 and the lips were not especially thick. The hair was black, and in those seen by Dr 

 Scott was inclined to be long, wavy, reaching to the shoulders ; but in some tribes he 

 says that it was stiff, slightly curled, and stood out like a mop around the head, whilst 

 in the people who lived more to the south it was in short corkscrew-like curls. The 

 eyes, as far as he recollects, were dark brown. The gait was peculiar, with a step and 

 swing from the hip. 



The younger women wore the Malay sarong round the waist and over the breasts ; 

 the older women were generally content with a sarong or piece of bark cloth or fringe 

 of fibrous roots around the waist, and with necklaces of shells, seeds, or monkeys' teeth. 

 The men wore a loin-cloth made of bark, and on festive occasions they wound a strip of 

 bark round the head. Many of the men ornamented the face with a white patch on the 

 cheek, and the girls had the face covered with red and brown streaks. They carried on 

 the back a light basket of rattan to hold fruit or small animals taken in the jungle. 

 They obtained iron choppers, or parangs, from the Malays, but could not smelt the 



* Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. xv. p. 299, 188G. 



t Mr Nelson Annandale has kindly given me photographs which he took of a Sakai rock shelter in Patalung 

 which resembles the hut descrihed by Dr Scott. 



