SHORT NOTES. 129 



sickness. Among- the Orang Laut when a man is ill, a wooden 

 figure of a bird, snake, fish or other animal is made, and the 

 pawang or bomo exorcises the hantu or devil in the sick man and 

 drives it into the figure, which is then carried out to sea and 

 thrown overboard. Last year we picked up a wooden bird 

 floating in Durian Strait. 



Very likely the human figures were used in the same way, 

 being carried out into the jungle instead of out to sea. Like 

 the Rumah hantu to be seen in the woods near Malay Kam- 

 pongs. These images resemble the adu adu of Pulo Nias. 



Dr. Abbott. 



The Orang Laut of Singapore 



In Journal 33, p. 247, Mr. Skeatand I published some notes 

 on the Orang Laut of Singapore, a race very nearly extinct, 

 and of which very little is known, I have since come across an 

 account of them in Finlayson's Mission to Siam and Cochin 

 China, in 1821. The author somewhat naturally mistook them 

 for Malays and thus describes them. " The condition of the 

 lower class of Malays in these parts is wretched beyond what 

 we should conceive to be the lot of humanity in an intertropical 

 climate, almost the whole of their life is spent upon the water 

 in a wretched little canoe in which they can scarce stretch 

 themselves for repose. A man and his wife and one or two 

 children are usually to be found in these miserable sampans; 

 for subsistence they depend on their success in fishing. Their 

 tackling is so rude and scanty that they are often reduced to 

 the most urgent want, when they have made a meal they lay 

 basking in the sun or repose under the dense shade of the man- 

 grove till hunger again calls them into action. They have 

 scarce a rag of cloth to secure them from the scorching noon- 

 day sun or shelter them from the damp and noisome dews and 

 exhalations of night. The women are not less dexterous than 

 the men in managing their boats. Their only furniture consists 

 of one or two cooking pots, an earthen jar and a mat made of 

 the leaves of the Fandanus which serves to protect them 

 from the rain. In the numerous bays inlets and creeks that 

 surround Singapore an inconceivable number of families live in 



R. A. Soc, No. 41, 1904. 



