ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF PERAE. 47 



getting into communication with the tribes from whom they had 

 been stolen, but eventually five men came down to the British. 

 Residency at Kwala Kangsa charged by the mothers and other 

 relations of the missing children to take them back. Most of the 

 children had been taken from their relations by men of their own 

 or other tribes, most likely at the instigation of the Malays, to whom 

 they were afterwards sold. Among the Malays they are worth from 

 thirty to forty dollars apiece. A Patani Malay confessed to me, 

 some years ago, that he cultivated the acquaintance of some SaJcei 

 jinak, (tame Sakeis, who mix with the Malays) because he could 

 get them to steal children for him. l?or a few trifling articles, 

 which seemed to the savage to be untold wealth, the latter would 

 start off: to procure an unlucky infant with whom to pay his credi- 

 tor. Sometimes, the Malay told me, a man would be away for two 

 months, eventually bringing a child snatched from some tribe at 

 Ulu Kelantan or Ulu Pahang. 



The men who came down to the Eesidency at Kwala Kangsa 

 were of different tribes. In Ulu Perak the Semangs and Salceis of 

 the plains seem to mix, both being distinct from the orang hulcit 

 or SaJcei bukit^ the men of the mountains, who are described as 

 being fairer and better-looking than the others. 



I greatly regret that circumstances did not permit me to have, 

 these people under observation for more than one day, and that my 

 notes regarding them are, therefore, necessarily meagre. 



The names of the five men are Kota, Bancha, Bttnga, Belifg 

 and ISTaga. Kota is a Semang, and so far civilised that he adopts 

 Malay dress when he visits a Jcampong. The others wore a chawat, 

 or waist-cloth, of some cotton material purchased from the Malays^ 

 not the back chawat, which I have seen in the Kinta district. 

 They do not all belong to the same tribe, and do not all speak the 

 same language, though able to communicate freely with each 

 other. A vocabulary was supplied to me by Kota. The other 

 men gave signs of dissent several times when he gave his version 

 of the word wanted, but the list was made late at night, and I had 

 no time to take down several equivalents of the same word. I hope, 

 on some future occasion, to be able perhaps to do so. The skin- 

 disease remarked by most travellers, who have had an opportunity 

 of observing the aborigines of the peninsula was noticeable in all 



