THE ORANG LAUT OF SINGAPORE. 247 



The (Drang* Laut of Singapore. 



" We tack not now to a Gallang Prow" Kipling. 



At the time of the occupation of Singapore by the British, 

 there were living on the island, then densely afforested, one or 

 two races of natives, known as the Orang Kallang and Orano- 

 Selitar. The former of these lived on the river of the same 

 name, the latter along the rivers of the Johore Strait. Some 

 accounts of these two tribes was published by Logan in Vol. i. of 

 Logan's Journal in 1847, and illustrated by outlines of heads. 

 The Kallangs were removed by the Tumunggong of Johore 

 from the Kallang river to Pulai River when the island was 

 ceded to Britain. They formerly consisted of 100 families, but 

 in 1847 the small pox had reduced them to eight. They were 

 said to have lived exclusively in boats, neither building huts nor 

 cultivating any plants. Their language at that time appears to 

 have been Malay, and neither Mr. Logan nor Mr. Thomson 

 who described the Orang Selitar were able to elicit any words 

 of their original language. Of these races it is not easy now to 

 find any traces, as they have become amalgamated with the 

 Malays, adopting not only their language but also their customs 

 and religion. Lately however the authors of this note \isited 

 Kampong Roko, on the Kalang river, and made an attempt to 

 collect what information was procurable concerning this inter- 

 esting people. They were accompanied by Mr. R. H. Yapp (of 

 the Cambridge expedition) who took photographs of some of the 

 older men who were stated to be of this race. Kampong Roko 

 itself is a Malay village of the ordinary type, built on a mud 

 bank of the Kalang river and containing a very mixed popu- 

 lation. The natives have for many years employed themselves 

 in fishing and in preparing Nipah leaves for cigarettes-wrappers, 

 so that the ground is covered for a considerable depth with a 

 dense mass of waste fragments of leaves. We visited the vil- 

 lage on Nov. 12th, and sought out the oldest inhabitants, the 

 Batin Jenang, and an old man named Rabu, together with one 

 or two others, and spent a long time with them in endeavours to 



