ABOBIGINAL TRIBES: DIVISIONS OF RACE. 
37 
well as the tamer tribes. But it so facilitates intercourse 
witli other races as to cause the tribe to fuse rapidly with 
the Malay population and to disappear. At the present 
moment the purest Mantra or Biduauda communities are 
to be found in the great mountain mass about Gunong 
Hantu, between Sekngor and Negri Sembilau. These 
communities are veiy nomadic and wander from the TJlu 
Kenaboi to tlie Pahang slopes of the great central 
range of the Peninsula, There they are said to possess 
a distinctive type of hut — a tent-like triangular arrange- 
ment with sloping sides and a bamboo flooring that is 
not raised to any height above the ground. Elsewhere 
this tribe is well known to European students through 
the "Mantra Mission" at Ayer' Salak, in Malacca, an 
aboriginal religious settlement that is now little more 
than a name : the men's nomadic habits have taken most 
of them back to the jungle, while the women have 
preferred to marry into the more settled homes of the 
Chinese. When I last visited the settlement I could 
not find a single pure-blooded Mantra ; the tribe cannot 
now be studied at Ayer Salak. Pafcher Borie, the founder 
of the mission, knew and wrote a great deal about this 
tribcj but his writings suifer nuich from the fact that 
lie had a thesis to support. That thesis was his belief in 
a prior conversion of the Mantra by the Apostle 
St. Thoma^j ■ and he cared for httle else. 
Another dubious tribe must be described as "Hervey's 
Kenaboi." The doubt in this case assails the very 
existence of these aborigines. Mr. D. F. A. Hervey^ 
o.M.G., formerly Resident Councillor of Malacca, took 
down on two occasions fram wandering 8akai calling 
tliemselves Oranrf Krhmhoi vocabularies that show no 
affinity to any other language in the world. Mr. Hervey 
