6 
PAPERS ON MALAY SUEyECTS, 
the Batang Padang mountains. Sir Hugh Clifford 
possessed much local knowledge and was a master of 
the Malay laiignage, the one practical medium of 
eoimnunicatioD. Besides collecting very accurate and 
very useful vocabularies of "Hanoi'' (Central Sakai) 
and ''Tembe'* (Northern Sakai) lie rendered a great 
service to methodical research by insisting on the im- 
portance of tribal divisions as against the slipshod 
]»rucess of ti eating all the aborigines as one or even two 
peoples* Mr. Skeat's prolonged study of the Coast 
Besisi added very materially to our knowledge of the 
aborigines. The Besisi have lost, it is true, many of 
their distinctive beliefs and customs through long 
contact with the Malays, but they still retain their 
ancient language; Mr. Skeat's vocabulary and his 
" Besisi Songs " supply the fullest linguistic data that 
have yet been published about any aboriginal tribe. 
Mr, Cerruti's recent book on the Mai Darat of Batang 
Padang is another contribution of importance. Although 
he was not a linguist like Sir Hugh Clifford and Mr, 
Skeatj he wrote of a tribe with which he had many years 
intimate acquaintance, confined himself to that tnbe, 
wrote only of Avhat he had himself observed, and had no 
theories of his own to advance. His account of the life 
of the Mai Darat is very full and true. 
The rest that has been written about the aboriginal 
tribes is either the notes of excursionists who have paid 
flying visits to the Sakai or else it is the work of scholars 
in Europe who have built up thcoi^ies and inferences 
upon the notes of others. The former type — of which Dr. 
Rudolf Martin's book is the most brilliant example — may 
be dismissed as insufiicieut and inconclusive even when it 
is accurate within its own narrow limits. Of the latter 
