4 
PAPERS ON MALAY SUBJECTS, 
professional work came to be impugned, tliese jesting 
stories of his idle liours were also quoted against his 
memory with a Teutonic solemnity tliat made ttem 
still more ridiculous. Jokes tliougla tliey were, they 
have been fatal to his name. He has become a dis- 
credited writer whose work seryes as a red rag for the 
horns of the ethnological expert. 
Vaughan- Stevens was no "Professor"; he was not 
even a ,'i(traiff ; he was an expert collector sent ont to 
collect skulls and anthropological exhibits for a s^'ndi- 
cate of scientists in Germany. Within his limits he did 
his work well. His skulls were genuine; and there is 
no suspicion attaching to his blow- pipes, qnivers and 
bamboo-combs. But his employers expected more. 
Ignorant as he was of Sakai and even of Malay, he could 
not hope to get any real insight into the ideas and 
beliefs of tribes whose plane of thought is so far 
i^emoved from our own. When asked to give informa- 
tion of this sort he could only do his best ; and his best 
was a hon/i fide conjecture by a very imaginative person. 
Moreover, it is doubtful whether his employers had any 
conception of the cost and danger of joniTieys through 
the wilds of the Peninsnla. Vaughan- Stevens was 
miserably poor; he could not afford to engage coolies 
and elephants or equip expeditions tlirough the jungle. 
By working at outposts like TJlu Selama and Kuala 
Medang he met the tamer aborigines and obtained 
through them some information about the wilder tribes. 
He succeeded in making good collections of museum- 
exhibiis, though he was handicapped in his accoimts of 
them by his ignorance of Sakai and Malay. In the end 
things went against him. He made no startlmg dis- 
coveries, for there were none to be made* He found 
