ABORSGINAL TRIBES.' INTRODUCTORY, 
3 
tKeory was questioned by those wlio had knowledge of 
the existence of fair aboriginal tribes showing no trace of 
either Kegrito or Malay admixture. A mystery seemed 
to hang over the wild tribes of the Peninsula and to 
suggest that somewhere in the Malayan forests there 
might be found the most primitive tribes on eartli, men 
who would represent the missing link of Darwinism. 
In the end a man was sent out to solve this mystery — 
a collector named Van ghan- Stevens whose work in the 
early nineties did much to advertise Sakai research in 
Europe and to rouse expectations that were never 
destined to be fulfilled, 
I knew the " Professor," as Vaiighan-Stevens was 
styled. He was a simple kindly man who possessed a 
great gift of imaginative exaggeration. He told mo 
that he had made the acquaintance of the w ilder Sakai 
by festooning a forest tree with beads and pieces of 
cloth and by listening to the comments of the ambushed 
savages until he had heard enough to enable him to 
speak their language. Indeed he was full of strange 
tales and stranger resoui'ces. By covering himself with 
tar he claimed to make himself leechproof and inde- 
pendent of clothes. If he was unlucky enough to break 
liis legj he simply thrust the injured limb into a swamp : 
the sun caked tlie mud into a natural splint and gave 
the patient no trouble except that of digging himself 
out when the cure was complete. Any one who totalled 
up — as I did — the penods of time that Van ghan- Stevens 
asserted spending in the different savage countries that 
he had visited was impelled to the conclusion that 
the " Professor " was either a Methuselah or an Ananias* 
He was neither. He was a humourist who did not 
expect to be. taken seriously. But afterwards, when his 
