INTRODTTCTORY. 
If the extent of our knowledge of the wild tribes of 
Malaja was to be measured by the mere weight of 
the books that have been written about them the sul^ject 
would not afford rancli scope for further research. The 
work of Messrs. Skeat and Blagden covers some 1,600 
pages ; Dr. Rudolf Martin's book is almost as Tohiminous ; 
then we have a fifteen-shilling fasciculus " by Messrs. 
Annandale and Robinson, a French work on " Perak et 
les Orang Sakey," a book by Signer Cerrufci on "My 
Friends the Savages," many essays by Father Schmidt 
and others on the Mon-Annam affinities of the Sakai 
dialects, and innumerable articles by Vaughan-Stevens, 
Clifford, Hale, Xnocker, de Morgan and other authorities, 
reliable or the reverse* But with all this mass of 
literature we know next to nothing about the aborigines 
of the Malay Peninsula. Ko European has ever mastered 
a Sakai dialect or made himself familiar with the inner 
life of any single Sakai tribe. The flying visits of 
scientific observers represent very little more than the 
intelligent globe-trotter and his note-book of first im- 
pressions. They may tell us some simple facts about 
the shape of a Sakai's house, the colour of his skin and 
hair, and perhaps a few details about his clothing, habits 
and weapons. To such notes there may be added a 
short vocabulary of some 200 or 300 words. There our 
information ends; and, after all, it rests only on some 
brief conversations (usually through an interpreter) and 
a few photographs and measurements taken in a hurry, 
la it surprising that our experts disagree when every 
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