44 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
interlacing branches of trees with the shrubs naturally growing round the edge. 
Gaps are often left in which traps are set. As may be well imagined, this 
system of agriculture is very destructive of the jungle, seeing that rarely more 
than two crops are ever raised in one clearing, which may be suddenly deserted 
at any moment owing to a death in the camp. 
The Sakais of this district own a breed of dogs, which is probably identical 
with that owned by the Po-Klo, and quite distinct from that of the pariahs 
common in Malay villages. The points of difference are that the muzzle is 
shorter in the Sakai breed, the ears more erect, the legs shorter, the tail more 
bushy, the body more thick set, and the colour an almost uniform tawny rufous, 
very similar to that of the Malay hunting dog ( Cyon sumatrensis). The Mai 
Darat treat their dogs with great kindness, and when on a journey carry them ; 
this office usually falling to the lot of the younger women. The dogs aid 
them greatly in hunting, and are very suspicious of strangers. They are said 
to be often infected with rabies. The only other domestic animal usually 
owned by the Sakais is the common fowl, which they have probably acquired 
recently, for their breed is the same as that seen in Malay villages. At the 
present time, the Sakais of the Batang Padang district, and even those of the 
mountains on the Perak-Pahang border, own large numbers of fowls, which 
they breed to sell to Chinese pedlars, or even bring down into the towns them- 
selves, carrying them on their backs in open work crates made of rattan. 
Though they will sell their poultry alive, they refuse either to kill or to eat it 
themselves, looking upon all animals reared in their camp as members of their 
community, as they themselves told us. They deny, however, that they have 
the same regard for the pets of other people. 
Kittens are occasionally procured from the Malays, and we have seen a 
little boy dressing one up like a doll. The wild pig ( Sus cristatus ) is not in- 
frequently tamed, though it does not appear to be bred in captivity. A specimen 
sold to us at Telom by a party of Sakais followed its owners like a dog, and 
came up to them when they called out ‘ jut-j era-jut ,’ a cry that appeared to have 
no definite meaning. The young of the monkey, Macacus nemestrinus , is also 
captured and made into a pet, being almost an object of barter between camps 
lying many miles distant from one another. We have known a case in which 
a specimen, which its owners refused to sell us, was taken all the way from 
the plains of the Batang Padang valley up into the central range, where monkeys 
hardly exist, having possibly been exterminated by the relatively large Sakai 
population. 
The houses of the Mai Darat closely resemble those built by the Malays 
in their own hill clearings, but there is no reason to believe that the Sakais 
