FASCICULI MALATENSES 
5i 
The houses differed from any that we had previously seen, and were in 
some respects of a higher type than those of the Malays in the wilder parts of 
the Peninsula. The interesting feature in them was that in several instances a part 
of the one room of which each consisted was divided into several cubicles by 
walls that did not reach up to the roof, and that only extended outwards to 
the centre of the floor. The kitchen consisted of a fireplace extending under 
the eaves, just inside the door, and surrounded with a number of hanging 
shelves for the reception of cooking utensils, large spoons of cocoanut shell, 
turmeric graters, made from the rough midrib of a palm leaf, and the like. 
On being requested to make us specimens of such toys and ornaments 
as they commonly used, several of the men set to work to construct the 
trappings necessary for a ‘ spirit-play ’ ( main bantu). These consisted of a 
number of ornaments plaited from strips of palm leaf, and representing birds, 
fruit, snakes, and other objects, the most interesting of which were little square 
canopies, with ribbons twisted into rings at the extremities, depending from 
their corners. All these were to be hung up in the house when the medicine- 
man called down spirits, who would be deceived by the birds and fruit into 
believing that they were in a pleasure garden, while they would rest under the 
canopies, which appeared to be the same thing as the balei nyani described 
above, only in a simpler form, and without the ‘ baby.’ Models of birds, 
fishes, and fruit of exactly the same character are used in Malay ceremonies of 
a magical or religious nature, as will be afterwards described. 
The Orang Bukit round Kuala Lumpur regard themselves as subject to 
the Penghulu or Malay headman of that town. It is not unknown in this 
state, even at the present day, for Malays to take to the woods and become 
members of a Sakai tribe. 
This brings to a conclusion the purely descriptive part of our account of 
the customs and modes of life of the Semang and Sakai tribes that we visited 
ourselves ; we give a more detailed description of their physical characters in a 
subsequent paper. We have made no attempt to enter on the question of 
linguistics, considering it better to hand over such vocabularies as we were 
able to make to an investigator already working on the subject, and in possession 
of far more extensive material than we could gather in the time at our disposal. 
