58 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
Before describing the houses of the Trang Samsams, it is necessary to 
explain why they call themselves ‘ Sea Folk’- — a name which is not applicable 
to all Samsams, many of whom, in Perak and Kedah, live in the interior. A 
few Samsam villages in Trang, such as Ban Pra Muang, at the mouth of the 
Trang River, are built practically on the coast ; but the majority lie some little 
distance up small rivers, which reach the sea through a tangled system of 
winding creeks and mangrove swamps. These villages are surrounded with 
irrigated rice-fields, fruit trees, and groves of palms. The inhabitants spend a 
part of each year engaged in agriculture, but the younger people of both sexes 
migrate annually to the coast and islands, leaving the village in charge of the 
old folk. Here they stay for some months, fishing and gathering oysters 
and trepang. The houses in their villages are much like those of Malays and 
Siamese in other parts of the Peninsula ; they are raised on posts to the height 
of from six to ten feet, their walls are of rough bamboo basketwork or slabs of 
bark, and their roofs of palm-leaf thatch. As a rule, they are divided internally 
into (i) a narrow passage, into which the door opens, and which contains the 
kitchen fireplace — a wooden box filled with sand and provided with a number 
of stones or earthenware substitutes on which to rest the cooking-pots ; and (2) a 
couple of chambers, the floor of which is raised a few inches above that of the 
passage. The inner of the two chambers is often completely walled in, and has a 
door giving on the kitchen ; but the outer one is not divided from the passage 
except by the raising of the floor. The villages may reach a considerable size, 
consisting of forty or fifty houses. The dwellings used during the annual migra- 
tion to the coast are far less elaborate ; they are not raised from the ground more 
than a couple of feet, their walls and roofs, when they can be distinguished 
from one another, are both formed of palm-leaf thatch, and there are no interior 
partitions. In some cases there is no room for a fireplace inside, and there 
are no doors ; no food can be cooked while it is raining, and the houses give 
very little protection from rough weather. 
The boats used by the Samsams of Trang are of no great size, the majority 
of them being either simple dug-out canoes or hollowed tree trunks, the sides 
of which have been slightly raised by a superstructure consisting of a number 
of the slender stems of a small palm fastened together, and to the trunk, by 
means of flat strips of bamboo, on which they are transfixed, being further 
secured by lashings of split rattan. The superstructures are fairly watertight, 
so closely are they fastened together, but they do not last for more than one 
season. 
Their pottery and brasswork, and the greater part of their cloth, are 
obtained by the Trang Samsams from Penang, and they display no decorative 
