62 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
As I only saw five individuals, four men and a woman, of the Orang Laut 
Kappir, and as these individuals differed considerably in appearance, I am not 
able to give a general description of the outward characters of the race. Of 
the five persons examined, an old man and his wife could only be distinguished 
from the crowd of Samsams which surrounded them by the brightness of their 
eyes ; two young men, sons of this couple, had much the same appearance as 
that of many Mai Darat youths, except that their hair was absolutely straight 
and lank, and their gait not that of jungle-folk ; while the fifth individual, a 
man of about thirty-five, had an extraordinarily massive face and jaw. It has 
been our rule in the present paper to abstain from discussing cranial features 
other than those which can be distinguished by a superficial examination ; but 
it may be noted that this man had, actually but not relatively, the longest head 
of any individual whom we measured in the Malay Peninsula. The brightness 
of the eyes was a feature which all five persons had in common, and the straight- 
ness of their hair was another. [The way in which the. hair is brushed up 
from the forehead gives rather an erroneous impression in the figure 
(Plate XV, fig. i)]. The four men measured 1,624, 1,612, 1,562, and 1,523 
mm. in stature. Probably the Orang Laut Kappir could be differentiated 
generally from theSamsams by having wider noses, a well-developed epicanthus in 
a larger proportion of individuals, and a slighter figure, to note only superficial 
differences ; but it seems likely that intermarriages have often taken place, if 
the inhabitants of certain Mahommedan camps or villages, such as that on 
Pulau Telibun, are not the direct descendants of Orang Laut Kappir, who have 
been induced to £ enter Islam,’ and have become merged in the race which 
converted them. 
The two families encamped on Pulau Mentia had no weapons, and had 
never so much as heard of blowguns. Their clothing, houses, and household 
implements and utensils, of which they possessed but a very scanty store, were 
identical with those of the Samsam camp on the same island, being most 
probably copied from them ; but the two houses were larger and rather better 
constructed — though not more than six feet high — than the majority in this 
camp, from which they were separated by several hundred yards. 
The boat in which I travelled resembled those of the Samsam canoes 
which have a superstructure of slender palm-stems, but was more elaborate. 
It was about fifteen feet long and rather narrow for its length, as was rendered 
necessary by the fact that it consisted essentially of a hollowed tree trunk. 
The superstructure of palm-stems, which was about two feet high, was tied by 
bands of split rattan to false ribs, that projected upv/ards above its level from the 
bottom of the boat. The bands were rendered tighter by being twisted by a 
