11 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
indigenous Malay, who is to be found chiefly in the more agricultural districts 
of Kuala Kangsar and Krian ; as a matter of fact, even the Malay population, 
such as it is, consists, to a large extent, of Achinese and other island folk, as the 
official census 1 would seem to indicate. 
The case is different when we come to consider the Sakais (Mai Darat). 
The whole of the main range of the Peninsula, which here attains a height of 
over seven thousand feet, as well as the subsidiary foot-hills, is still untouched by 
civilization, and only occasionally visited by wandering Chinese and Malay 
pedlars ; while the mountains are inhabited by a considerable Sakai population, 
who still retain, in many respects, their primitive habits and customs. As far 
as the tribes living in the higher hills are concerned, there has not been time 
for the purity of the race to be affected by Chinese and Malay admixture — a 
contingency which the comparatively strict ideas of sexual morality held by the 
Sakais also postpones for the present. 
We give a short account of each village visited in the Batang Padang 
magistracy, with a record of the work accomplished. 
Bidor. A large village some seven miles from Tapah, which was, at the 
time of our visit, the administrative centre of the district, though now that 
the railway from Penang to Singapore has reached Bidor, the headquarters have 
been transferred to the latter place. The population is considerable but mainly 
Chinese, though several Sakai communities exist within a few miles. In the 
immediate proximity of the village there is no old jungle, the land consisting 
of worked-out tin diggings, with a few badly cultivated rice-fields. 
We stayed at Bidor, which has an unenviable reputation for unhealthiness, 
for two or three days at a time on several occasions during January and 
February, 1902. During this time we measured a fair number of Perak Malays 
as well as several Sakais from Perangkap, a clearing at the base of the main 
range, seven or eight miles away, and paid a visit to a Sakai camp at Paku. 
We also investigated some interments, and obtained an imperfect skull of a 
Sakai woman, and a small ethnographical collection. Practically no zoological 
collecting was done, but a few Hymenoptera and Heterocera were obtained, and 
here, for the first time, we met with the nocturnal wasp, Vespa doryloides , which 
is usually so common in Malayan countries, but which appears to be absent 
from, or very scarce in, the Patani States. 
Gedong. A small Malay clearing, with about forty inhabitants, a few miles 
from Bidor. The clearing is surrounded by bamboo jungle, and we visited 
a small camp of Sakais in the immediate neighbourhood, obtaining some 
ethnographical specimens and the measurements of several individuals. 
i. Fascic. Malay. — Anthropology , part I, pp. 29, 68, 69. 
