24 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
told me that the urat batu rhizomorph was not used among them to make 
girdles, though It was obtained from the Semin to make necklaces, bracelets, 
and head-dresses. Several of the men wore long strings of hard, black and grey 
seeds round their necks, and had on their heads garlands of flowers and sweet- 
scented grass. They had all shaved their hair and did not leave a topknot. 
The septum of the nose was pierced. None of them were tattooed or scarified. 
It is the Po-Klo who now* make the bows and arrows usually attributed 
to Semangs, who occasionally, but very rarely, buy these weapons from them. 
The bows, judging from specimens apparently from this district, in the State 
Museum at Taiping, are stout, though of no great size, the strings of twisted 
vegetable substance, and the arrows provided with steel heads. The Po-Klo are 
very jealous of their bows, and refused to bring them for me to see, but they 
were most positive, as also were the Malays of the village, that they were able 
to make the arrow-heads, beating them out with a stone, when hot, from scrap- 
iron they procured from Malay or Chinese pedlars. They brought me the 
teeth of bears and the frontlets of the Malay serow (Nemorbaedus sweitenbami ), 
which they said they had procured by shooting the animals with poisoned 
arrows. From what was told me by them and the Temongoh Malays, who, 
it must be remembered, have a strain of Semang blood in their own veins, it 
seems probable that a large proportion of the horns of this antelope that are 
sold in different parts of the Malay Peninsula, especially in the state of Legeh, 
as charms and medicine, are originally procured by Sakais living in the moun¬ 
tains, though the beast is so wary that only one specimen has ever been shot by a 
European, and only two skins, which were obtained by ourselves, ever brought 
to Europe. 
In describing the blowguns of the Semin I have described those of the 
Po-Klo also, as the majority of them are probably made by the latter tribe. 
The Po-Klo quivers 4 , however, differ very much from the uncovered 
bamboos used by the jungle men round Grit, being by far the most elaborate 
we saw in the Malay Peninsula. Like that procured from the Hami, they 
are made of a coarser species of bamboo, but, unlike them, they have tight- 
fitting conical covers, plaited out of the creeping rhizome of a fern known to 
the Malays as Paku lUbu-ribu , probably a species of Lygodium . Fibres of 
slightly different shades are often chosen in making these covers, and are so 
arranged as to form contrasting zones upon them, the plaiting being so close 
that they are quite watertight. The outer surface of the bamboo is invariably 
decorated with an incised pattern recognized among all the people of this 
district as representing an Argus Pheasant. As will be seen from the figures, 
I. See Note on Semin weapon?, arjtai^ pp. 12-14, 
z* Plate XI I, fig. i t A, B, C, D ; Plate XIII, fig. I, A. 
