himself was now fast sinking into the stolid,
animal indifference of his right-hand neighbour. I saw him, exactly as I
have described him, some two years ago, and, unless kindly death has set
him free, he has now, I do not doubt, reached the happy condition of
_kaleh_.

If the men suffer thus, what are the pains endured by tender women and
by little children? It makes one sick to think of it! And yet, all these
things happened and are happening to-day, within shouting distance of
Singapore, with its churches, and its ballrooms, its societies for the
prevention of cruelty, its missionaries, its discontented exiled
Europeans, its high standards, its poor practice, its loud talk, and its
boasted civilisation.

IN A CAMP OF THE SEMANGS

The paths are rough, the trails are blind
The Jungle People tread;
The yams are scarce and hard to find
With which our folk are fed.
We suffer yet a little space
Until we pass away,
The relics of an ancient race
That ne'er has had its day.

_The Song of the Last Semangs._

The night was closing in apace as I and my three Malay companions pushed
our way through the underwood which overgrew the narrow wood path. We
were marching through the wide jungles of the Upper Perak valley, which
are nearer to the centre of the Malay Peninsula than any point to which
most men are likely to penetrate. Already the noisy crickets and tree
beetles were humming in the boughs above our heads, and the voices of
the bird folk had died down one by one until now the monotonous note of
the night-jar alone smote upon our ears. The colour was dying out of the
leaves and grasses of the jungle, and all things were assuming a single
sombre shade of black, the trees and underwood becoming merged into one
monstrous shapeless mass, bulking big in the gathering darkness.

We had been delayed all day, by constantly going astray on the
innumerable faint tracks, which, in this part of the country, begin
nowhere in particular, and end nowhere at all. The jungle-dwelling
tribes of Semang, who alone inhabit these woods, guard their camps
jealously, for, until lately, they were often raided by slave-hunting
bands of Malays and Sakai. To this end they do all that woodcraft can
suggest to confuse the trails which lead to their camps, making a very
maze of footpaths, which serve but as a faint guide to strangers in
these forests.

The Semang are the survivor