he fact that formerly their neighbours carried on an
extensive slave-trade by making them victims and also took advantage of
their simplicity and good faith in many other ways, until the British
Protectorate was established and these poor wandering tribes were put
upon a par with more civilized races.

I began to gather information concerning these wild men of the bush and
learnt that they inhabited the unfrequented parts of the Perak and
Pahang States, that they were a nomadic race and that they passed most
of their time in the abstraction and preparation of vegetable and animal
poisons in which art they were exceptionally expert and that they were
equally skilful in shooting poisoned arrows. Some of my informants
wanted to make me believe that they were exceedingly ferocious by nature
and so superstitious that they would aim their deadly dart at whatever
stranger ventured to approach them, believing him to be the messenger of
some Evil Spirit and that afterwards they would make of him a dainty
meal to comfort their insatiable stomachs.

But knowing something of the previous relations between the Sakais and
the people surrounding them I was put on my guard against certain
exaggerated and prejudiced reports and felt strongly tempted to try and
dissipate the vague mystery--that I somehow guessed was based upon
self-interest--in which they wished to envelop the Mai Darats.

The more they told me about them the more I felt attracted towards the
Sakais, it seeming to me that a people so foreign to every light of
civilization, so bold as they were described to be, so free from every
regime or authority, must needs afford an interesting study to one who
sought to know them at close quarters. Perhaps, when once I had overcome
the, not always surmountable, difficulty of getting into their company,
I might find amongst them a tranquil life and settle down in their midst
as a planter or agriculturist for I was already convinced that I was
unfitted for commercial enterprises in which very often scruples of
conscience and uprightness are encumbrances.

My brief sojourn in civilized society made me long for the freedom and
peace which, may be, awaited me there; I longed to know intimately these
people who, I reasoned to myself, must be exempt from corruption as they
were so much hated by those who lived in its midst, and who were
surrounded by so much mystery.

There was, I must confess, another reason that helped to draw me tow