ound the hut a piece of ground is prepared for the cultivation of
potatoes, yams and maize, but the harvest is very scanty, and the whole
is frequently destroyed by the visit of a _sladan_. Here, too, the
good-wife devotes a part of her time to fowl-breeding.

She, like all the Sakais, sleeps at her pleasure in the morning. As soon
as she gets up, with the help of her daughters she prepares the morning
meal and serves it out as she thinks proper without the slightest remark
being heard as to the quality or quantity of the food given to each.

After breakfast every one goes about their own business; the men
shooting, searching for poisons, or setting traps; the women and girls
gathering tubers, bulbs and mushrooms, or catching insects, lizards and
frogs, whilst the old people no longer able to go to the forest remain
behind chewing tobacco or _sirih_ and looking after the children.

Sunrise and sunset keep each other company!

Towards noon all who can, return to the village, those who cannot, after
having eaten in the forest, squat themselves on the ground to rest. It
is the solemn hour of silence and repose, observed by man and beast.

Only when the sun, from being right overhead, has begun to decline
westward is the interrupted work or march resumed. At the first sign of
twilight, which is very brief, the Sakais may be seen hastening back to
their huts, on their return from labour or from other villages, where an
abundant meal and ineffable peace awaits them.

CHAPTER XII.

Intellectual development--Sakais of the plain and Sakais of
the hills--Laziness and intelligence--Falsehood and the Evil
Spirit--The Sakai language--When the "Orang Putei" gets
angry--Counting time--Novel calendars--Moral gifts.

Intellectual development amongst the Sakais of the hills is very limited
and as a consequence requires little or no study but much more is to be
met with amongst those of the plain for two reasons which I have already
explained: one their traffic and consequent intercourse with more
civilized races; and the other the mixture of blood from their parents'
concubinage with strangers, thus destroying the purity of their own.
After the establishment of the British Protectorate and the abolition of
slavery in the Federated Malay States the Sakai men and women returned
to their native places, the latter taking with them the children born of
their masters and the former entered into business relations with th