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Where the climate, the charms of the place and the security from wild beasts were all calculated to captivate their fancy and render them contented, the poor Sakais drooped and pined for the vicissitudes of their wild life in the woods where comfort was unknown and food was sometimes scarce.
This is an implacable application of the maxim "timeo danaos et dona ferentes" by folks who do not understand Latin and who ignore the existence of the Greeks but who know thoroughly well their stranger neighbours. It is therefore vain to seek among the Sakais those poetical metaphors and that flowery, figurative style of speech which is attributed by us to all Orientals without distinction.
It is not sufficient to pierce the tissue with a quill; a little bamboo cane has to be at once inserted; the day after a larger one is substituted and so on until it is possible to hang from the ears pendants made of bamboo and ornamented with flowers, leaves and perhaps even cigarettes. A strip of upas bark twisted round the head bestows the finishing touch to the Sakais' toilet. Happy people!
There, where mountainous fertility ceases, one to the east and the other to the west, lie the plains of Pahang and Perak whose industrious hands guided by civilized ideas are carrying on a work of redemption from abandonment and malaria by the extension of cultivation and sanitary principles. The forest the territory of the Sakais covers the central part of the Peninsula.
The Sakais also admit the existence of a Good Spirit but precisely because he is good, so much so as never to reveal himself, they do not deem it necessary to bother him. To the Good Spirit the Sakais oppose in their mind, the Evil Spirit exercising his empire upon the souls of their ancestors.
Those rare ones, whose appearance would be rapturously hailed by our youths as the forerunners of a possible mustache or beard, are plucked out by the Sakais in their spare time!
It was of no use to speak to them of money because they had not the smallest idea of what it meant. At first they responded roughly that they did not care anything at all about the matter, for, as I before said, the Sakais from habit and an innate spirit of independence will never hear of submitting themselves to any regular, ordinate labour.
As a matter of course this fraudulent manner of trading made the poor Sakais' debts amount to fabulous proportions and then their swindling creditor dictated the conditions he best liked: the man had to follow and serve him or if there was some woman in the family he preferred, he would carry her off either to keep for himself, or privately sell to another.
In the cold nights they will all sleep close together to keep themselves warm and yet nothing wrong results from this promiscuous proximity. As I have already said, chastity is a natural virtue among the Sakais, and even that which relates to legitimate love is veiled in a coy mystery. Neither the male or the female are given to sexual caprices.
In the plains, however, a great many families may be found living together in the same village, sometimes even to three thousand persons. But it is not here that one is able to study and observe the habits and customs of the genuine Sakais.
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