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Cleanliness as the reader will have understood from the example given above is not the highest quality of the Sakai any more than it is of other primitive peoples. Hygienic practices march alongside civil progress. The bath, as a pleasure or a necessity, is quite unknown to them, and those who dwell amongst the mountains have the greatest fear of water.

But, when the thrashing was over, she followed him meekly, with the tears still wet upon her cheeks, making no attempt to escape. Thus Ku-îsh, the Porcupine, and Chêp, the Bird, made their way through the strange forests, until they had once more regained the familiar Sâkai country, and were safe among their own people.

What is certain is that the Bakufu sent to Kyoto the prime minister, Sakai Tadakiyo, with three other representatives, and that shortly after their arrival in the Imperial capital, arrangements were completed for the proposed change.

And does it not approach foolishness? The birth, and subsequent suckling, of her first child put an end to the grace and bloom of a Sakai woman. She fulfils with incomparable zeal the functions confided to her by Nature, but as she has, at the same time, to attend to the heavy duties allotted her by man she becomes over-worked and worn-out with excessive fatigue.

No man can say how ancient is this custom, nor yet the beginnings in which it had its origin. Does it date back to a period when huts and garments, even of bark, were newly acquired things, and when the Sâkai suffered both ungladly after the manner of all wild jungle creatures?

It was to semi-wild Sâkai such as these that Chêp and her people belonged. There are tribes of other and more savage jungle-dwellers living in the forests of the broad Sâkai country, men who fly to the jungles even when approached by the tamer tribesmen.

When as often happens a Sakai has to undertake a journey of more than three days as in the case of seeking a wife or of making a large provision of tobacco for all the encampment, both he and those left behind have recourse to a novel calendar in order to remember how many days he is absent.

But the British Government is quite equal to the task it has undertaken, and there is no reason to doubt that before long it will have reduced to impotency these dregs of Society who creep in amongst the Sakai tribes, that are far removed from civilization and justice, there to work out their wicked schemes and practise their crafty wiles.

A river-bed is a path ready cleared through the forests, and, to the Sĕmang, Sâkai, and jungle-bred Malay, it is Nature's macadamized road. More often the unnavigable streams serve as guides to the traveller in the dense jungles, the tracks running up their banks, crossing and recrossing them at frequent intervals.

Ku-îsh gathered up the fish, and took all the tobacco he could find on Kria's body, for a Sâkai rarely loses sight completely of those cravings of appetite, which, with him, are never wholly satisfied. Then, when the darkness had shut down over the land, he crept to Kria's house, and bade Chêp follow him.