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Updated: August 3, 2024
I did full justice to the roots and fish, but prudently left the doubtful meat alone, and when the cravings of my hunger were appeased, I began to make advances to my hosts. First I produced a palm-leaf bag holding about four pounds of coarse Chinese rock salt, and bade the Sĕmang gather round and partake.
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 Sĕmang, who alone inhabit these woods, guard their camps jealously, for, until lately, they were often raided by slave-hunting bands of Malays and Sâkai.
She felt that she no longer had cause to be troubled; that whatever she and Semang might need would come without effort on their part. Once there lived a woman, Boamaring, who was Raja Besar in a large kampong where people did not know how to work. They could not make ladangs nor prahus.
By the same aid Semang made the room handsome. Everything became changed instantly. The ceiling was of ironwood, and the planks of the floor were of a wood called lampong, which resembles cedar. Large numbers of brass vessels were there, and many gongs were brought from the prahu, besides a great quantity of various goods. The mother said: "This is well, Semang."
Semang said: "Well, I will go tomorrow to search for something to eat." At sunrise next morning he went away in a prahu, paddling up-stream. He reached a kampong, and the name of the raja here was Anjangmaran. He could find no food, so he went on to the next kampong, and to another, but had no success, so he continued his journey, and then arrived at the fourth kampong. There were no people here.
Its eastern boundary is only an approximate one, Kelantan joining it in the midst of a vast tract of unexplored country inhabited solely by the Sakei and Semang aborigines. The State is about eighty miles wide at its widest part, and thirty at its narrowest, and is estimated to contain between four and five thousand square miles.
The Sĕmang, of both sexes and all ages, coal black, save where the gleams of the fire painted them a dull red, and nude, save for a narrow strip of coarse bark cloth twisted round their loins, lay on their stomachs with their chins propped upon their elbows, or squatted on their hams, smoking placidly.
None the less, however, I hold to the belief that my informant actually did see something weird and uncanny at the back of Gûnong Korbu; and that the keen eyes of a jungle-dwelling Sĕmang should not be able to clearly recognise anything their owner could encounter in the forests of the Peninsula, is, in itself, a miracle.
In the night he heard Deer talk in his sleep: "Tomorrow morning I am going to look for a small bottle with telang kliman. It is underneath the pole in front of the house." Semang said: "Who is talking there?" Deer waked up and became frightened, ran down the ladder, and got into Semang's prahu, where he went to sleep. Before dawn Semang arose and walked down toward the prahu.
We pushed on more rapidly when the gleam of welcome light showed us that men were at hand, and presently we emerged upon a tiny opening in the forest, in the centre of which the Sĕmang camp was pitched. The shelters of these people were rough enough to deserve no better name.
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