CHAPTER XIX.

A CREW OF WRETCHED FUGITIVES 'ORANG-LAUT," OR SEA GYPSIES- LOW CIVILISATION OF THE ORANG-LAUT — TOTAL ABSENCE OF ALL RELIGIOUS FEELING-THEIR MODE OF LIVING -THE PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF ORANG-LAUT-DEARTH OF FRESH WATER-ORDERED TO PROCURE WATER UP THE RIVER -PARLIS AND PIRATE FLEET-INTERVIEW WITH HAGGI LOUNG -PERMISSION GRANTED TO PROCURE WATER-TOM WEST'S ADDRESS TO THE MALAYS-PADDLE UP THE RIVER-TROPICAL MALAYAN SCENERY-PASS KANAH-OBTAIN FRESH WATER.

LET us return, however, to Tamelan. I filled my watercasks with all the water that was procurable, and started out of the river. When crossing Setouè Bay, a prahu was seen coasting along the edge of the jungle, and after a short chase we caught her. The people in her were devoid of the usual Malay clothing, and in a most abject. condition; they described themselves as Orang-Patani, or people of Patani (a Malayu-Siamese province on the opposite coast), and said they were flying before the Siamese army.

My Malays owned they were countrymen, but spoke of them as barbarians of the lowest caste, pariahs of Malayia, and summed them up by the title of Bad People, or Gypsies, who make war by petty theft alike upon Malays or Siamese.

The specimens before us were decidedly very objectionable in every way: they were dirty to a degree, with a most villanous expression of countenance. After their first fear wore off, the women exhibited a most shameless want of modesty, and the men evinced a total absence of all jealous feeling for their wives or regard for their children; and yet, when one poor wretch offered me his two children for a half-bushel measure of rice, I could not help thinking their vices were the result of their sad, sad load of want and misery; and, giving them rice without taking their unfortunate offspring, we sent them on their way rejoicing.

These fugitives I believe to be identical with the Orang-laut, or Men of the Sea, spoken of by the earliest as well as modern writers when describing the different Malay races. Their proper home is in prahus, or canoes, although some of them occasionally settle upon the borders of the sea. Like the sons of Ishmael, their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them. The Malay of more civilised communities holds them in contempt; and he is the only man who can be expected to have any sympathies with them. They are found. haunting in small groups-for their numbers do not entitle them to the appellation of tribes-the neighbourhood of our flourishing colonies, as well as the most secluded and barren places in Malayia. They are usually found east of the Straits of Malacca, although, as I have just shown, they reach the western side sometimes. Under fifty different names, they are known to the inhabitants of Siam, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Moluccas, and in all cases bear a bad reputation.

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The best description of them is given by a Mr Thomson, a gentleman who has written on the Archipelago. I take the liberty of transcribing it entire, and can testify to the truth of the account, in so far as they came under my own observation:

"This tribe takes its name, Salatar, from a creek in the island of Singapore, on the narrow strait which divides it from the mainland, not above eight miles distant from that flourishing and civilised British emporium. Its numbers are about 200, living in forty boats or canoes; and their range in quest of subsistence does not exceed thirty square miles. Their language is the Malayan, and considerable pains were taken to elicit any words foreign to that language, but without success. As

a proof of their possessing the same language as the Malays, I may mention that the children were heard, when playing, to converse in this language, and were perfectly understood by the Malays amongst our crew.

"They are possessed of no weapons, either offensive or defensive. Their minds do not find a higher range than necessity compels: the satisfying of hunger is their only pursuit. Of water they have abundance without search. With the sârkab, or fish-spear, and the parang or chopper, as their only implements, they eke out a miserable subsistence from the stores of the rivers and forests. They neither dig nor plant, and yet live nearly independent of their fellow-men; for to them the staple of life in the East, rice, is a luxury. Tobacco they procure by the barter of fish, and a few marketables collected from the forests and coral reefs. Of esculent roots they have the prioh and kalana, both bulbous, and not unlike

coarse yams. Of fruits, they eat the tampii, kledang, and buroh, when they come in season; and of animals, they hunt the wild hog, but refrain from snakes, iguanas, and monkeys.

"On their manners and customs I must need be short, as only long acquaintance with their prejudices and domestic feelings could afford a clue to the impulse of their actions. Of a Creator they have not the slightest comprehension, a fact so difficult to believe, when we find that the most degraded of the human race, in other quarters of the globe, have an intuitive idea of this unerring and primary truth imprinted on their minds, that I took the greatest care to find a slight image of the Deity within the chaos of their thoughts, however degraded such might be, but was disappointed. They knew neither the God nor the devil of the Christians or Mahometans, although they confessed they had been told of such; nor any of the demigods of Hindoo mythology, many of whom were recounted to them.

"In the three great epochs of their individual life, we consequently found no rites nor ceremonies enacted. At birth the child is only welcomed to the world by the mother's joy; at marriage, a mouthful of tobacco and one chupah (gallon) handed to one another confirm the hymeneal tie at death, the deceased are wrapped in their garments, and committed to the parent earth. 'The women weep a little, and then leave the spot,' were the words of our simple narrator. Of pâris, dewas, mâmbangs, and other light spirits that haunt each mountain, rock, and tree, in the Malayan imagination, they did not know the names, nor had they anything more to

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be afraid of, as they themselves said, than the pirates of Galang, who are men like themselves.' With this I was forced to be contented, and teased them no more on the subject.

"They do not practise circumcision, nor any other Mahometan rite. Their women intermarry with the Malays not unfrequently: they also give their women to the Chinese; and an old woman told us of her having been united to individuals of both nations at an early period of her life. Their tribe, though confining its range within the limits of thirty square miles, may still be considered of a very wandering kind. In their sampans (canoes), barely sufficient to float their loads, they skirt the mangroves, collecting their food from the shores and forests as they proceed, exhausting one spot and then searching for another. To one accustomed to the comforts and artificial wants of civilised life, theirs, as a contrast, appears to be extreme. Huddled up in a small boat hardly measuring twenty feet in length, they find all the domestic comforts they are in want of. At one end is seen the fireplace, in the middle are the few utensils they may be in possession of, and at the other end, beneath a mat not exceeding six feet in length, is found the sleeping apartment of a family, often counting five or six, together with a cat and a dog. Under this they find shelter from the dews and rains of the night and heat of the day. Even the Malays, in pointing out these stinted quarters, cried out, 'How miserable!' But of this the objects of their commiseration were not aware. In these canoes they have enough for all their wants.

"Their children sport on the shore in search of shell