s of a very ancient race of negrits, remnants
of which are still to be found scattered over Eastern Asia, and may be
supposed to be the first family of our human stock that ever possessed
these glorious lands. In appearance they are like African negroes seen
through the reverse end of a field-glass. They are sooty black in
colour; their hair is short and woolly, clinging to the scalp in little
crisp curls; their noses are flat, their lips protrude, and their
features are those of the pure negroid type. They are sturdily built,
and well set upon their legs, but they are in stature little better than
dwarfs. They live by hunting, and have no permanent dwellings, camping
in little family groups, wherever, for the moment, game is most
plentiful, or least difficult to come by.

It was a fire from the camp of a band of these little people, which
presently showed red in the darkness a few yards away from us, just when
we were despairing of finding either a shelter for the night or a meal
with which to satisfy the pangs of hunger, that a twelve hours' march
had caused to assail us. 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 Semang
camp was pitched. The shelters of these people were rough enough to
deserve no better name. They consisted of three or four lean-to huts,
formed of plaited palm leaves, propped crazily on rudely trimmed
uprights, and round the fire, in the centre of the camp, a dozen squalid
aborigines were huddled together. We approached very cautiously, and
when I had been seen and recognised, for I was well known in these
parts, the sudden panic, which our presence had occasioned, subsided
quickly, and we were made free of the encampment and all that it
contained.

Hunger is a good sauce, and I ate with a satisfaction which has often
been lacking at a dinner table at home, of the rude meal set before me.
A cool green leaf of the wild banana was spread for me, and on it were
laid smoking yams and other mealy jungle roots, which fill one, as young
turkeys are filled during their rearing; a few fish, fresh caught in the
stream and cooked over the fire in the cleft of a split stick, and the
meat of some nameless animal--monkey I feared--which had been dried in
the sun until it was as hard as a board, eked out the curious meal. I
did full justice to the roots and fish, but prudently lef