s that upon
this evening, as we clustered round the fire in this camp of the
Semangs, the aged patriarch, who had praised the 'sweetness' of my salt,
lifted up his voice and spoke in this wise.

'The jungles are growing empty now, _Tuan_, and many things are changed
since the days when I was a boy roaming through the woods of the Plus
valley with my father and my two brothers. Now we live in these poor
jungles of the Upper Perak valley, where the yams and roots are less
sweet and less plentiful than in our former home, and where the
fish-traps are often empty, and the game wild and scarce. Does the
_Tuan_ ask why then we quitted the valley of the Plus, and the hills of
Legap, where once our camps were pitched? The _Tuan_ knows many things,
and he has visited the forests of which I speak, why then does he ask
our reason? It was not for love of these poor hunting grounds that we
quitted the Plus valley, but because we loved our women-folk and our
little ones. The _Tuan_ knows the tribe of Sakai who have their homes in
the Plus, but does he not know also that they entered into a compact
with the Malays of Lasak to aid in hunting us through the woods and
selling all of our people whom they could catch into slavery? We of the
forests had little fear of the Malays, for we could make blind trails
that they could never follow, and could hide our camps in the shady
places, where they could never find them. The Malays were wont, when
they could trace us, to surround our camps at nightfall, and attack when
the dawn was about to break, but many and many a time, when we were so
surrounded, we made shift by night to escape from the circle which
hemmed us in. How did we win out? What then are the trees made for? Has
the _Tuan_ never heard of the bridges of the forest people that the
Malays call _tali tenau_? When darkness was over the forest, the young
men would ascend the trees, and stretch lines of rattan from bough to
bough, over the places where the trees were too far apart for a woman to
leap, and when all was ready, we would climb into the branches, carrying
our cooking-pots and all that we possessed, the women bearing their
babies at their breasts, and the little children following at their
mothers' heels. Thus, treading shrewdly on the lines of rattan, we would
pass from tree to tree, and so escape from our enemies. What does the
_Tuan_ say? That it is difficult and hazardous to walk by night on
slender lines stretched among t