of the poor
creature's superstitions, beliefs and susceptibilities and a spirit of
precaution against offending his puerile vanity or of in any way
provoking jealousy or mistrust.

When he is persuaded that the presence of his undesired guest brings him
no evil he will give you his full confidence and spontaneously accept
you as a benevolent and powerful protector.

The perils, I grant, are many and great, but greater still are those
that lie in wait for an armed traveller. The savage may be terrified and
overpowered by the massacres with which civilization asserts its
tyrannical superiority but the venom of hatred has entered his soul and
he meditates and prepares an ambush which sooner or later, without fail,
will give him his revenge.

The use of brutal force (that for me is a political error) is an
enormous damage to the study of the customs, beliefs, and psychological
peculiarities of the people with whom we are in contact, for they will
back out of every enquiry or investigation, will either refuse to
respond or will tell you lies, and this accounts for the contradictory
reports that different travellers give about the same tribe or race.

This, kind reader, is my modest conviction as, from their method of
proceeding, it is also of the English, who are Masters in everything
that concerns colonization.

* * * * *

My baggage being ready it only remained for me to find some carriers who
would be useful to me, if not as guides to the country of the Sakais, at
least as interpreters between me and its inhabitants.

Penang is populated chiefly by Malays but numerous other races are
represented there, especially Chinese and Indians. Without much trouble
I succeeded in engaging the services of five porters: a Malay, an
Indian, a Chinese, a Siamese and a Sam-Sam, quite a lad. Together they
formed a little Babel which I congratulated myself would prove of great
help in making overtures with the Sakais.

All my followers, with the exception of the Sam-Sam, had faces which
would have graced the gallows and I am sure that Lombroso[2] would have
classified them without hesitation as born-criminals. But their
forbidding countenances did not alarm me as it is well known that the
basest villain becomes timid and servile when confronted by unexpected
danger, and I was well aware that the dread of tigers, snakes, traps and
poisoned arrows, the thousand mysteries of Death which the wonderful