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ound the hut a piece of ground is prepared for the cultivation of potatoes, yams and maize, but the harvest is very scanty, and the whole is frequently destroyed by the visit of a _sladan_. Here, too, the good-wife devotes a part of her time to fowl-breeding. She, like all the Sakais, sleeps at her pleasure in the morning. As soon as she gets up, with the help of her daughters she prepares the morning meal and serves it out as she thinks proper without the slightest remark being heard as to the quality or quantity of the food given to each. After breakfast every one goes about their own business; the men shooting, searching for poisons, or setting traps; the women and girls gathering tubers, bulbs and mushrooms, or catching insects, lizards and frogs, whilst the old people no longer able to go to the forest remain behind chewing tobacco or _sirih_ and looking after the children. Sunrise and sunset keep each other company! Towards noon all who can, return to the village, those who cannot, after having eaten in the forest, squat themselves on the ground to rest. It is the solemn hour of silence and repose, observed by man and beast. Only when the sun, from being right overhead, has begun to decline westward is the interrupted work or march resumed. At the first sign of twilight, which is very brief, the Sakais may be seen hastening back to their huts, on their return from labour or from other villages, where an abundant meal and ineffable peace awaits them. CHAPTER XII. Intellectual development--Sakais of the plain and Sakais of the hills--Laziness and intelligence--Falsehood and the Evil Spirit--The Sakai language--When the "Orang Putei" gets angry--Counting time--Novel calendars--Moral gifts. Intellectual development amongst the Sakais of the hills is very limited and as a consequence requires little or no study but much more is to be met with amongst those of the plain for two reasons which I have already explained: one their traffic and consequent intercourse with more civilized races; and the other the mixture of blood from their parents' concubinage with strangers, thus destroying the purity of their own. After the establishment of the British Protectorate and the abolition of slavery in the Federated Malay States the Sakai men and women returned to their native places, the latter taking with them the children born of their masters and the former entered into business relations with th
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