eir
quondam owners by the exchange of forest products for trifles of little
or no value.

This explains why in the tribes dwelling on the plains we meet with
certain cunning and malicious intents which are in strange contrast with
their primitive ingenuity and sincerity. But although in comparison to
their brethren of the mountains they might and do pass for artful, they
themselves are continually cheated and deceived by their more skilful
neighbours who barter inferior qualities of tobacco, iron, calico and
other trash, worth nothing, for real treasures in rattan, cane, rubber,
poisons, fruit and fishing gear which the Sakai of the plain is very
clever in making.

Notwithstanding this sharpening of their intellect due to sojourn
amongst their more astute neighbours or to the inheritance of
insincerity, theirs by birth when born in exile, they are not yet
capable of understanding what profit they might make by exciting
competition between their covetous barterers, and the latter, each one
for self-interest, are very careful not to open the eyes of those who
are so ready to let themselves be cheated. Moreover, the ill-treatment
to which they were once subjected, and the imperfect knowledge they
still have of what the British Protectorate means, renders them timid
and too much afraid of these rapacious merchants to dare resent, in any
way, the prepotence which damages them.

In spite of the corruption which has infected them from their
companionship or relationship with corrupted people the Sakai of the
plain still preserves some of his original goodness and uprightness.
Only too well it may be said that once he has rid himself of these moral
encumbrances which leave him defenceless in the hands of the
unscrupulous he will have taken a new step towards civilization but
there will be two virtues the less in his spiritual patrimony.

* * * * *

The Sakai who has taken refuge in the hilly part of the forest in order
to escape from the influences of Civilization which may now be said to
beset him on all sides, still preserves and defends the original purity
of his race.

His intellectual development is inferior to that of his brother living
in the plain because he keeps himself alien to everything that might
effect his physical laziness and the utter inertia of his brain.

He lives because the forest gives him abundant food, and he lives idly,
immersed in innumerable superstitions that