their native gala dress-a strip of red bark, some four feet long by a foot and a half broad, twisted round their hips in a knot at the left side, so that it was open down the left thigh to give free scope to the limbs when walking. At either hip there was hung a big tuft of dried grasses or herbs fixed into a bamboo socket, partaking of the nature both of an ornament and of a charm against sickness. They wore necklaces of children's beads and twenty or thirty turns of brass picture-wire tightly wound round their upper arms, with bangles of the same at their wrists. Their hair was frizzed out to an enormous extent (it is naturally crinkly) and stuck with bamboo combs.

One eye

Pa Rousay struck me as one of those unfortunate people who, thanks to a grotesque exterior, are never taken quite seriously by their friends. I thought she seemed the butt of the party. She certainly was an extraordinary figure-if figure she can be called, inasmuch as she had none. was considerably smaller than the other, which gave her the appearance of being on the perpetual wink. Her face and breast were temporarily tattooed with blue and red lines and white dots stippled upon them, and she had the cheerfullest, merriest expression, and she certainly danced and sang the best of them all. But, alas! for the inconstancy of Man, even the Primitive. Pa Rousay was childless; she was no longer young.

Hence Pa Ntoné. She was a beauty among her people-black fuzzy hair, light brown skin, large dark eyes, and a mouth which was large but beautifully shaped. Sprays of a flower rather like white lilac were in her hair, and the holes in her ears were kept open by little round bits of wood. Tethered to her wrist by six inches of fibre was the peace-offering that she brought, a green woodpecker, which lay croaking dismally on the floor beside her. She

wore the upper garment I have already described, bringing it round upon her lap as she sat down, out of the fold of which, as a young kangaroo from its mother's pouch, there peered the round face of Pati, a little boy of one or two, staring through his elfin locks at the strangers. His mother rolled him a cigarette - a tiny roll of tobacco wrapped in a bit of dry nipah-palm leaf-and sometimes he puffed at it and anon he took the breast. Once before I had seen a tame Sakai woman suckling a kitten, but this struck me as more peculiar still.

It was after our acquaintnce had ripened a little that I ventured to joke with Urup, the much be-married, about his multiplied responsibilities, and my comments being translated caused general amusement, the poor Indian being satisfied with a far less excellent joke than must be set before the reader of "Maga." Urup grinned and said "Bor: good. It is a good plan," somewhat defiantly. The ladies under discussion appeared engrossed with their rice, and said nothing. The relations of the two wives seemed, as I have said, quite amicable. It was later, just after taking the photographs, that Virgil delighted Pa Rousày by presenting her with a cotton jacket of a cheerful magenta hue which he produced with a magnificent air. She put it on at once, and her feelings being too many to sit down under, she must needs get up and march round and round the room. Of course the other young women clamored for a coat apiece too, but there were no more that time; so they satisfied themselves with marching in an admiring tail after the leading lady; and if envy, hatred and malice, or any uncharitableness was in their hearts, then they are not the simple folk I take them to be. Pa Ntoné's disappointment, it is true, was mitigated by two brass curtain rings which I found in my pocket. And as they were too big

for her fingers, at my suggestion she put them on her toes, and stamped about rejoicing. Besides these there were Pa Roup, a matronly looking woman with a very deep voice, and her husband, against whom I only find the words Private James in my notes. No characteristic trait had he, of any distinctive kind. Lastly there were the two sons of the patriarchal couple, I forget their real native names, which I may say were rather hard to extract, they preferring to be known by Malay names. I have them down in my notes as Si Ranting (Master Twig), a boy of about fourteen, newly married to an equally immature wife, and Si Tan, his brother, of eight or ten. They were each of them dressed in a loin-cloth which could not have scantier been. The elder of the two boys was suffering from a disease very common among the Upland People, a sort of flaky sloughing off of the skin upon the whole body and limbs. That made up the first day's party.

At first the presence of a stranger put some constraint upon them, which was happily dispelled as soon as a great brick of tobacco with sirih leaves and betel-nut had been set down in the middle of them; whereupon they looked at each other and burst out laughing. Then Pa Rousày and her sister-in-law -or how shall I express the relationship?-went out to see to the washing and cooking of the rice, and I got into conversation with the rest as well as I could and began my vocabulary, about which I shall have something to say presently.

We also filled up the time by having our photographs taken, and an interesting collection they make. Perhaps the most "heureusë resoolt," again to quote my guide, is the view looking up river from the bamboo bridge; the jungle forms an arch of dark foliage bespangled where the broad leaves catch the sunlight, and the river runs among

black granite boulders dappled with foam in pools and shining stickles. In the foreground are the two boys shivering and huddled together, one polishing the other with a block of soap. What an advertisement it would make! Si Ranting came out with his skin as smooth as Naaman's, but, alas and alack! as fast as he grew dry, so quickly did the miracle fade away.

When the cooks came in noisily bearing the great chatty or bowl of steaming rice, who shall describe the enthusiasm? It was good to see people with such obvious appetites, so conspicuously thankful for their victuals. Only one thing was lacking, some upland equivalent for the resounding grace:

A boar's head in hand bear I,
Decked with wreathes and rosemary;
And I pray you gentleman all be
merry,

Quot estis in convivio.
Caput apri defero

Reddens laudes Domino.

This lack the omnivorous infant clearly felt as he raised his voice and mightily proclaimed, "Cha Ba, Eat rice, Cha Ba!" There had been prepared twelve big leaves for plates, upon which Pa Stoe helped out the rice in equal portions, two being carefully folded up and put aside for absent friends at home. Meanwhile looked on with benignant eyes the Founder of the Feast.

After the meal accounts were taken, but that in no too avaricious a spirit. My guide opened his boxes on the floor, and the sight of so much wealth was in itself a pleasure. First was given several double handfuls of red tobacco, with as many of nipah cigarette wrappers. Then (but this was a solemn and noble giving) a red blanket to the ancient Pa Jumat. Urup had a chopper, some one else a sarong; beads and brass wire found eager acceptance, as did matches, some salt and a ball of

string. Also a dollar apiece all round, a gift which was acceptable, as a compliment to their civilization, but of little material use to them. And of course the rice, one small sack of it for a beginning, it not being considered good policy for the giver to leave himself beggared in that respect upon the first day. So off they went in high spirits.

Next day they came again, most of them with one or two others, and the same scenes occurred. On the third day, Virgil being out, I with some trepidation acted as their host. It was a most successful entertainment, consisting of a concert followed by Dumb Crambo, but the guests did the entertaining. The day before they had been begged, but could not be persuaded to sing; nothing but a very little halfhearted humming, “De, de, ng, de, a, de," &c., could be elicited, but a great deal of hanging back, pushing forward, giggling and slapping. Now, whether they had grown accustomed to me or whether they had partly forgotten my existence (I was sitting in an unobtrusive corner desperately attempting to sketch them), anyhow Urup, his eyes falling upon a Sakai mandolin, a plain joint of bamboo with two fibres strung along it, picks it up, and after mechanically twanging the strings a little, breaks suddenly into song in a clear ringing deep voice, and the others joined in the chorus. His tune ran as it were upon a certain note, and the subject of each verse appeared distinct, of birds or beasts or of their known familiar haunts, and while the chorus repeats in slow recitative the words and the note, the leader trills ahead in runs and shakes up and down the scale, -not that there is any scale in our sense of the word. (You must pray accept this most untechnical description as better than none; listen to a child humming to himself on a summer morfing, and you will hear the tune

and better understand the vocal score.) This is one song as it was translated to me:

Leader. Going, going on hill and mountain,

Chorus. Hill and mountain, hill and mountain,

and so on, the chorus taking up the last words of the leader's improvisation.

Climbing, climbing, climbing, climbing,

Over streams and over rivers,
Rivers deep and little rivers,
Rivers shallow, flooded rivers,
The river Gol and the river Bidor,
The river Jelal, the river Klung.

It is fine music, manly, not boisterous, plaintive but never repining, the song of a full memory, a reminiscence. It is direct as the gait of an elephant and stately, harmonious to wild and silent places.

From singing the girls fell to dancing. And now I must mention a trivial incident, as it shows how little we understand each other. They were hardly begun when the old lady Pa Stoe jumped up with a scandalized expression, and stopped the performance. Of course I could not understand her indignant comments nor the girls' deprecatory replies, but I guessed it was the old story. "Of course they mustn't let themselves go before a white man," I thought, and I cursed her in my heart as she bundled them all out of the house. But I was mistaken. All she had said was, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," or words to that effect. And when they came back with bunches of leaves in their hair and at their waists, she smiled in benign approval on the performance, and the dance began in due form. They stood swaying from the knees, and waving their arms. Every now and then they made a sudden whoop and a jump and change of places, just as in the Highiand schot

tische. The old lady beat time with her hands, and chanted "Ta, ta, ta, tok." Presently the mandolin accompaniment forgot to play, the dance grew wilder and wilder, and finally resolved itself into mere pantomime. Pa Rousay, in her magenta coat, with her streaked visage, Pa Ntoné, with the flowers in her hair, the immature bride, with Pa Roup for partner, stood vis-àvis, crossing and recrossing (it was the first figure of the Kitchen Lancers now) with marvellous gesticulations, bounds, and outcries, till the bamboo floor skipped beneath us. It did not take long to discover that they were acting the parts of the forest denizens. First it was tigers; they fiercely roared and sharpened their nails cat-fashion against the wall. Most of us have seen a tiger do this, and perhaps have stirred him with a patronizing umbrella in Regent's Park. Seen in his own forest by attentive eyes of fear, how bigger he must have loomed upon one of these miserable unarmed pigmies, who intruded all unwitting upon his manicure, and lived to make a play of it! Then with heads stretched out and waving fins they were fish in the brook, pressing up against the current. It was Tigi the snake, and they rolled over and over upon the floor. Sambhur was suggested, and before there was time to be shocked all four were on their backs with the legs sticking straight up in the air, up again and cantering round the room on all fours, or rubbing the velvet from their antlers, which, as I guessed, had been fore. shadowed by the first part of this remarkable pantomime. And so with many other animals. I suggested monkeys, just giving them a clue, and they seized the idea and greatly improved upon it, scratching themselves and destroying imaginary and hopping vermin in the most realistic manner. Then they sat down in a row in the doorway with their legs dangling over

the ladder, and whooped and chattered and generally outsimianed the tribes of monkey-kind.

Pa Rousay having, as I have said, been provided with a magenta jacket and the other three danseuses having none, I felt it would be ungrateful to let them go bare backs away after so laughable an entertainment. I therefore presented each of them with one of my merino singlets, which reached well down to their knees. And I cannot say whether they were more delighted with the style of the garments or with them considered as a protection against cold. So off they went. I watched them file across the bamboo bridge and disappear round a turn of the bridle-path; the ragged head and gaunt figure of the patriarch, his old wife carying Pati her grandchild, then the magenta jacket and the three new singlets laden with rice bags, then the two boys, the bridegroom and his younger brother. Last of all, blow-pipe in his fingers, comes Urup, the man of experience. One after one they were re-absorbed by the jungle from whence they came.

And that I thought was my last sight of them; but it being a fine afternoon, and another of their household having called on some errand or other, we decided to go up home with him. We told him to follow his own jungle paths. We soon left the bridle-road and pushed through their track, no wider than a deer's track, steep as the side of a house, then down again, to find ourselves breathless and covered with dirt and leeches on the bridle-path again. The jungle folk are clean hunters. There seemed no squirrels left on their demesne,-hardly a bird. In one place we were shown a blantak, a gin for deer or wild pig, which consisted of a sharp wooden spear, a spring of bent sapling held back by a rattan rope laid treacherously across the ground. Of smaller game we found a rat

strangled in a noose set on similar principles, and brought it along with

us.

We came out near the top of their clearing, where the Indian corn was throwing up green heads among the burnt and blackened branches of the recumbent trees. Scrambling down its almost precipitous face, we passed through a spinney of giant bamboo as thick as a man's thigh, out upon a ridge which projected half-way across a wide and long valley, upon which ridge lived our friends. They lived in two one-roomed huts of about fifteen feet by twelve, with floors of split bamboo laid a few inches above the wet earth. The walls were of bertam thatch, and not more than two feet high, for the thatched roof was steep and not high enough even for them to stand upright under except in the middle of the room. In the house we entered were all our friends, besides two thin wretched dogs-sharp eared, sharp nosed, sharp backed, each with its hind-legs tied together to keep it from straying. They were all sitting round the two fireplaces; the smouldering ends of logs radiating from these centres of warmth gave forth a tingling smoke which filled the hovel and filtered out through a hundred holes. The floor, the walls, the thatch were alive with a hundred thousand cockroaches. The wind swept chill down the valley.

What a life! Think what it must be to live like that, huddled together for warmth, in nakedness, without food fit for a dog. Can you realize the position of a family whose house must be built from roof-ridge to flooring out of the growths of the jungle; who yet own not a knife to cut them, because they live twenty miles away from a shop, or because they have not half a dollar? Must they go into the cruel bertam and break off its spiky fronds with their hands? To have no means of winning fire but one flint and steel, perhaps in

a family that hunts for its food over half-a-dozen valleys! Urup has it; but Urup has gone to see our neighbors over the hill. The rain through the hole in the roof has put out our fire, and now it is night, and between us and hunger are a squirrel and a dozen big fat grubs-raw, and we have no fire. For my part I find it hard to realize the tragedy of the situation. I can't help thinking, Could they not rub two sticks together? Could they not .? Surely, living overshadowed by a million acres of fuel, they could contrive something! It seems absurd to think of such helplessness and misery for want of a trumpery box of Japanese matches, with a monkey stamped in red upon it, selling at two for a cent.

On such a scene appears my friend in his role of Universal Provider. If you count up all their possessions, from red blanket to rock-salt, you will see that he has supplied them all, not as a dole but in return for work. He has given them clothes, he has made them plant

corn. When it is ripe they and their friends from far around will make a mighty orgy, and eat and eat until the barn is empty, but no matter. Once a-month at least there is ensured to them a sufficiency of farinaceous food, whereunto is added tobacco to tickle their nostrils and betel-nut to comfort their hearts. I say it is a good work.

Theirs is a poor life at the best. Still, as we never know when we are well off, so happily it is possible to be miserable unawares; I do not suppose they are sorry for themselves. They certainly did not look disconsolate as, gorged with rice, and cooking more, they sat wrapped up in their new clothes. Pa Ntoné had enveloped Pati in hers, so that his straggling top-knot alone was visible. Rats on such a day were at a discount, but I wanted to see cooked the rat we caught-and in a minute there was nothing I wished to see less.