The Sĕmang are the survivors of a very ancient race of negrits, remnants of
which are still to be found scattered over Eastern Asia, and may be supposed to
be the first family of our human stock that ever possessed these glorious lands.
In appearance they are like African negroes seen through the reverse end of a
field-glass. They are sooty black in colour; their hair is short and woolly,
clinging to the scalp in little crisp curls; their noses are flat, their lips protrude,
and their features are those of the pure negroid type. They are sturdily built, and
well set upon their legs, but they are in stature little better than dwarfs. They live
by hunting, and have no permanent dwellings, camping in little family groups,
wherever, for the moment, game is most plentiful, or least difficult to come by.
It was a fire from the camp of a band of these little people, which presently
showed red in the darkness a few yards away from us, just when we were
despairing of finding either a shelter for the night or a meal with which to satisfy
the pangs of hunger, that a twelve hours' march had caused to assail us. We
pushed on more rapidly when the gleam of welcome light showed us that men
were at hand, and presently we emerged upon a tiny opening in the forest, in the
centre of which the Sĕmang camp was pitched. The shelters of these people were
rough enough to deserve no better name. They consisted of three or four lean-to
huts, formed of plaited palm leaves, propped crazily on rudely trimmed uprights,
and round the fire, in the centre of the camp, a dozen squalid aborigines were
huddled together. We approached very cautiously, and when I had been seen and
recognised, for I was well known in these parts, the sudden panic, which our
presence had occasioned, subsided quickly, and we were made free of the
encampment and all that it contained.
Hunger is a good sauce, and I ate with a satisfaction which has often been
lacking at a dinner table at home, of the rude meal set before me. A cool green
leaf of the wild banana was spread for me, and on it were laid smoking yams and
other mealy jungle roots, which fill one, as young turkeys are filled during their
rearing; a few fish, fresh caught in the stream and cooked over the fire in the
cleft of a split stick, and the meat of some nameless animal—monkey I feared—
which had been dried in the sun until it was as hard as a board, eked out the
curious meal. I did full justice to the roots and fish, but prudently left the
doubtful meat alone, and when the cravings of my hunger were appeased, I
began to make advances to my hosts.
First I produced a palm-leaf bag holding about four pounds of coarse Chinese
rock salt, and bade the Sĕmang gather round and partake. The whole contents of
the bag were emptied out on to a leaf with minute care lest one precious grain