one have seen us: I, the European, the white man, belonging to one of the most
civilised races in the Old World; the Malays, civilised too, but after the fashion
of unchanging Asia, which differs so widely from the restless progressive
civilisation of the West; and, lastly, the Sĕmangs, squalid savages, nursing no
ambitions save those prompted by their empty stomachs, with no hope of change
or improvement in their lot, and yet representing one of the oldest races in the
world—a race which, though it first possessed the East, with all its possibilities
and riches, could utilise none of them, and whose members carry in their eyes
the melancholy look of dumb animals, which, when seen on the human
countenance, denotes a people who are doomed to speedy extinction, and who,
never since time began, have had their day or have played a part in human
history.
Tobacco upon the mind of man has much the same effect as that which hot water
has upon tea-leaves, or, indeed, as that which that beverage itself has on the
majority of women. It calls out much that, without its aid, would remain latent
and undeveloped. For human beings this means words, and, while we dignify
our own speech over our tobacco by the name of conversation, we are apt to
dispose of that of the ladies round a tea-table by labelling it gossip. Among a
primitive people conversation means either broken remarks about the material
things of life—the food which is sorely needed and is hard to come by, the boat
which is to be built, or the weapon which is to be fashioned—or else it takes the
form of a monologue, in which the speaker tells some tale of his own or
another's experiences to those who sit and listen. Thus it was that upon this
evening, as we clustered round the fire in this camp of the Sĕmangs, the aged
patriarch, who had praised the 'sweetness' of my salt, lifted up his voice and
spoke in this wise.
'The jungles are growing empty now, Tûan, and many things are changed since
the days when I was a boy roaming through the woods of the Plus valley with
my father and my two brothers. Now we live in these poor jungles of the Upper
Pêrak valley, where the yams and roots are less sweet and less plentiful than in
our former home, and where the fish-traps are often empty, and the game wild
and scarce. Does the Tûan ask why then we quitted the valley of the Plus, and
the hills of Lĕgap, where once our camps were pitched? The Tûan knows many
things, and he has visited the forests of which I speak, why then does he ask our
reason? It was not for love of these poor hunting grounds that we quitted the
Plus valley, but because we loved our women-folk and our little ones. The Tûan
knows the tribe of Sâkai who have their homes in the Plus, but does he not know