should be lost, and then the naked aborigines gathered round and feasted. These
jungle dwellers lack salt in their daily food, and look upon it as a luxury, much
as a child regards the contents of a bon-bon box. With eager fingers they
clutched the salt, and conveyed it to their mouths in handfuls. This coarse stuff
would take the skin off the tongues of most human beings who attempted to eat
it in this way, but I suppose that nature gives the Sĕmang the power to take in
abnormally large quantities of salt at one time, because his opportunities of
eating it in small daily instalments are few and far between. In an incredibly
short time the four pounds of salt had disappeared, and when the leaf had been
divided up, and licked in solemn silence, the Chief of the family, an aged,
scarred, and deeply wrinkled negrit, turned to me with a sigh and said—
'It is very sweet, this salt that thou hast given us. Hast thou tobacco also, that we
may smoke and rest?'
I produced some coarse Japanese tobacco which I had brought with me for the
purpose, and when cigarettes had been rolled, with green leaves for wrappers,
we all squatted around the fire, for the night was chilly up here in the foothills,
and the silence of sated appetite and rested limbs fell gently upon us.
The eyes of one who dwells in the untrodden places of the earth are apt to grow
careless of the picturesque aspect of his surroundings. He is often too busy
following the track beneath his feet, or observing some other such thing, which
is important for his immediate well-being, to more than glance at the beauties
which surround him. Often, too, his heart is so sick for a sight of the murky fogs,
and drizzle-damped pavements of London, or for the ordered green fields and
hedgerows of the pleasant English country, that he does not readily spare more
than a grudging tribute of admiration to the scenes which surround him in his
exile. To-night, however, as I sat and lay by the crackling logs, I longed, as I had
often done before, to possess that power which transfers the sights we see to
paper or to canvas. Around us the forest rose black and impenetrable, the
shadows deepened by the firelight of the camp. In the clear sky overhead the
glorious Eastern stars were shining steadfastly, and at our feet a tiny stream
pattered busily on the pebbles of its bed. Around the fire, and reddened by its
light, sat or lay my three Malays, bare to the waist, but clothed in their bright
sârongs and loose short trousers. The Sĕmang, of both sexes and all ages, coal
black, save where the gleams of the fire painted them a dull red, and nude, save
for a narrow strip of coarse bark cloth twisted round their loins, lay on their
stomachs with their chins propped upon their elbows, or squatted on their hams,
smoking placidly. A curious group to look upon we must have been could any