MALAY SKETCHES
journey through the primeval forest, the home of wild beasts and Sakai people, aboriginal tribes almost as shy and untamed as the elephant, the bison and the rhinoceros, with which they share the forests of the interior.
Sâhit and his wife started on their journey in the company of two brothers of Mat Aris, but meeting him the brothers returned, Mat Aris undertaking the part of escort. In the afternoon of the first day's march a Sakai named Pah Patin met the three, and, being known to Mat Aris, that worthy ordered him to accompany them. Pah Patin did as he was told, and when evening came on, as there was no dwelling within miles, a shelter was built in the jungle wherein the night was to be passed.
It is as well to understand what a Malay jungle is like, for a good soil, well watered, in one of the hottest and dampest climates in the world, produces a forest that is not altogether the counterpart of all other forests.
The reading public, no doubt, believes that the jungle of Darkest Africa is a place of gloom, terror and difficulty without parallel. It may be so, but few of those who know it have visited Malâya, and one is apt to exaggerate one’s own troubles.
Whatever gruesome peculiarities there are about
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