Identifier: scottishgeograph20scotuoft (find matches)
Title: Scottish geographical magazine
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors: Scottish Geographical Society Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Subjects: Geography
Publisher: Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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l themselves, or Kong KeJ: as the Siamese call them, and theKong Tai or Orang Siam, differ racially on the one hand from the Malays ofthe British States and on the other from the Siamese officials fromBangkok who are sent down to aid in the government in small numbers.As regards the Malays, it is not accurate even to say that the Malaylanguage is a test, for many can speak no other tongue but Siamese. The effect of foreign rule on the wild tribes of the peninsula has notbeen quite what one would have expected. Leaving out of account thefew communities of Sea Gipsies (Orang Laid) which still linger at certain 346 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. points on the coast, and which have probably had a multiple origin, it isstill possible to distinguish three distinct racial elements in the wildtribes. North of the Perak and Pahang rivers a Negrito element pre-dominates in the Semangs ; in the central portion of the peninsula asecond element, which we may call, for want of a better name, dwarf
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Semang Matrons. Grit, Upper Perak—left-hand figure with freshly shaved head.(From Fasciculi Malayenses, Anthropology.) Mongolian, in the Sakais1; while the Jakuns, so far as the diverseaccounts given of them can be reconciled, appear, in my opinion, tobe chiefly Malays who have never accepted Mohammedanism, but Ihave never met a Jakun myself and cannot speak of them by experi-ence. The Semangs have long been the slaves or serfs of the Malays, 1 The name Sakai is sometimes used in a more general sense, meaning any jungle tribe. THE PEOPLES OF THE MALAY PENINSULA. 347 living in the jungle without cultivating the land, but coining to aid theirmasters at harvest time and collecting jungle produce for them. Theircondition has as yet undergone little or no change under British rule,for it happens that they inhabit those parts of the Federated States inwhich the mining industry has not been developed. In the SiameseStates, however, they have practically disappeared as an entity, thoughhere

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