Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

I70 HABITATIONS
of building their huts upon very lofty house-posts.
Mr. Wray informs me that he has never seen in
Perak a " bee-hive " hut, or even a tree-hut, made
either by the Semang or by the Sakai, although at
Kuala Dipang and elsewhere he has seen very tall
tree-huts built by the Malays.
The most interesting question, however, connected
with this subject is undoubtedly that concerned with
the successive steps by means of which the hut-type
is evolved.
Among the Semang its evolution is perhaps on the
whole the clearest, the various stages being, as they
appear to me, the following :
—
1. Natural shelters— rock -shelters, caves, tree
buttresses, branches, etc.
2. Artificial shelters or weather-screens—a single
large palm-leaf, either planted in the ground
or fixed across the fork of a tree.
3. A number of such palm-leaves, planted in a
straight row, or in a semicircle or circle, their
tops drooping over towards a common centre,
thus forming a "round" or "bee-hive" hut
— if in the fork of a tree, the hut's shape is
naturally adapted to suit its branches.^
^ For one of the earliest accounts
of these tree-dwellings
lie 1
(treated from a somewhat sensaneighbourhood
of this river, through
'^ur glasses, our notice was attracted by
what seemed to be some enormous
^^^^^^, ^^^^^ j^ ^^e trees. The size of
tional standpoint), see 7>«7;(?/rt«a' these nests was prodigious, yet they
Sport itl Biirmah, S/a//i, and were not placed at a very great height
Ala/ay \sicl by Capt. J Bradley,
f"'" ^^^ ground, nor in the tallest trees.
/ o