Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

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GENERAL REMARKS 201
forest -pools, which are the drinking -places of the
birds.
The weapons of these tribes consist chiefly of the
blowpipe and the bow, the former being the weapon
of the Sakai, the latter that of the Semang. To these
may be added a rude kind of adze and a jungle-knife
or chopper, spears of palm-wood or bamboo, which
are replaced by iron-bladed weapons among the
Malayising tribes. Of the use of the " squailer " or
throwing-stick, there is not much recorded, although
these are undoubtedly used, especially by the Jakun
tribes of the south, Throwing-sticks of hard wood,
some of which are sharpened at one end only whilst
others are sharpened at both, are also used by the
Peninsular Malays, by whom they are called (as by
the Jakun) "seligi."" They are, moreover, I believe,
much used by other races of Indo-China.
In trapping and fishing they are particularly
expert—some of their traps having the simplicity of
' of their extraordinary skill in No. 2, pp. 212, 213).
jungle travelling, M.-Maclay wrote as ' Capt. J. Bradley mentions seeing
follows :— Knowing the direction in on several occasions in the I'eninwhich
he was to go and keeping it in sula what he evidently look for
mind, the Sakai would try to find out " squailers,"' and though he gives no
the thinner patches in the jungle. details of locality, his evidence is very
The sajilings which he could not avoid circumstantial. Thus in one place he
he would bend aside with his hand says that outside the tree-huts which
without breaking them ; the larger ones they discovered, " a number of spears
he would stoop or creep underneath. were laid among the branches of the
He would never tear or cut away trees." These consisted merely of
a liana or creeper which hung in his "long sticks of hard wood, sharpened
way, preferring to hold it in his hand at both ends"; in other words, the
and crawl underneath it ; and in spite Malay " scligi "
(J. Bradley, Travel
of this constant stooping and crawling, and Sporty p. 298). In yet another
circumventing and circuitous running, place he mentions that he found, "in
he would advance with great rapidity. the interior of one of the huts, a
In following, not without trouble, number of short thick sticks intended
these real men of the jungle, M.-Maclay apparently as missile weapons. Several
had to confess that, in s]Mte of his of them had traces of blood and
long experience and practice in these feathers ailhering to them, as if they
things, he had found his master in a had been used for knocking down
fifteen -year-old boy (y. A'. A. S., S.B., birds" (id. p. 330).