Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

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558 DEALINGS WITH OTHER RACES part ii
show of respect and kindness, and cheats them to
their faces in the most courteous and friendly manner.
Though he himself dreads the power of their Poyangs,
he is well aware at the same time of the influence of
his bolder and more energetic and reckless character
on the Benua, and, when occasion requires it, talks of
his good- will being abused, of the inadequacy and
dilatoriness of the return that is being made to him
for his advance, and hints that if his debtor does not
prove more diligent, he will not be able to restrain his
anger.^
Jakun of Johor.— The Jakun tribes are entirely
inoffensive, having an excellent temper ; they are
generally kind, affable, inclined to gratitude and to
beneficence. Hospitality is much practised amongst
them, not only towards other Jakun but towards any
stranger who reaches their habitations. All Indian
nations are much inclined to begging ;
and
anything
they happen to see that pleases them they ask of the
owner, when they know that there is no means to
steal it, and sometimes their demands are so frequent
and repeated as to appear very importunate. The
Jakun, however, are not so ; they differ much in this
respect from other Indians ;
they
are liberal and
generous. When visited they very seldom ask for
fathers), who were summoned to the lofty branches, where the
' Kempas
presence of Mahomed Shah, king of links its knots, there we love to
Johor :
" We wish to return to our old
sojourn. Our weapons are
pipe (' temiang'), and the
the blowquiver
of
customs, to ascend the lofty mountain, arrows imbued in the gum of the
to dive into the earth's deep caverns, deadly ' Telak ' {sic). The fluid most
to traverse the boundless forest, to delicious to us is the limpid water that
repose, with our head pillowed on the lodges in the hollow of trees, where
knotted trunk on the ' Durian ' tree, the branches unite with the trunk ;
and curtained by ' Resam ' leaves. To and our food consists of the tender
wear garments made from the leaves shoots of the fragrant 'Jemantong'
of the ' Lumbah,' or ' T'rap ' tree, and the delicate flesh of the bounding
and a headdress of ' Bajah ' leaves. deer."— Newbold, pp. 394, 395.
Where the ' Meranti ' trees join their ^ J.I.A. vol. i. p. 285.
'
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