WILD MEN OF THE WOODS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2555, 24 November 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

WILD MEN OF THE WOODS.

The following interesting letter from the pen of Connt Joufl'roy D'Abbans, the French Consul at Wellington, has bepn published in the Evening Press for the information of a correspondent enquiring in that journal for information on this subject: —

These tribes are now to bo found, not in Burmah, but a little more south, in tho Malay Peninsula. Their number is rapidly decreasing, but at the present date, I think two or throe thousand of them are estimated to exist, according to the ccnsus in tho Straits Settlement. The Malays call these people the "Orang-Outan," literally "men of the woods." They are quite different from the kind of monkey which are improperly named "Orang-outang." The word "outang,"in Malay language, means "a debtor." The savage people called "Orang-outang " are rather hairy, as they are nearly nude. I saw many of them, men and women, without auy dress at all. Some have a belt of bark or old clothes given them by Malays or white men. For dwellings they adept some trees in the bush, make some rough step* on the trunks, arrange a sort of floor with branches and creepers out of the reach of tho tigers and other ferocious beasts. Their language is hardly articulated, and amounts to less than a hundred sounds. They cannot rount moro than up to four or five. If you enquire (of course by signs) from them how many children they have, in case they have moee than four, they answer, plenty, by great demonstrations of their hands. Their food cousists mainly of roots, fruit, fish, birds' or snakes' eggs, generally eaten raw. But they know the use of fire With a box of vestas you could obtain anything you wish from them. The only Malay word they know generally is "Api"(fire). The tribe of the "OrangOutan " is certainly tho link which separates the genus man from the genus monkey. These wild people sometimes dwell in canoe* made from bark or from a hollow trunk. Then tlioy are called " Orang-Lakut " (men of water). They are born, they live and they die in their canoes, which could not live at sea. You meet them in the rivers and rarely in the heights of the Peninsula. The " OrangOutan " and Lakut " are branches of the same family, the latter looking rather le.-s wild owing to the fact that, th-ir wauderingr life brings theui more into contact with the Malays and white people. Their food is exclusively fish and shells. No doubt these fellow-creatures of ours are the aboriginals of the coutbern part of Asia, having been driven away by the invading Tartars and others. I have been told that a few of them exist now at Sumatra., hut I never met any of them there. The Negritos of Mindanao Island, one of the Phillipines, are of the same species ; maybe they form a link of the chain, a little near«r to the civilised man very little further removed from the monkey than the Orang-Outan. I cnet also in Borneo, not far from Brunei, aborigine", rather hairy, undressed, and treated with the utmost disgust by the wild and uncivilised Dayaks, who wear belts and large hats made of dried leaves They dwell on trees like their brothers of Malacca, and are disappearing in the same way. The Sultan of Borneo, speaking with me about them, said: "Those wild fellows generally count ud to five ; but if I order them to bring me, as a tribute, five rattan basket-', they cannot then count even up to two." That shows that the last representatives of the primitive men are not absolutely devoid of cunning.