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Ayer se'gantang sa'lobok,
Sa'dangkang yang ber-bunyi'
Siamang ber-jawat-jawat,
Tompat ungka ber-dayu-dayu;
Batin yang ampunya-nya.
From every pool a gallon of water,
The frogs that croak;
The gibbons that travel from bill to hill
And the places of their noisy councils,
All these belong to the Sakai chief.
The Sakai who first enunciated the theory contained in this description of his rights must have been far advanced in the imaginative power so well displayed in the story of Sri Rama, told by Mir Hasan and published by Mr. Maxwell in the Journal of the Society: or perhaps it was a Malay who made it up with the intention of putting on record that after all the Sakaies could only claim a little water in the recesses of the jungle where unclean beasts dwell.
The Sakais of today seem to wish for very little else, and all efforts to civilize them are unsuccessful; they are the least harmful of all savage races and are bound to retire before civilization, even if only the civilization of Malays, luckily there is still plenty of room for them in the forests of the Peninsula.
