The Orang Laut of Singapore.
"We tack not now to a Gallang Prow." Kipling.
At the time of the occupation of Singapore by the British, there were living on the island, then densely afforested, one or two races of natives, known as the Orang Kallang and Orang Selitar. The former of these lived on the river of the same name, the latter along the rivers of the Johore Strait. Some accounts of these two tribes was published by Logan in Vol. i. of Logan's Journal in 1847, and illustrated by outlines of heads. The Kallangs were removed by the Tumunggong of Johore from the Kallang river to Pulai River when the island was ceded to Britain. They formerly consisted of 100 families, but in 1847 the small pox bad reduced them to eight. They were said to have lived exclusively in boats, neither building huts nor cultivating any plants. Their language at that time appears to have been Malay, and neither Mr. Logan nor Mr. Thomson who described the Orang Selitar were able to elicit any words of their original language. Of these races it is not easy now to find any traces, as they have become amalgamated with the Malays, adopting not only their language but also their customs and religion. Lately however the authors of this pote visited Kampong Roko, on the Kalang river, and made an attempt to collect what information was procurable concerning this inter- esting people. They were accompanied by Mr. R. H. Yapp (of the Cambridge expedition) who took photographs of some of the older men who were stated to be of this race. Kampong Roko itself is a Malay village of the ordinary type, built on a mud bank of the Kalang river and containing a very mixed popu- lation. The natives have for many years employed themselves in fishing and in preparing Nipah leaves for cigarettes-wrappers, so that the ground is covered for a considerable depth with a dense mass of waste fragments of leaves. We visited the vil. lage on Nov. 12th, and sought out the oldest inhabitants, the Batin Jenang, and an old man named Rabu, together with one or two others, and spent a long time with them in endeavours to
