Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/25

 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE

I

OME years before the impassive British Government came to disturb the peace of primitive nature and to put an end to the strife of primitive man, Kria, son of Mat, a young Malay from one of the western states, sneaked up into the Telom and established himself as a trader on its banks well within the fringe of the Sâkai country.

Aided by a few Sâkai—feeble and timid jungle-folk, the aboriginal possessors of the Peninsula—but mainly with his own hands, he built himself a house with walls of thick, brown bark, raised to a height of some six feet above the ground on stout, rough-hewn uprights, and securely thatched with běrtam palm leaves. It was a rude enough affair, as Malay houses go, but compared with the primitive and lopsided architecture of the Sâkai it was palatial. The fact that this stranger had planned and built such a mansion impressed the fact of his innate racial superiority upon the jungle-dwellers once and for all. Here, they saw, was Genius, no less; though their language (which among other things has only three numerals and as many names for colours) contained no word even remotely conveying any such