■+> The Archipelago
Even in these early stages, there are marked differences
between man and man. When I suggested that now
they were bound to the launch, I would take them away
with me, they showed a fine alarm, and the dull fellow
began again rapidly to unfasten the cane that bound
us together. They were as quickly reassured, and
laughed at their own timidity. They could hazard no
opinion at all of what the white man’s country might
be like. Being gently led back to the way of cross-
examination, they said that when any one died, it was
due to the malevolence of an evil spirit. They stayed
with the dying man to the last, and then laid him out
on a platform of canes on piles, after which they went
away and never came back. All the people, they said,
wept when any one died. Of time, they had no conception
beyond that involved in the succession of darkness
and light, and the changing of the dry and wet
seasons. They could tell nothing of any one’s age.
They live only in the present, looking neither forward
nor back. Once a year, as I learnt at Mergui, they
change their habitat, from the western or outer side
of the islands, to the inner or eastern side. This is
at the time the north-west monsoon begins to blow,
lashing the unprotected sea into fury. In the turmoil
of the long-drawn battle between wind and wave, which
lasts from May to October, there is no place for the
frail craft of the Saldn, and he lives for the most part,
with his boats drawn up ashore, in the sheltered inlets
on the eastern face of the archipelago. Testimony
to this double life is written on the face of the islands;
v o l . ii. 561 l