9BB 




RKillY"\ 

.IBRARY I 

JNJVERSITY Of I 
CALIFORNIA^/ 



In Malay Forests 




i / 

In Malay Forests 



BY 



/iW GEORGE MAXWELL 



WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 

EDINBURGH AND LONDON 

MCMVII 



All Rights reserved 



TO 

WIFE. 



529 



PEEFACE. 



Six of the articles in this volume have 
appeared before, and for permission to 
reprint them my thanks are due to the 
editors of ' Blackwood's,' ' The Pall Mall/ 
* Macmillan's/ and * Temple Bar/ 

The first article is intended to be an 
introduction to, or setting for, the others, 
regarding which I need say no more than 
that they are accounts of personal incidents, 
and they range through different States of 
the Malay Peninsula, and cover many years. 



GEOKGE MAXWELL. 



PENANG, 
January 1907. 



CONTENTS. 



PAB 

THE FOREST 1 

THE PINJIH RHINO 12 

A DEER- DRIVE . 47 

CROCODILE CATCHING 66 

SLADANG ........ 88 

THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH . . . .109 

TAPIR 125 

A FISH-DRIVE 145 

THE WILD GOAT 167 

THE BLAT ELEPHANT . . . . . .186 

A TIGER-DRIVE 207 

A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE 225 

TUBA FISHING 246 

A WERE-TIGER 265 

CROCODILE SHOOTING 280 

APPENDIX 

THE PAWANG 298 



IN MALAY FORESTS. 



THE FOEEST. 

To most people the Malay Peninsula is only known 
as the long narrow strip that, on the map of Asia, 
runs down into the sea beyond the bulky V-shaped 
projection of India, and divides the Indian Ocean 
from the China Sea. 

Passengers by the mail-boats for the Far East, 
though they approach it at the islands of Penang and 
Singapore, see of its length during their voyage down 
the warm smooth waters of the Straits of Malacca but 
little save a continuous range of distant mountains 
bathed in a haze of purple, blue, and grey. 

He whose business or pleasure takes him on one of 
the local steamers sees a little more. In the fore- 
ground there is, on the west coast, an unbroken line, 
level as that of the sea, of dark-green forest. This is 
the mangrove belt, which grows on the alluvial soil 
brought down and silted up by the rivers, and which 
ends where the sea begins. Behind this line rises a 
range of heavily-timbered mountains, and behind this 

A 



2 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

yet another range ; and on all sides the horizon is 
bounded either by forest - covered mountains or by 
forest-covered plains. 

It is almost the literal truth that the whole penin- 
sula is covered with forest. It is not that the country 
is uninhabited, for it has a population of some hundreds 
of thousands : but it is that the inhabited area, every 
yard of which has been won from, and hacked out of 
the forest, is infinitesimal in comparison with the 
extent of the forest that remains untouched. 

Throughout its hundreds of miles of length and 
breadth the Malay Peninsula is practically one vast 
forest. The great alluvial tin- fields of Kinta, Larut, 
Selangor, and Seremban, where tens of thousands of 
Chinese coolies strip the surface to lay bare the ore, 
are really mere patches ; and the towns, palatial and 
magnificent though the buildings of some of them are, 
are nothing more than specks in an expanse that 
sweeps from one Sultanate to another, and is only 
limited by the sea. 

Our railways and roads run through forest, and our 
mines, plantations, and towns are bounded by it. 

It is, however, difficult at first to realise the environ- 
ment of the forest. When the newcomer has left his 
steamer, and the railway has taken him to the town 
which is his destination, it is possible that he may fail 
to appreciate the most wonderful of all the new sights 
around him ; he may, and most frequently does, accept 
the dense mass of trees and vegetation that shuts in 
the railway line as " the jungle," and consider the 
timber-clad mountains merely in the light of scenery. 
Jf In a Malay village one may better realise the manner 



THE FOREST. 3 

in which the forest hems in the cultivated area. The 
settlement is generally situated on the banks of a 
river. By the water's edge are the houses, built under 
the shade of fruit-trees, and behind them are the flat, 
irrigated padi-fields. On all sides this area is shut in 
by a dark heavy line that uprears itself, around and 
above it, like the walls of a prison. This line is the 
forest edge; and thence the forest spreads in every 
direction, miles upon miles, until some other village 
is reached; there it opens out again, and sweeping 
round the clearing, as a wave encircles some ocean 
rock, closes in again behind it and continues, over 
mountains, over plains, until the sea is reached. 

But it is when he views it from a mountain peak 
that the stranger can best see the extent of the forest. 
He will then discover, what the Malay can never for a 
minute forget, that he lives his life in the midst of a 
forest which is as much apart from him as it is around 
him. The fact that it extends, interminable, far beyond 
the horizon on every side, then for the first time makes 
its indelible impression upon his mind. 

This other wonderful thing he will perhaps first 
realise : the forest is an evergreen ; the season, whose 
changes in the cultivated area turn brown soil to the 
tender green of the young padi shoots, to the richness 
of the colour of the swelling plants, and to the golden 
wealth of the ripened grain, fails to touch the forest. 
Neither the season, nor the flight of time, leaves a 
mark upon the forest ; virgin in the days of which we 
cannot guess the morn, virgin in our days, virgin it 
will remain in the days of generations yet unborn. 

On the slopes of the nearest spur each individual 



4 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

tree stands clear, each giant form showing the swelling 
roundness of its wealth of bough and leaf. Tier upon 
tier, the trees stand thickly massed, without a break, 
from the level of the plain to the height of the topmost 
trees that show their heads against the sky-line. Deep, 
dark, sombre green is the colour of this near range ; 
here and there one may catch glimpses of lighter 
shades, a few scattered patches perhaps of sage green 
where some trees, after fruiting, are putting forth a 
new flush of leaves ; possibly there may be a speck of 
vivid red that marks a tree whose young shoots assume 
an unusual colour. But the contrast only accentuates 
the prevailing tone. 

Beyond these hills, which are not perhaps more 
than a few miles away, rises a range that is clad in 
purple. At this distance the mass of trees shows 
through the clear atmosphere, not with the shape 
of each individual tree, but with a uniform raised 
and rounded roughness that covers alike mountain 
crag and mountain ravine. 

In some places in the plains between the two ranges 
one may perhaps see the lighter green that marks a 
cultivated area, or a gleam of white sand where 
alluvial tin-mines show like islands in the sea. 

Beyond the purple mountains rise other ranges, and 
though, of course, you cannot see it, you know that 
the forest sweeps on through wide hidden valleys and 
wonderful places rarely trodden by man, until it re- 
appears in sight upon another range. 

The mountain-chains melt from purple to blue, and 
as they recede the roughness of the forest covering be- 
comes a velvety pile, and then an even softer texture ; 



THE FOREST. 5 

and finally, where grey mists melt and dissolve in the 
distant haze, it is not easy to know which is forest 
and which is sky. 

Such is the view that lies beneath your eyes as you 
stand upon a mountain peak some four or five thou- 
sand feet above the plain. But so deep, so soft is the 
mantle of forest, that you may fail to realise the 
grandeur of the mountains. They have not the 
austerity that belongs to nakedness. To right and 
to left, where the mountain spurs run out and down 
to the plain, your eyes rest on slopes which, though 
steep perhaps, are softly undulating. Each tree melts 
gently into its neighbour, or partly hides it; all is 
green and harmonious, and the mountain offers a 
face which appears to be as smooth and unbroken as 
a pasture land. But sometimes you may see how 
deceptive this appearance is. It has been raining, 
and a great cloud comes slowly swimming landward 
from the sea. The direction that it takes will bring 
it within a mile of you. As it approaches the 
mountain you wonder what will happen, whether 
it will rest against the mountain side, or whether it 
will roll upwards through the trees. But to your 
amazement, when the cloud edge touches the mountain 
it does not stop. Then you see that the whole cloud 
is swimming on into the mountain. What has hap- 
pened is that a mountain ravine has acted as the 
channel up which a current of air is rushing skywards 
from the plain, and into the ravine the cloud is being 
slowly sucked. As the cloud enters, its shape and 
size and colour help your eye to see both sides of the 
ravine, and you may vaguely estimate the depth and 



6 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

width of the valley that had been strangely invisible 
although so close. But as soon as the cloud is past 
and gone, the trees on both sides of the ravine seem 
to leap together ; and, though you now know exactly 
where to look, waving branches and woven leaves 
defy your efforts to say where the entrance is. You 
then wonder how many similar places are hidden 
around you, and picture to yourself the great sea 
cloud hemmed in by the sides of the ravine and 
still swimming further landward. 

There is another time when you may have a revela- 
tion. A few minutes after sunset the westward facing 
mountains blaze with the refulgent glory of an after- 
glow. A rosy light probes the secrets that the forest 
hides from the noonday sun the grandeur of wide 
valleys that wind an intricate way into the inmost 
heart of the mountains ; the mystery of little deeply- 
shaded tributaries that fall into them on either side ; 
the vastness of untrodden ravines and gorges; the 
majesty of unscaleable precipices ; the terror of long 
straight scars that tell of landslides where trees and 
soil and rock have slipped in hideous disaster, leav- 
ing a wound that has cut to the very bone. For a 
moment all is revealed the mantle of the forest does 
not avail against this searching light, and you may 
well think that it is in the sweet exposure that the 
mountains blush. 

But come down from the mountain peak, and walk 
alone along a forest path. Though it is midday it is 
very dark and very sombre. The sun cannot pierce 
the dense foliage of the branches of the giant trees, 
and so heavily do shadows lie upon shadows that the 



THE FOREST. 7 

very green seems almost black. The sheltered air is 
fresh and cool, and there is an almost perfect stillness. 
Underfoot, except where the path is trodden bare, is 
a matting of dead leaves and of sweet damp moss. 
The track upon which you stand is a foot or perhaps 
a foot and a half wide, and at the height of your body 
the width of the open way is perhaps three feet. The 
daily passage of the Malays keeps back the encroach- 
ment of brambles and forest creepers. But the track 
is only wide enough and the opening only high enough 
to allow a man to pass. You could not ride even the 
smallest and handiest of ponies along it. 

To right and left of the path the forest appears to 
be almost impenetrable. The trees grow so thickly 
together that you are closed in by a small but un- 
broken circle of tree trunks. Between the trees there 
are tangled masses of bushes, briers, and saplings. 
Rattans and creepers of every kind crawl along the 
ground and among the trees, sometimes hanging in 
heavy festoons and sometimes tense with the pressure 
that they exert. So thick and strong is the mass of 
creepers that when a wood-cutter has hacked through 
a tree trunk it is often kept upright by the ligaments 
that bind it to the surrounding trees. After an hour's 
walk along a forest path, a casual observer might say 
that, so far as he could see, the forest contained no 
flowers, no butterflies, no birds, no life of any kind. 
But if you sit upon a fallen tree -trunk and look 
around, you may see a little more. High in a tree, 
and almost out of sight, you may see an occasional 
flower, and lower down perhaps, your eye may light 
upon an inconspicuous spray of blossoms that a care- 



8 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

ful scrutiny shows to be a miniature orchid. There 
are few butterflies in the forest, but now and then, if 
you are by one of the openings among the trees, which 
are to the winged creatures what the paths are to us, 
you may see a moth or butterfly pass by flapping its 
heavy velvet wings. You seldom hear a bird, but if 
you are quiet and wait long enough some tiny sun- 
bird may come your way, or, perhaps, some weird bird 
with light-blue eyes and an enormous tail ; or a jungle- 
hen may creep out from under a bush, and scratch for 
ants' eggs in an open space where a tree has fallen. 
The only other thing that you will see, except an 
occasional lizard, will be ants, and perhaps a millepede. 
If you know where to look for them, you will see the 
tracks of four-footed animals, but you will not see the 
animals themselves. 

But in a forest which you know to be so vast 
and so boundless you have a right to expect more 
than you have seen. Ants, a butterfly, even a bird, 
do not and cannot represent the life of this great 
gloomy place. But more you cannot see. You are 
the centre of a small circle whose radius varies from 
fifteen to thirty yards. Inside this circle you can 
see more or less distinctly; outside it everything is 
hidden. Even so huge an animal as an elephant is 
sometimes invisible at fifteen yards, and almost always 
invisible at thirty yards. Wherever you go you carry 
with you that little circle outside which lies the un- 
known. The path that lies behind you is, as soon 
as it passes outside that circle, as full of the unknown 
as the path before you or the tangle on either side. 
So little do you see that the feeling comes over 



THE FOREST. 9 

you that you are alone in the midst of mysterious, 
hidden things. The feeling that immediately follows 
this is that these mysterious things are not merely 
hidden, but are specially hidden from you. The 
circle that moves with you is the veil built up 
against you. You could imagine that you were a 
trespasser, or at all events were regarded as such. 
Then you have the horrible feeling that from be- 
hind the tree-trunks watching eyes are looking upon 
you. It is bad enough at any time if you are alone 
and all is quiet; it is worse as the sun sinks and 
light fades; it is worst if by any ill chance you 
happen to know that you have lost not only your 
way but your sense of direction. 

At all times you may see things happen of which 
the reason is hard to divine. Though not a breath 
of air can be felt to move, a frond of a palm may 
begin to sway gently and rhythmically backwards and 
forwards while all the other fronds of the same tree 
remain as motionless as the trees around. You ex- 
amine the palm to see if there is possibly a rat or 
some other animal at its base, but can discover 
nothing. Sometimes one single leaf amidst the 
numbers on a branch may begin without apparent 
cause to be violently agitated, and will as suddenly 
stop. 

The Malays always consider themselves as in- 
truders when they enter the forest, and never 
forget their awe of and reverence for it. They 
seldom go into the forest alone ; and when one man 
asks another to accompany him, the reason that he 
is going into the forest is always considered to be 



10 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

sufficient in itself. While it is true that the forest 
lies almost at their doors, they never forget not 
merely that no man knows its extent, but that it 
actually is without bound or limit. 

To the Malays the great enveloping forest is full 
of supernatural powers. There are the wonderful 
Jin Tanah, the Earth Spirits ; Gergasi, the great 
tusked giants; Orang Bunyi, the invisible Voice 
Folk. There are individual creatures such as Hantu 
Pemburu, the Spectral Hunter; mountain top and 
river pool have their local spirits ; and there are 
classes innumerable of ghosts, goblins, and demons. 

They are known as Hantu Hutan the Spirits of 
the Forest, and are as real to the Malays and as 
much dreaded as the tigers and other wild animals 
of the forest. 

Men, such as rattan-cutters or gutta-hunters, whose 
vocations take them into the forest, repeat a short 
charm to avert the wrath or displeasure of these 
spirits ; and the farther they go from home the 
more careful are they to make use of due ceremony 
and incantation. 

The forest envelops their homes and their lives ; 
but, as with the fisherfolk and the sea, the more they 
explore it the more they know that it is a world 
apart. That it is so near and extends so far adds to 
it majesty and terror. In order to realise something 
of what the Malay forest is, one may perhaps look 
at it for a moment from the point of view of the 
Malays, who know it better than any one else. And 
in the charms, which have been handed down from 
generation to generation, and which the Malays 



THE FOREST. 11 

repeat to this day when they enter the forest, one 
may have some perception of the sentiment that 
inspires them. A rattan - cutter, though he may 
find plenty of canes within easy call of his 
home, repeats this invocation to the spirits of the 
forest 

" Peace unto ye all ! 
I come as a friend, not as an enemy. 
I come to seek my living, not to make war. 
May no harm come to me, nor mine, 
To my wife, my children, or my home. 
Because I intend no harm, nor evil, 
I ask that I may come, and go, in peace." 

It is worthy of notice that, though the Malays 
have been staunch Muhammadans for centuries, their 
aboriginal fear of the forest is so deeply rooted that 
it is to the spirits and not to Allah that they apply 
for protection. 

Similarly, when a party of Malays sets out to drive 
deer, the commonest of all game, they may go no 
more than a few hundred yards away from the 
village; but none the less the leader of the party 
will utter this preface to his prayer to the 
spirits 

" Hail ! All hail ! 

We crave permission to enter on this domain 
And to tie our nooses to these trees." 



12 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 

AN old rhinoceros, that made its abode in the Pinjih 
valley in the Kinta district, was for many years 
the most famous animal in the native State of 
Perak. 

In the first place, it was kramat : that is to say, the 
Malays credited it with supernatural powers, and 
imagined it to be protected against all danger by a 
guardian spirit. It often happens that an animal 
which attaches itself to one locality and establishes 
a reputation for daring or cunning, and which is 
fortunate enough to escape a few ill-directed bullets, 
comes in a few years to be considered kramat, and is 
in many cases imagined to be a reincarnation of a 
deceased celebrity. It is generally recognised that 
animals under the protection of another world will 
treat the human inhabitants of the district honoured 
by their presence with a benign consideration border- 
ing on condescension ; thus a kramat elephant will 
walk by the rice-fields leaving the crops untouched, 
and a child might drive away a kramat tiger that 
strayed too near the cattle-folds. 

But this rhinoceros was extraordinarily savage; 
and it was this combination of kramat power and 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 13 

savagery that constituted its second claim to dis- 
tinction. It was known to have killed three men on 
three separate occasions, and in each case the attack 
was said to have been entirely unprovoked. At an 
inquest held on the terribly mangled body of a Malay 
named Japaringonen, the evidence proved that two 
men had been walking quietly along a forest path 
when, without any warning, the great brute had 
rushed upon them. In many other cases men had 
been attacked, but had escaped with their lives. It 
would turn aside for no one, so it was said; on the 
contrary, if met in the forest, it would either stand its 
ground and then slowly and deliberately advance in 
the direction from which it had been disturbed, or it 
would charge without warning. 

It had been a terror in the Pinjih valley long 
before the British occupation of Perak (1874), and 
twenty-five years later, at the time of this narrative, 
it was only in large and armed parties that the wood- 
cutters and rattan -collectors ventured into the less 
frequented parts of the forest. 

On more than one occasion the headman of the 
district had organised expeditions to kill the animal, 
and once a party of five picked Malays had met the 
rhinoceros and had fired fifty shots at it. I heard the 
headman tell the story once. "It was no child's 
play," the old man said, turning fiercely on one of an 
audience who had criticised the shooting. "If a 
bullet felled the brute, it picked itself up at once ; and 
if a shot missed, it charged forthwith. A hundred 
men might have fired more shots, but they could not 
have done more to kill it. And," he added with a 



14 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

scowl, " the end of the matter is, that you cannot kill 
an animal that will not die." 

The animal's third claim to distinction lay in its 
horn, which was said to be of exceptional length and 
girth, and also to be blue. Malays divide rhinoceroses 
into four classes, according to their horns. There is 
the one known as sumbu lilin, the " wax -coloured 
horn " ; sumbu api, " the flame-coloured horn " ; sumbu 
nila, " the blue horn " ; and lastly, sumbu itam, the 
ordinary everyday "black horn." 

Ehinoceros' horns are considered to have the most 
marvellous efficacy as remedies for almost every kind 
of disease, and even shavings of a horn are carefully 
prized. In a case where the most appalling wounds 
were inflicted by this particular rhinoceros upon a 
man named Kanda Daud, the whole credit of the 
man's recovery was ascribed to the alleged fact that 
some of the blue of the animal's horn had come off on 
the man's hands as he sought to defend himself, and 
that this blue had been used by the native doctors as 
the antidote to the wounds. 

The fact that made this rhinoceros so well known 
among the Europeans of Kinta was not so much the 
colour of its horn, or that it was Jcramat, or was 
savage, as that it was of the large one-horned variety 
known as Ehinoceros Sondaicus, which is somewhat 
rare, and that it seldom left an area of some forty 
square miles, circumscribed by bridle - paths, and 
within close reach of the headquarters of the district. 
By comparison with the boundless extent of the forest 
on all sides, and with the roving propensities of most 
big-game animals, this made it easily accessible ; and 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 15 

many efforts were made to bring it to account. But 
(partly, I imagine, to the native trackers being afraid 
to bring their men up to the brute) something always 
went wrong. Once the District Magistrate managed 
to get on terms with it, but was charged so often and 
so determinedly in very thick scrub that he had to 
beat a retreat and leave the rhinoceros master of the 
field. In the dull record of failures there was, how- 
ever, one light spot. The attendant spirit of kramat 
animals has power to deceive the hunter by altering 
the appearance of the hunted animal or by giving 
its shape to one of the hunters or their attendants, 

and on one occasion a gallant officer in the N 

Eegiment fell its victim. Leaving his pad elephant 
in the forest with a Malay in charge, he proceeded one 
day to set off on foot to look for fresh tracks. He 
walked for hours, until suddenly his tracker stopped 
him and silently pointed out the outline of a huge 
animal in front of them. M. took a steady aim and 
fired : a scream from a sorely-stricken elephant and a 
yell from a terrified Malay were his answer. He had 
walked in a circle and had fired at his own elephant. 
As the smoke cleared he caught a glimpse of the 
elephant rushing madly through the forest and had a 
full view of the Malay bellowing on the ground. The 
wretched man had been quietly smoking his cigarette 
on the elephant's neck, and now, lying where he fell, 
was only in doubt whether a bullet- wound or a broken 
neck was the cause of his death. Both elephant and 
man recovered, the Malay the quicker of the two, for 
the elephant, though the wound healed, was never fit 
for work again ; but both had a lucky escape, for the 



16 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 

bullet, which hit the elephant high on the shoulder, 
had gone perilously near the man's leg. It will be 
some time before M. hears the last of the shot ; but 
the chaff of the clubs does not carry the bite of the 
smiles of the Malays, who give the credit of the 
whole occurrence to "old kramat" and his guardian 
spirit. 

Such, briefly, was the history of the animal, and 
Malias was by no means keen on tackling him. 
Malias was a local Malay who drew a regular 
salary from me, and who wandered round the 
country seeking for, and as far as possible verify- 
ing, news of game. He was not particularly bright, 
and, like all Malays, was inclined to be lazy; on 
fresh tracks, however, he was as keen as possible, 
and he would follow up a wounded tiger without 
his pulse giving a stroke above its normal beat. 
Chance brought us an ally : this was an old man 
named Pa' Senik, a foreigner from one of the 
northern unprotected States. He was of another 
type to Malias, who was a mere villager; for Pa' 
Senik's youth had been spent at the court of a 
petty raja, and had been such as might be expected 
from his surroundings, full of conspiracy and intrigue, 
love and lust, fair fight and cold - blooded murder. 
At last he had fallen upon bad days, for another 
raja ruled in the place of the man he had served, 
and he had had to fly for his life. He came to 
Perak, where he was shrewdly suspected of com- 
plicity in a carefully planned and well - executed 
dacoity, and then settled down quietly in the Pinjih 
valley, where until his eyesight failed him he had 



THE PINJIH KHINO. 17 

made a living by shooting deer. He was now old 
and poor, but despite his age was keen to go after 
the rhinoceros, and, knowing its haunts and wallows, 
assured us that he could bring me up with it. But 
this was no ordinary quest, he said ; if without pre- 
liminary preparations we went in search of tracks, 
we were foredoomed to the failure that had attended 
all previous efforts. We must first " ask " for the 
rhinoceros from the Jin Tanah, or Earth Spirits, 
who have power over the forest and all its inhabit- 
ants, and to whom the attendant spirits of kramat 
animals are vassals. Pa' Senik, who was a pawang, 1 
proposed to make a feast and invoke the spirits, and 
to ask them to give us the rhinoceros and to accept 
compensation. We should not have to pay much, he 
said, for the spirit, if it accepted the offer, would 
probably ask for something to eat, a fowl perhaps, 
or some eggs, and a lime or two. Of course, if the 
spirits proved obdurate, nothing could be done, and 
we must not think of any act of defiance; but, if 
made with skill and address, our application would, 
he thought, be favourably considered. The exchange 
value of a rhinoceros in the spirit world seemed to 
be extremely moderate, and I gave the old man a 
dollar (all he asked for) with which to prepare the 
feast preliminary to the invocation, and arranged to 
go to his house to witness the ceremony. 

The following Saturday was the day agreed upon, 

1 A pdivang is a man who, by ceremony, incantation, or charm, 
propitiates or invokes the assistance of the spirits. He figures in 
every enterprise and festival of the Malay community. For a fuller 
account see the Appendix. 

B 



18 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

and a few miles by railway to the next station, and 
a walk of a couple of miles took me to his village, 
where a house has been set aside for me. After 
dinner I was invited into the adjoining house, where 
Pa' Senik had made his preparations. Like all Malay 
houses it was divided into three parts : the front 
room or verandah, absolutely public; the middle 
room, where the men eat and sleep, reserved for 
intimates; and the kitchen, where the unmarried 
women sleep, absolutely private. The ceremony was 
to take place in the centre room, and here I was 
introduced ;to Che Mat, a brother pawang, whom Pa' 
Senik had called in to assist him. After a few 
minutes' conversation the proceedings began, and 
while they sat down and faced one another over 
a brass bowl containing burning charcoal, I made 
myself as comfortable as I could upon the floor 
within a few feet of them, and round us such men 
and women and children as had obtained admission 
ranged themselves in a semicircle. Various bowls of 
water, in which floated leaves and flowers, were set 
about the floor, and twigs and sprays of leaves and 
blossoms were fixed to the posts and walls. Each 
bowl and leaf and flower had its definite significance, 
and to each were spells and charms attached. Pa' 
Senik then took up an arbab, a three-stringed instru- 
ment, in shape somewhat like a banjo, but played 
with a bow. After a tentative essay or two he 
struck up a monotonous chant to a tune a degree 
more monotonous. Much of his music was impro- 
vised to meet the special conditions of the present 
instance ; but the greater portion of it was part of 



THE PINJIH EHINO. 19 

his traditional craft. It was lengthy and full of 
repetitions : but the gist of it was that here was 
a white man, who came to ask the assistance of 
the spirits; and here were Malias, Che Mat, and 
Pa' Senik, the servants and followers of the white 
man, and they too craved the assistance of the 
spirits; and in the forest was the rhinoceros whom 
they desired to take, and whom they now besought 
the spirits to give them. What answer would the 
spirits give us, and by what means could we ensure 
their assistance in the enterprise ? Such, in a few 
words, was the meaning of an invocation that lasted 
twenty minutes. The chant ended, Pa' Senik laid 
aside his bow, and asked one of the company to 
recite from the Koran. A man at once began to 
intone some verses, while the whole audience joined 
in the usual responses and replies, and the protection 
of the Islam religion was thus called in upon pro- 
ceedings utterly at variance with the teaching of 
Muhammad. When this was over, a tray containing 
rice and various kinds of curry was brought up to 
Che Mat, who had hitherto remained silent and 
motionless, in pose of entire abstraction. He now 
roused himself, and throwing some gum benjamin 
into the censer over which he faced Pa' Senik, 
moved the tray in and out of the thick smoke 
until it was thoroughly fumigated. Then he took 
a saucer of rice from an attendant, and passed it 
in a similar manner through the smoke, and after 
placing a lighted candle on the edge of the saucer, 
put it on a tray suspended from the roof between 
the two men. Finally, a plate of parched rice was 



20 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

purified from all mortal taint by smoke, and then, 
also with a lighted candle on its rim, carried out 
of the house by Che Mat, and hung on a tree. This 
marked the conclusion of the opening stage of the 
proceedings. The rice on the tray between the two 
men was of a peculiar kind, considered a delicacy, 
which is used in sweetmeats, and was intended to 
attract the attention of the spirits we desired to 
invoke. The parched rice outside the house was 
for any of the thousand and one wandering demons 
who might appear, and who, unless thus provided 
for, might mar the proceedings. The curry and rice 
was for the audience, most of whom at once followed 
it to a corner of the room, and devoted an undivided 
attention to it. 

After an interval both men stripped to the waist, 
and Pa' Senik took up his instrument, and to the 
same drear chant reiterated the purpose for which 
we met. Che Mat in the meantime undoing the 
handkerchief that Malays bind round their heads, 
let a mass of long hair fall down upon his shoulders, 
and carefully combed it out and anointed it with 
cocoanut-oil. He then bound his handkerchief round 
the long glistening hair, and rolled it scarf-wise round 
his head. When this was done he brought forward 
more saucers of rice, and held them in the smoke 
of the censer, and passed his hands, his head, his 
breast, his knees, and his back through the pungent 
incense, ending by moving the censer three times 
round himself. He bowed to the four cardinal 
points, took some of the rice in his hand, and, 
muttering a spell over it, blew upon it in the pro- 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 21 

fessional manner known as jampi. Another candle 
was lit, and Pa' Senik again began to play his in- 
strument. Suddenly Che Mat broke in upon the 
monotonous music of the arbab, clapped his hands 
wildly above his head, shook his hair free from the 
handkerchief that bound it round his forehead, and, 
with a quick twist of his neck, swung his long 
locks in a sweeping circle round his head. The sud- 
dennesss of the interruption was startling. Eound 
whirled the black glistening mane, followed by the 
gaze of every eye in the room, and as it completed 
the circle, another short jerk of the muscles of the 
neck sent it again madly flying round his head. 
Again and again, and more quickly each succeeding 
time, was the stream made to revolve round him, 
until at last all that was to be seen of the man 
seated on the floor was his short bare body, with 
an occasional glimpse of white compressed features, 
surmounted by a black, rushing, whirling halo that 
tilled and fanned the room. For some minutes this 
extraordinary muscular effort continued, until sud- 
denly Che Mat fell forward in a state of collapse. 
There was perfect silence for a few moments, while 
all the spectators held their breath, and then Pa' 
Senik, picking up some rice, threw it over the supine 
figure, and asked him who he was. There was no 
answer, and Pa' Senik was forced to have recourse to 
his arbab. After a considerable interval Che Mat 
announced that he was Pran Ali, meaning thereby 
that he was possessed by a spirit of that name. In 
answer to questions put by Pa' Senik, the spirit 
Pran Ali expressed himself as friendly to us, and a 



22 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

natural enemy of the earth spirits and the guardian 
spirits, but declared that he was unable to help 
us in the quest of the rhinoceros ; deer were the 
animals over which he had power, not rhinoceroses. 

If it had been a deer now 

Pran Ali could help us no further, and thereupon 
left, and Che Mat was no longer possessed of him. 
There was another interval of singing and playing 
by Pa' Senik, who called on various spirits to come 
to our assistance, and repeated innumerable charms 
to prevent the rhinoceros from hearing or scenting 
us as we approached it, to prevent it from charging, 
or from recovering from any wound that might be 
inflicted upon it. "If all the dead return to life 
and walk this world again, then, and not till then, 
may this animal turn upon us; if the bottommost 
of the three layers of stone that support the earth 
reappear upon the surface, then, and not till then, 
may this animal attack us." But to repeat one-tenth 
of the incantations and invocations would fill many 
pages, and would interest but very few. Che Mat 
stopped the long tale by again evincing signs of 
another demoniacal possession. Again his attitude of 
abstraction fell from him, and his weird hair-swing- 
ing held the room. After the pause that followed 
his collapse he inquired what we wanted of him, and 
when Pa' Senik offered him a bowl of parched rice, 
he at once seized it and swallowed a handful of the 
contents ; when a plantain was produced, he gulped 
it, skin and all, and then announced that he was 
Sang Kala Eaja Megang Kimba, one of the guardian 
spirits. Pa' Senik thereupon humbly inquired whether 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 23 

we might be allowed to follow the rhinoceros (which, 
by the way, was throughout the evening spoken of 
as a buffalo), and the spirit's immediate reply was 
a downright refusal, saying that on no account would 
he lose the animal. This caused a sensation amongst 
the audience, and there was much shaking of heads, 
but Pa' Senik was not to be beaten. He began with 
cajolery, and when that had no effect tried what is 
vulgarly known as bounce. Who was this spirit 
that he should take this defiant attitude? To this 
the spirit answered that he was a thousand years 
old : Pa' Senik declared that he was a thousand 
years older. "Ten thousand years old," replied the 
spirit. " Ten thousand years older," retorted Pa' 
Senik, who thereupon challenged his adversary to a 
contest as to which was the stronger. When the 
challenge was accepted, Pa' Senik seized a handful 
of parched rice and threw it full in the face of his 
adversary, and then leant forward, glaring at him 
over the smouldering censer. His opponent immedi- 
ately seized a huge bowl of rice and raised it in the 
act to hurl; but when his arm reached the topmost 
point above his shoulder from which it would turn 
to throw, he suddenly stiffened, and the whole of 
his body became rigid. For a few seconds he sat 
there living and motionless as the statue of a 
discobolus : and then the bowl dropped from his 
nerveless fingers and fell crashing to the floor. Sang 
Kala Kaja Megang Eimba was beaten in contest. He 
cast himself forth, and Che Mat was thrown into a 
third frenzy, becoming possessed of a spirit named 
Awang Mahat. Unfortunately Awang Mahat be- 



24 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

longs to that unhappy class, whether in this world 
or the other, of creatures who mean well: his in- 
tentions are excellent, but he is powerless for good 
or evil, and the consideration he meets with is, 
therefore, such as might be expected. Little was 
asked of him, and he could tell us less : beyond 
saying that if our quarry were wounded near water 
it would come to life again (a pleasing prospect, as 
we had to seek it in swamp and marsh), he could 
not help us. He remained but a few minutes, and 
then craved leave to depart. When he left, Che 
Mat was nearly fainting, and to allow him to recover 
there was a long interval of playing and singing by 
Pa' Senik. Che Mat's wife, herself no unskilled 
disciple in witchcraft, in the meantime occupied her- 
self in attending to her husband, breathing upon 
him, rubbing, kneading, and massaging him. When 
attention was called and the proceedings resumed, 
Che Mat fell into a fourth frenzy, more violent than 
any that had preceded it. He had undergone his 
previous attacks in silence, but this time he gave 
vent to scream after scream, short sharp yells of 
pain. When the succeeding exhaustion had some- 
what passed, he declared that he was the Jin Kepala 
Gunong Api the Jin of the Volcano's Summit 
one of the Jin Tanah, the Earth Spirits, whom we 
had to fear in this enterprise. He was most violent 
at first, but soon became quiet, and then friendly, 
and finally asked what we would give him if he 
allowed us to "take" the rhinoceros. Various gifts 
were suggested, but rejected as valueless in the 
Spirit World, until finally the offer of an egg, some 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 25 

parched rice, and the rice I have mentioned as a 
delicacy, was accepted. 

This, Pa' Senik was careful to explain to me the 
next morning, was not in this case to be considered as 
representing the exchange value of the rhinoceros ; it 
was tendered and accepted only in the sense of a pro- 
pitiatory offering. All that was vouchsafed was that, 
as far as the Earth Spirits were concerned, we were at 
liberty to follow the rhinoceros ; whether we succeeded 
or not was another thing, and to that the Jin would 
not commit himself. But we were given an omen, 
and told that if we met a tiger's tracks crossing those 
of the rhinoceros, we were to return at once, and not 
to make another attempt ; when we made our offering 
at the entrance of the forest, certain signs in the flame 
of a candle would tell us the disposition of the guard- 
ian spirit ; and, thirdly, we were to be guided by our 
dreams that night. The Jin then threw Che Mat into 
a final frenzy and left. This ended the night's work. 

We were astir early the next morning, and Malias 
eagerly asked me what I had dreamt. Alas ! no omens 
were to be gathered from my dreamless sleep ; nor had 
any one else been favoured, except my little Tamil 
" boy," who had been very much frightened by what 
he had peeped in to see overnight, and who plaintively 
said, in tones that showed he wished it were true, that 
he had dreamt of being back at my house. Pa' Senik 
was ready with his offering, and after breakfast he, 
Malias, and I set off for a walk in the forest. We had 
no news of the whereabouts of the rhinoceros, for, as I 
have said, no one would go to look for this animal's 
tracks ; but a day would be well spent in learning as 



26 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

much as possible of the lie of the country. Pa' Senik 
had been directed by the Earth Spirit to make his 
offering at " the gateway of the forest," which is the 
Malay term for the place where the village foot-track 
leaves the open cultivated land and plunges into the 
virgin forest. At the " gateway," then, Pa' Senik made 
his offering. Splitting into four the end of a bamboo, 
and deftly weaving the stem of a creeper through the 
split ends, he improvised a censer, which a couple of 
green leaves and a handful of earth made fire-proof. 
Some dry leaves and a dead twig or two made a fire, 
upon which he sprinkled incense. The stipulated 
offering was passed through the smoke, and then 
carefully placed on an open spot. Now came the 
question what was the augury ? Pa' Senik lit a 
candle, and placed it on the edge of the censer, and, 
after due invocation, stepped back and keenly watched 
the flames. In doing this one has to stay beside the 
lighted candle, calling upon the spirits to attend until 
one feels one's skin move, then step back and watch 
the flame : if it flickers, it betokens the arrival of the 
spirits ; if, after breaking and wavering, it burns true, 
straight, and upright success; extinction is failure; 
if it blows to the right or toward you, hope ; to the 
left or away from you, the chances are against you. 
In the wind -protected corner Pa' Senik had chosen 
the candle burnt true and bright, and as we started 
hope ran high. We had a long day's walk through 
the forest, but to find fresh tracks was too much to 
expect. Old tracks, however, and abandoned wallows 
gave proof of " old kramat's " existence ; and the 
next morning I returned to my quarters well satis- 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 27 

fied at having got through the opening stages of the 
campaign. 

Though no result was seen that day, Pa' Senik's 
offering had not been without its effect, for not many 
days later a Malay came hot-foot in search of Malias, 
and told him that he had that morning seen the fresh 
tracks of the rhinoceros crossing a native path some 
twelve miles away. Pa' Senik was sent for, kit and 
provisions packed, coolies collected and despatched, 
and that night we all slept in our informant's house. 
It stood in a small clearing, in the depths of the forest. 
A few hundred yards away from the door a precipitous 
limestone hill rose sheer out of the level plain, and 
towered some seven hundred feet above our heads. At 
sunset numbers of jungle-fowl crowed and called on 
every side as they came down to drink at a little 
stream behind the house ; and a party of black gibbons 
made the echoes ring with their ear-piercing whoops. 
The wild goat lived on this limestone hill, our host 
Hussein informed us; one could hear them bleat at 
night, and they often came down from the precipitous 
heights to feed round his clearing, but they were very 
rarely seen. We went to sleep early, and the next 
morning I woke my men at half-past four. A tiger 
had roared close to the house during the night, and 
this made Pa' Senik rather apprehensive of the omen 
regarding the tiger tracks crossing the rhinoceros 
tracks. We made a good breakfast, and while the 
first jungle-cock was shrilling his clear challenge and 
the gibbons went whooping through the tree-tops in 
search of food, we started to make a wide cast through 
the forest to find fresh tracks of the rhinoceros. With- 



28 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

out doubt the heart of the Jin had been softened, for 
we had not gone more than two or three miles before 
we came on tracks made early the previous evening. 

Pa' Senik had explained to me overnight that his 
" work " of the evening I have described would re- 
main effectual for a month, and that an offering each 
time we entered the forest anew was all that was now 
required. He was provided with his censer and pro- 
pitiatory gift, and in half an hour we were ready to 
proceed. Malias and I then went on alone, instruct- 
ing Pa' Senik, Hussein, and another local Malay, to 
follow us slowly, and to keep, so far as they could 
judge, a quarter of a mile behind us. We followed a 
well-beaten track, and it seemed from the manner in 
which the animal had walked steadily on, without 
stopping to feed on the way, that he was making for 
another part of the country, and that many miles lay 
between him and us. We were therefore taken en- 
tirely by surprise when, before we had gone more 
than half a mile, a turn in the path brought us 
suddenly upon him. He was lying at full length in 
a wallow ; but I was unable to make use of the dis- 
advantage at which we held him, for as I threw up 
my 10 -bore a hanging creeper caught the barrels, and 
I had to lower the rifle and disengage it before I 
could bring it fairly to my shoulder. By this time 
the rhinoceros had lurched out of the pool, and I only 
had time for a hasty shot at his shoulder, hitting him, 
as I subsequently discovered, too high up and too far 
forward. The thick smoke of the black powder pre- 
vented me from getting a second shot before the 
animal disappeared in the dense forest growth. An 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 29 

examination of the tracks explained the suddenness 
of the encounter, for they showed that the rhinoceros 
had stayed the whole night long in the wallow, and 
the footprints proved that it really was " old kramat " 
that we had met. This Malias was at first inclined to 
doubt, for we had seen the animal plainly, and his 
horn was not the cubit's length of cerulean blue that 
every one said " old kramat " carried, but only a short, 
black, shapeless stump ; nor had he in the least degree 
acted up to his reputation for pugnacity. The only 
fact in favour of the theory that it was he whom we 
had met was that there was not a sign of blood. This 
rather disconcerted the Malays; but I had before 
followed a wounded rhinoceros for three miles without 
finding a drop of blood (until the Malays had openly 
grumbled at my following an animal that had obvi- 
ously been missed), and had found it when I did come 
up with it on the point of death dying, I believe, 
from internal hemorrhage. We made but a short 
pause by the wallow to examine the tracks, and then 
pushed on. At once we were covered from head to 
foot, and our rifles from stock to muzzle, with the 
wet clay that clung to the bushes through which the 
rhinoceros had made its way. Slimy branches drip- 
ping with mire slapped our faces, and oozy drops of 
mud fell upon our heads and clotted in our hair. Then 
before we had worked more than a hundred yards of 
our way along the track a mass of white glittering 
clay caught my eye, and as I squatted on my heels 
Malias reached forward to make an excited tug at my 
coat. What we saw was on slightly higher ground 
than that on which we stood, and appeared to be at 



30 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

least seven feet high; it was perfectly motionless. 
An "ant-hill," whispered Malias, for it was covered 
with the same substance as that with which we were 
smeared. An ant-hill, of course, I thought, and the 
rhinoceros had rubbed against it in passing. And so 
I nodded and prepared to move forward, but as I did 
so the mass moved and disappeared behind the brown 
pile of a real ant-hill. " Allah ! that was he," groaned 
Malias. But before I could express my feelings the 
animal reappeared on the other side of the covering 
heap, and walked slowly away from us. Though his 
back was well exposed, a careful aim at the base of 
the spine produced no effect, and (the smoke hung 
terribly) I had no time for a second shot ; nor perhaps 
would I have risked it, for I felt sure that this time at 
all events he would charge. However, the rhinoceros 
went straight away, nor did we see him again for 
many hours. For perhaps a mile we followed him 
through virgin forest, where, though rattans and 
creepers obstructed the path, the great trees afforded 
a shelter from the sun. But then the rhinoceros 
turned aside into a clearing where two seasons before 
the Malays or the aboriginal Sakeis had felled the 
timber to grow a crop of hill-rice. The scrub that 
had grown up since they had reaped their harvest 
and abandoned the place was some ten feet high, 
and here the difficulty of making one's way was in- 
creased a hundredfold, and moreover we were exposed 
to the full force of the tropical sun. Bowing and 
bending to avoid the interlacing creepers, twisting 
and turning to free our rifles from the branches that, 
despite our efforts, caught their projecting muzzles, 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 31 

we had of course to move in perfect silence. The 
sun struck fair on our rounded backs, and we were 
surrounded by myriads of flies. They flew into our 
eyes, imprisoned themselves in our ears, or crawled 
clog-footed over our glistening faces. We pushed on 
extremely slowly, for we had no desire to come up 
with the rhinoceros in this horrible tangle, where we 
had but little chance of self-defence. There was no 
alternative, however, but to stick to the tracks. We 
could not say what line the animal intended to take, 
and to make a detour was therefore out of the ques- 
tion. The only thing to do was to give the rhinoceros 
time to move on, and to trust to meeting him in more 
favourable country. At first the track showed that 
he could not decide whether to go straight away or 
whether to refuse to leave the advantage the thick 
scrub gave, or, thirdly, whether to wait in the path 
and fight. This, of course, necessitated extreme 
caution, but at last after some two or three hours 
we emerged from the scrub and re-entered the forest. 
Soon afterwards we saw a few scanty drops of blood, 
and Malias was much reassured thereby. Then the 
rhinoceros took a definite line across country, and at 
about one o'clock we came to a small stream that it had 
crossed. Here we waited for Pa' Senik and the men. 
When they came up they informed us that we were 
close to the place where Japaringonen had been killed 
by this animal. After our meal and a cigarette we 
pushed on again. Before we had gone another mile a 
snort and rush showed that we had come up with " old 
kramat " again. His behaviour was most extraordin- 
ary : from a distance perhaps of some fifty yards away 



32 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

he charged headlong towards us, passing within fifteen 
or twenty yards of our position. The sound of sap- 
lings crashing and breaking, and creepers rending and 
snapping, filled the place and testified to the enor- 
mous bulk and power of the animal. When he had 
gone fifty yards behind us, he stopped. Here he 
paused a few seconds, and then with a snort charged 
back again at an acute angle to the last direction he 
had taken. He again passed close enough for us to 
catch a glimpse of him and to see the bushes moving, 
but not close enough for one to aim with any certainty. 
Again he stopped, paused, and then with a snort came 
back on another line that passed us no nearer than 
the others. What his intention was I cannot say; 
whether it was that he could not discover our exact 
position, or whether his wounds had knocked the 
inclination for real fighting out of him, I do not 
know ; but I am inclined to believe that he did not 
want to fight, and think that it was what tacticians 
term a demonstration. He made five such rushes, 
but no time did he come close enough for me to take 
more than a snap - shot, and this, thinking that I 
should require my cartridges for close quarters, I 
refused to risk. 

At last, however, Malias pointed out a stationary 
black object some twenty-five or thirty yards away. 
I could see that it was the rhinoceros, but could not 
make out what part of him it was. Nevertheless, 
thinking that I might not get a better opportunity, 
I fired ; in another wild charge he rushed headlong 
through the forest straight away from us, bursting 
or tearing a path through every obstacle. Again we 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 33 

followed, and after another mile came up with him 
for the fourth time, when, after a series of similar 
demonstrations, he gave me a clear shot at twenty- 
five yards at the base of his spine. He again went 
straight away ; but the blood showed that both 
this bullet and the one before had taken effect, and 
when we came on a place where the poor brute had 
lain down we made certain of him. Though we 
followed the tracks until four o'clock we failed, how- 
ever, to come up with him again. It was now within 
two hours of sundown, and as we had only a rough 
idea of where we were, it was necessary to think of 
getting back. We therefore waited for the other 
men to come up to us, and then discussed the 
position: the house from which we had started that 
morning was many miles behind us, and it was 
out of the question to think of returning there. 
Where was the nearest house ? On this question 
there was a divided opinion, and one of the de- 
baters climbed a tree to prove his case, and, 
descending, admitted like a man that he was wrong. 
From the tree he could see a grove of durian- 
trees; and towards this spot we made our way, for 
we knew that from the grove a native track would 
lead to the nearest village. Before we left the 
tracks we marked a tree or two, so as to be able 
to start the next morning where we now left off, 
and then made our way toward the durian - trees. 
When we arrived there we found that we were 
within two or three miles of Pa' Senik's house, which 
we reached within another hour. The actual dis- 
tance we had followed the rhinoceros from sunrise 

c 



34 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

to nearly sunset was not more than fifteen miles 
(from point to point it was perhaps seven); but 
these miles had been covered step by step carry- 
ing the weight of a heavy rifle under a tropical 
sun, bent double to evade the thorns that clutched 
at everything, stepping delicately to avoid the dead 
leaves that crackled under foot ; and, with every 
nerve on the alert, we did not estimate the distance 
by miles. 

Early the next morning we went back at the spot 
where we had left the tracks the evening before. 
We found that the rhinoceros had lain down and 
slept the night not far from where we had left him : 
he had eaten but very little, and had not wallowed. 
He had now, of course, many hours' start of us, and 
we had to make such speed as we could in order 
to overtake him, and yet to exercise extreme caution 
that we might not stumble upon him and be charged 
unawares. We had to move in perfect silence or 
we should not come up with him, and at the same 
time we had to keep our eyes on the tracks step by 
step. The difficulty of following the tracks even of 
a rhinoceros is extraordinary. One would imagine 
that an animal weighing perhaps two tons, and whose 
footprints are nearly twelve inches across, would be 
easy to follow; but time after time we had to stop, 
retrace our steps, or make a cast through the forest. 
On hard dry ground covered with leaves only the 
barest impression was left: we had often to lift the 
leaves to look for the mark of a toe-nail dinting 
perhaps the undermost leaf to the ground. Often, 
too, the tracks appeared to go straight on, and it 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 35 

might not be for some time that we found that we 
were on old tracks and must turn back. Traces of 
blood were extremely scanty, and it was only from 
time to time that one or the other of us would 
silently point to a single drop of clotted blood on 
a leaf or twig. The difficulty, too, and the physical 
exertion of moving in silence through the thick vege- 
tation of the forest, must be undergone to be fully 
realised. While one hand is perhaps disengaging a 
thorny creeper from the shoulder, the other hand 
holding a heavy rifle, and one foot suspended in the 
air to avoid some crackling leaf, every muscle of the 
body is called upon to maintain the equilibrium. 
Moving thus in silence, we saw in the forest animals 
that would otherwise have been alarmed long before 
we came in sight. Mouse-deer repeatedly allowed us 
to approach within a few feet of them ; twice we got 
among a sounder of sleeping pig before they awoke ; 
and once an agitated tapir dashed across the track 
only a few yards away from me. A danger, how- 
ever, there is of this silence. Malias and I had 
followed a wrong track for a few yards before we 
discovered our mistake; retracing our footsteps, we 
saw that beside the path lay a green puff-adder coiled 
and ready to strike, and that each of us had un- 
wittingly set his foot down within six inches of its 
head. It was slowly thus that we made our way, 
and it was past one o'clock on an intensely hot 
day that we came up with the rhinoceros again. I 
then saw him some thirty yards away standing 
broadside on to us. His head was hidden by foliage, 
and it was impossible to say at which end of the 



36 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

formless mass it was. I made the inevitable mis- 
take, and a careful aim at the spot where I imagined 
the heart to be only hit him far back in the quarters. 
As on the preceding day, he rushed away on re- 
ceiving the bullet, and the country in which the 
tracks took us was extremely dangerous. This was 
another clearing made for the cultivation of hill- 
rice such as that we had passed through the day 
before; but this was younger, and therefore worse. 
That of yesterday was some two years old, and 
through it one could see a few yards ; this was only 
seven months old, and an object a foot away was 
invisible. Of course, I repeat, no sane man would 
seek an encounter with any dangerous animal in 
either place. Bub the younger growth is really 
wonderful: it is a mass of tangled vegetation for 
here the giant lalang grass, that grows some six 
feet high, fights for its life with the horrible creepers 
that bind and choke it, and with the scrub -bushes 
that send their roots down into the earth to under- 
mine it. Here, like wrestlers, they strain and pull, 
and the victory is to the one that can endure the 
longest. The loser dies, and giant grass, creepers, 
and scrub fight interlocked at death-grips. 

Through this almost impenetrable thicket the 
rhinoceros made his way, and, to use a homely 
simile, his track looked like a double cutting on 
a railway line. It was necessary, therefore, to give 
him time to quit such desperate country, for in a 
patch of such wide extent a de'tour was out of the 
question. We therefore sat down for half an hour 
and then followed on ; but soon we found that what 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 37 

appeared to be a double cutting had developed into 
something more like a tunnel, through which it was 
necessary to make our way on hands and knees. 
It was impossible to see more than a foot in any 
direction, impossible to stand, and, except with one 
hand on the ground, impossible to fire. I therefore 
again gave the order to retreat, and for another half 
hour we waited on the edge of the thicket. Then 
we heard an uproar among some monkeys on the 
far side of the scrub. "They are chattering at the 
rhinoceros," I said. 

" Let us see," said Malias. And on we went again. 
Happily the tracks led straight on through the scrub ; 
and as there was none of the twisting and turning 
we had met the day before, we were emboldened by 
the calls we had heard from the monkeys, and pushed 
on in hopes that the rhinoceros was now in more 
open country. Suddenly a few heat drops, generated 
from a steaming ground and a blazing sky, fell patter- 
ing around and on us. Malias at once seized my 
coat and looked on every side with perturbation. 
" Hujan panas" he whispered, for " hot rain " is the 
sign of a bloody death. 

" Perhaps," I suggested, " it is a sign that the 
rhinoceros will die to-day." 

" That is not certain," he retorted. " It may be 
the rhinoceros that will die, and perhaps it may not." 
And then he added, very slowly and sententiously, 
" It is the Malay custom to be very careful when 
this happens." 

His nerve seemed shaken for the moment, and 
more carefully than ever we crept along on hands 



38 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

and knees. The heat in the open scrub was terrific. 
The tangled vegetation we were crawling through 
afforded our spines and necks no protection from the 
sun, and the air was bound a prisoner by the giant 
grass and bushes that throttled one another. Waves 
of heat were rising from the sweltering ground in 
quivering lines, and more than half we breathed 
there was steam: this filled the throat, but, though 
they hammered against our ribs, could not fill the 
lungs. The perspiration dripped from every pore of 
the body, but the mouth and tongue were clogged 
with drought, and salt with moisture from our lips ; 
and worse than anything else was the drumming of 
the nearly bursting blood-vessels behind our ears 
and temples. Time after time I was deceived into 
thinking that I heard the rhinoceros move. 

At last we reached the edge of the forest in safety, 
and threw ourselves down in utter exhaustion. We 
lay there gasping until the other men came up with 
us, and then found that the help we had expected 
from them had failed us. They produced sandwiches, 
cigarettes, my small flask of neat whisky, but for 
some extraordinary reason had forgotten the bottle 
of cold tea. I could not touch the whisky, and 
without something to drink it was impossible to eat 
or smoke. The only thing to do was to go on. On, 
on, and on therefore we pushed, without finding a 
drop of water to alleviate our thirst and to enable 
us to touch the mockery of refreshment we carried. 
There was not a sign of the big beast that led the 
way, except the three round dents that marked his 
toes, and occasionally in softer ground the impression 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 39 

of his sole. At last, at four o'clock, as we were 
thinking of giving up for the day, we came on a path 
that Malias recognised as one leading to the village 
of Pinjih. We therefore waited for the other men, 
and after marking the place, made our way to the 
village. There we arrived at sunset, and a house 
was quickly put at our disposal. Then after a 
swim in the river, rice, grilled chicken, chillies, and 
salt fish all that the village could offer were ready 
for us. 

Malias was openly despondent. Had not every 
one failed in this quest ? And how was it that 
bullets that would kill an elephant dead on the 
spot failed even to knock this animal over? The 
Jin was playing with us: we were safe from his 
displeasure perhaps, but it did not seem that he had 
any intention of allowing us to kill the rhinoceros. 
Though Pa' Senik was more cheerful, his prognos- 
tications were even worse. The animal, he said, was 
making for a hill called Changkat Larang, and if it 
once reached that spot its wounds would immediately 
be healed. We had left the tracks within three 
miles of the hill, and our only chance was to come 
up with it the next day before it reached this hill 
of healing. Both were so down-hearted that I re- 
minded them of the portent of the " hot rain," and 
suggested that the rhinoceros had returned to die 
by the stream and the village from which he had 
taken his name for so many years. But without 
avail. Both shook their heads in doubt, and I went 
to sleep, to hope for better luck the next day. 

By sunrise the next morning we had finished our 



40 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

meal of rice and chicken, and set off to pick up 
the tracks of the day before. We were soon on the 
ground, and then proceeded in the same order as on 
the two previous days. Soon we came on the spot 
where " old kramat " had spent the night. He had 
fed heavily on lush grass and young shrubs, and had 
wallowed for some hours. This was bad, very bad 
indeed, for the night before he had barely eaten a 
few mouthfuls, and had not wallowed at all ; and now 
it seemed as though he were better and stronger after 
the second day than he had been after the first. 
Pa' Senik, who was close behind, came up, shook his 
old head, and intimated that he had told us over- 
night that if the rhinoceros reached Changkat Larang 
his wounds would heal : the hill was now not far off, 

and then I cut him short, and, picking up the 

tracks, pressed on. In a few minutes a rush some 
twenty yards ahead of us showed that our quarry 
was again afoot. This was worse than ever. Hither- 
to every time that we had come up with him we 
had managed to catch a glimpse of him ; but now he 
would not let us come within sight of him, and I 
felt inclined to give up hope. To-day was my last 
chance, for I had to be back at my headquarters the 
next morning. The brute was stronger and better 
than he had been the day before, and now he refused 
to allow us to come to close quarters, and climax 
of despair he was heading straight for Changkat 
Larang. 

One ray of hope remained. The rush we had heard 
seemed but a short one seemed, I say ; for even so 
huge a brute as an elephant, after its first startled 



THE PINJIH EHINO. 41 

rush, can settle down to so silent a walk that a man 
may be pardoned for imagining it to be standing still, 
whereas it is really rapidly putting a lot of ground 
between it and its pursuer. Praying, therefore, that 
the rhinoceros might really have remained stationary 
after the rush we had heard, I moved as rapidly 
and as noiselessly as possible round to the right, in 
the hope of cutting him off, and after a detour of a 
few hundred yards, had the extraordinarily good luck 
of finding myself close behind him. The wind was 
in my favour, and I was able to get within some 
twenty-five yards. He was looking down the path 
he had come up, and I had made an exact semicircle 
in my detour, and was diametrically behind him. I 
had misjudged him when I had thought a few min- 
utes before that he would not allow me to come to 
close quarters, for now his every attitude meant 
fighting. Hustled and harried for the last two days, 
poor brute, he could stand it no longer, and was 
now determined to run no farther. Malias, crouching 
close on my heels, urged me in whisper to shoot at 
the leg, and aim to break the bone. But I hoped for 
a better chance than that, and squatted down to 
await developments. Then a slant of our wind must 
have reached the rhinoceros, for he very slowly began 
to slew round. The huge hideous head lifted high in 
the air and swung slowly over the shoulder, the 
dumpy squat horn showed black, the short hairy ears 
pricked forward, and a little gleam showed in the 
small yellow eyes; the nostrils were wrinkled high, 
and the upper lip curled right back over the gums, 
as he sought to seek the source of the tainted air. 



42 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

Pain and wrath were pictured in every ungainly 
action and hideous feature. High in the air he held 
his head as he turned round, high above us as we 
squatted close to the ground ; and his neck was fairly 
exposed to a shot, but I waited to let him show yet 
more. Then how slowly it was I cannot say, but 
very slowly it seemed his shoulder swung round, and 
at last I was afforded a quartering shot at the heart 
and lungs. I fired, and knew that he was mine. A 
short rush of some thirty yards, and he fell in an 
open grassy glade, never to rise, and never again to 
see Changkat Larang. 

Though he could not rise, the poor brute was not 
dead ; and as he moved his head lizard-like from side 
to side in his efforts to raise his ponderous body, he 
seemed more like a prehistoric animal than one of our 
times. The head of a lizard it was exactly, and the 
body of an elephant was joined on to it. Another shot 
killed it. When the other men came up, the two local 
Malays were wildly excited. Malias was nearly off 
his head. He examined the feet whose tracks we had 
followed so long and so far, the skin, the head, the 
teeth that killed Japaringonen and the two other 
men who had died so long ago that their names had 
been forgotten, the horn that was said to carry the 
famous blue which cured Kanda Daud. He touched 
and handled every part of the animal, and returned 
to touch and handle it with fresh interest in fact, 
he behaved exactly like a terrier puppy with its first 
rabbit. But old Pa' Senik, when he had uttered a 
short charm over the body to preserve us all from the 
consequences of its death, stood back a little space 



THE PINJIH RHINO. 43 

and looked on with folded arms. It was not in the 
company of such mere mortals as Malias and myself 
that he had been hunting : for the last three days he 
had been in the mighty presence of the Earth Spirit, 
who step for step had been with us in the forest. In 
Pa' Senik's eyes the day's success was the result of 
the promise made when Che Mat had been possessed, 
and only a line at the corner of his mouth and a 
gleam in his old eyes showed the grim satisfaction 
with which he viewed the victim of the compact. 

After a short rest I sent Pa' Senik and the two 
Malays to the house where we had slept three nights 
before to fetch my servants, my clothes, and my 
camera, and ordered Malias to follow me to Pinjih 
village to get some pack-elephants to carry the rhino- 
ceros' head and feet. 

It was with the greatest difficulty that I induced 
Malias to leave the body. 

" Some one must stay and look after it," he said. 

" But it's dead now," I objected. 

"Yes," he said with firm conviction; "but it was 
dead after Kanda Baud shot it, and it came to life 
again and nearly killed him." 

And he then asked to be allowed to stay behind, 
to shoot it again if it showed any symptoms of re- 
turning vitality. 

It was with some trouble that he was finally per- 
suaded to come away; but not even then would he 
move until he had hacked one of the hind-feet nearly 
off. 

" If he does go, he will go lame," he said. 

We found Pinjih village seething with excitement. 



44 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

My shots had been heard, and the entire population 
was waiting for news of an event that meant more 
to the villagers than it is easy to realise. 

By noon I had collected three elephants, and on 
the arrival of the men with my camera and impedi- 
menta we returned to take some snap-shots (which 
were not a success), and to cut off the head and 
feet of the rhinoceros. 

Between two upright posts at the shoulder and 
fore-feet I made out its height to be 5 feet 5J inches. 
I am certain, however, that the measurement did not 
do it justice : it had fallen in a cramped position, 
and it was impossible to stretch it out. Measure- 
ment between uprights is the best way of taking re- 
cords of dead game, but it is a poor way: one can 
imagine the difference between measuring a horse 
standing up and a horse lying down. When I caught 
my second glimpse of the animal, it appeared to be 
nearly seven feet high. I am sure that it was but 
little short of six feet high. 

The horn was disappointingly small, the more so 
because it had been said to be so extraordinarily 
fine. It was a short shapeless lump, only some seven 
or eight inches high ; but I think that it had once 
been much longer. The tip had been broken off, and 
the base was much worn and splintered. 

Through the crowd that collected round us as we 
cut off the feet, a lame old man pushed his way up 
to the headman, who brought him up to me and 
explained that this was one of the rhinoceros' victims. 
He was Kanda Daud, to whom I have already referred, 
and the story of his adventure was briefly as follows : 



THE PINJIH EHINO. 45 

Years before, " in the days when the white man had 
not yet come into the country," and when he was a 
young man, he had felled a patch of forest in the 
Pinjih valley to make a plantation of hill padi. The 
crop was nearing the harvest, and he was sitting at 
night with his gun to keep away the pigs and deer, 
when this rhinoceros came out of the forest and fed 
close up to his house. He fired, and heard the brute 
rush away and fall at the forest's edge. The next morn- 
ing he went with a youngster to hack off its horn, 
when the animal threw off the semblance of death 
and charged him. He fell, and the rhinoceros did not 
gore him with his horn, as is the custom of the African 
animal, but bit him with its enormous razor-edged 
teeth. The boy ran away, and in a few minutes re- 
turned with some ten men, whose approach frightened 
the brute. Kanda Daud appeared to be dead when 
they picked him up and took him to his house. 
Though the wretched man had been bitten in almost 
every part of his body, he recovered, and as he limped 
beside me to see the dead body of his old enemy, 
he showed me the cicatrices of his wounds. The 
calf and the fleshy part of the thigh of the left leg had 
atrophied ; they had been bitten away ; and the ball 
of his toe reached the ground in a painful hobble. 
On his ribs and under one arm were great drawn 
lines of hideous white, such as one associates with 
the idea of a scald. The muscles of an arm had 
disappeared, and there only remained a bone. It 
was marvellous that he had recovered ; but when I 
told him so he replied that when he was picked up 
and taken home, his hands and arms were found to 



46 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

be stained with an indigo blue. This was the dye 
of the rhinoceros' horn, which he had seized with 
both hands in his efforts to free himself from the 
brute as it held him on the ground. His hands and 
arms had been carefully washed, and the stained 
water was the only medicine that he was given. 
Part he drank, and with part his wounds were 
washed. It was indeed a marvellous recovery. And 
the poor old man talked excitedly, as he limped along, 
of the result he expected from getting more of this 
remedy: perhaps with a further supply a skilled 
pawang might make the flesh grow on his withered 
limbs. Didn't we think so? A very little had 
served to heal his wounds, surely an unlimited 
supply would bring a perfect cure. For more than 
twenty perhaps thirty years the old man had been 
waiting for this event, and at last the day had come. 
Bitter was his disappointment, and pitiable to see, 
when he reached the carcass, for no amount of rubbing 
and washing would yield a sign of the desired blue 
from that black stumpy horn. The Malays stood 
back and whispered in little groups. All felt sorry 
for him, but it was difficult to know what to do. 
Finally I touched him on the shoulder. 

" The rhinoceros is very old, Kanda Baud," I said, 
"and now in his old age the blue stain he carried 
has disappeared." 

He stood up and looked at me in silence for a 
moment. "And I am very old too," he said; and 
then he added as he turned away, " and now I shall 
never recover." 



47 



A DEEK-DRIVE. 

IN the corner of many Malay houses one may often 
see a curious bundle of rattan. It is coiled into great 
loops in the manner that a sailor coils a rope, and the 
inquirer is told that it is a sidin. If he inquires 
further, he will be told that it is used in deer-drives ; 
and if he is still curious, it may be exhibited for his 
inspection. The great ring of rattan opens out into 
a straight line some twenty- five or thirty yards long. 
The main line is of plaited and twisted rattans, and 
is about an inch thick, and from this line hangs a 
series of nooses. Each noose is made of three fine 
rattans plaited together, and forms, when spread, a 
circle about three and a half feet in diameter. They 
hang from the main line at intervals of eighteen 
inches, and therefore overlap considerably ; the catch 
is the ordinary running knot. In a deer -drive the 
sidins are stretched in a long line in some favourably 
situated part of the forest, and the deer are driven in 
that direction. The number of sidins used depends, 
of course, upon the locality. Ten are generally 
enough, for they form, when tied end to end, a line 
nearly 300 yards long, with 600 nooses; but some- 
times twenty, or even thirty, are used. 



48 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 

The Malays use sidins, rather than more sporting 
methods, in a deer-drive for many reasons. The forest 
is often a featureless wilderness of trees and under- 
growth, in which an unbroken line of nooses some 
hundreds of yards long has a better chance of stopping 
a deer than a few men armed with guns ; and two or 
three guns is generally all that a village can produce. 
Then the undergrowth beneath the trees is almost 
always so dense that a deer may pass unseen between 
two men not more than fifty yards apart, and under 
the most favourable circumstances it is rare to get 
more than a snap-shot. The Malay is an execrable 
shot, and seldom succeeds in shooting a running deer. 
It takes him half a minute or more to squint along the 
barrels of a gun before he will fire at an animal the 
size of a bullock standing at rest twenty yards away, 
and if he stops the headlong rush of a driven deer he 
is generally as much surprised as the rest of the 
company at his success. 

A deer -drive with sidins is perhaps the favourite 
form of sport among the Malays; and if deer are 
known to be in any patch of forest that can be beaten 
out, a suggestion to have a hunt is generally welcomed. 
Eusa (the sambar deer of India) are fairly common 
everywhere throughout the peninsula, and often do 
considerable damage by their depredations in the 
rice-fields when the crops are ripening. 

Let me describe an imaginary deer-drive. For the 
past two or three nights a couple of deer have been 
feeding in the rice-fields, and lying up by day in an 
adjoining patch of secondary forest. The injured 
cultivators go to the village headman, who at their 



A DEER-DRIVE. 49 

suggestion decides to have a deer-drive on the follow- 
ing day. Messages are sent from mouth to mouth on 
all sides, and before many hours elapse every one 
knows that he is expected to be at the headman's 
house the next morning at daybreak, and to bring his 
sidin, if he chances to have one, with him. 

While still a star or two shines whitely through the 
grey morning light, and while the night-jars are still 
wheeling and calling te-te-goh, te-te-goh, the Malays 
leave their homes and begin to gather round the 
headman's house. 

Those that own sidins bring them slung on their 
shoulders, and every man is armed. The majority 
have spears, others carry a dagger or kris in their belt, 
and the remainder have the long-bladed knife called a 
parang. This last is the everyday companion of the 
Malay, and he carries one from the day that he can 
toddle, gradually emerging from the state of cutting him- 
self with it to that of cutting everything else. With a 
sharpened edge nearly two feet long, it is equally useful 
for cutting down a small tree or for putting an edge to 
a copper fish-hook or extracting a thorn. It will slice 
a man nearly in two, and more than one tiger has been 
brought in for the Government reward by a Malay who 
had nothing else with which to defend himself. 

The gathering increases momentarily, and there is a 
violent barking and yapping of the headman's house- 
dogs as some strange dogs are brought forward and 
tied up to separate trees. Unhappy -looking brutes 
are these last small yellow animals, with sharp 
noses and prick ears : they are, I believe, direct 
descendants of the wild dog. They are generally 



50 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

much better than they look, and the most insignificant 
in appearance has perhaps a reputation that extends 
throughout the district. While some men are over- 
hauling the sidins for flaws, a small circle surrounds a 
man who is loading his muzzle-loader. The powder is 
the vilest German rubbish, or, failing that, stuff that 
he has collected out of Chinese bombs, and what is 
lacking in quality is made up in quantity. His 
wadding is a piece of cocoanut husk, and the missiles 
are a lump of hammered tin and a piece of iron of the 
length and thickness of a little finger that he has 
hacked off some worn-out agricultural instrument. 
The only other men with guns are an old haji, 1 who 
has a snider, and the headman's son, who carries a 
double-barrelled shot-gun. 

The old man squatting at the foot of a cocoanut- 
tree and tracing figures in the sand with his finger is 
the pawang, on whose skill the success of the drive 
will depend. In addition to a belief that certain 
animals are protected by attendant spirits, the Malays 
believe that the death of any animal is avenged by 
influences known as bahdi, jinggi, and genaling. The 
lahdi have, they believe, the power of bringing sick- 
ness, blindness, or madness upon the hunter, and an 
attack of fever after unwonted exertion in a malarial 
forest is always ascribed to them. The jinggi can 
let the deer pass by the unwitting hunter in the form 
of a mouse or attack him in the form of a tiger. 
They can also give the hunter the appearance of the 
hunted, and thus expose him to the fire of his friends. 
The genaling can kill the hunter outright ; but being 

1 One who has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca. 



A DEER-DRIVE. 51 

the strongest, are perhaps the most merciful, for I 
have never heard of a death being laid to their door. 
With such dangerous enemies to combat, the old 
pawang has no light task, for on him falls all the 
responsibility for any accident or mischance, unless 
he can shift the blame on to the injured party. This, 
however, let it be said to his credit, he can generally 
do satisfactorily. 

The old man is working out with lines and crosses 
a calculation, based principally upon the day of the 
month, which will show from which direction danger 
may be expected. Beside him lies a sidin, known as 
"the head of the sidins" It is supposed to have a 
peculiar efficacy, and may be distinguished from the 
others by its being ornamented with the skull of 
some such bird as a kingfisher or a woodpecker, 
and with a bit of some curiously twisted root or 
creeper. 

By the time that the sun is above the horizon two 
men, who had been told off overnight to examine the 
rice-fields for fresh deer tracks, return and report 
that the deer have fed again in the crops, and that, 
as on the preceding days, they have entered the patch 
of secondary forest, where they almost certainly now 
are. The headman comes down from his house, and 
there is a general discussion as to the direction of 
the intended drive. The arguments show that the 
ground in which the deer are supposed to be is of 
considerable extent, and that it is bounded on one 
side by the rice-fields and on the opposite side by a 
deep swamp. On the south it runs into a narrow 
neck, which connects it with a limitless expanse of 



52 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

virgin forest. The ground can be driven in two ways, 
either directly away from the rice-fields and towards 
a row of sidins erected alongside the swamp, or the 
line of the drive may be parallel to the rice-fields, 
in which case the sidins would be set up at the 
" neck." 

The pawang takes everything into consideration, 
his experience of former drives in the same place, the 
direction of the wind, and his own forecast regarding 
the side from which danger may come, and decides 
to have the line of sidins at the neck. 

The word to start is given, each man shoulders his 
heavy coil of nooses, the headman leads the way, and 
in irregular single file the party follows him. The 
village through which their path leads at first is not 
what we mean by a village in English. Our inter- 
pretation of the word is a collection of houses. The 
Malay village is a collection of holdings. Each man 
owns his two or three acres of land, in the middle 
of which his house stands ; and as the holdings 
generally extend in a narrow strip along a river 
bank, a village containing only a hundred houses 
is perhaps two miles long. Each man's holding is 
more or less thickly planted with cocoanut-trees and 
with a somewhat miscellaneous assortment of fruit- 
trees, round the roots of which grows a neglected 
crop of grass where goats and an occasional sheep 
find pasturage. The only public buildings in the 
village are the musjid, which is the property of the 
community, and the school, which is the property of 
the Government. The nearest police-station is thirty 
miles away. 



A DEER- DRIVE. 53 

When the path leaves the village it emerges upon 
the level and scientifically irrigated rice-fields, and 
continues, a foot or so above the level of the liquid 
mud, along one of the innumerable little embank- 
ments that criss-cross in every direction, and serve 
the double purpose of retaining the vivifying water 
and of forming boundaries between one man's crop 
and another. 

There are no houses in the rice-fields, but here and 
there are rude shelters consisting of a few bamboos 
and palm leaves strung together, which afford a 
certain amount of protection to workers during the 
heat of the day, and which are useful when it is 
necessary to protect the ripe crops from the depreda- 
tions of wild pig and occasional deer. 

The two men who had found the fresh deer tracks 
earlier in the morning point out silently and from 
afar where the deer had entered the rice-fields, where 
they had fed, and where they had re-entered the 
forest. The path now skirts along the edge of the 
forest, and as the deer may be lying up within a 
stone's throw of the party, no one talks above a 
whisper. The men soon arrive at the neck between 
the secondary forest and the virgin forest, and here the 
strictest silence is enjoined. The pawang points out 
the line in which he wishes the sidins to be erected, 
and as quietly as possible some men clear a track a 
foot wide along this line. They have to take care 
that, while cutting away as many branches, creepers, 
and rattans as will allow the sidins to hang freely, 
they do not cut away so much as to make the nooses 
conspicuous. This is soon done, and all stand aside. 



54 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

The pawang picks up " the head of the sidins" slings 
it over his right shoulder, and looks round for a 
suitable tree to which to tie it. Selecting one on 
the line that has just been cut, he chips off a small 
piece of the bark with his knife. The bark falls to 
the ground on its face that is, with the inner side 
downwards and the tree is a lucky one. (Were 
the bark to fall on its back another tree would be 
chipped until a lucky one is found.) Taking care, 
then, not to stand on the roots of the tree or in 
its shadow, he grasps it with his left hand at about 
the height of his head, and in a rapid mutter, with 
here and there a word thrown in in a louder tone, 
he makes this petition. The words cannot be dis- 
tinguished by the listener, but the following is a 
literal translation: 

" Hail ! all hail ! 

Mother to the earth ! 

Father to the sky ! 

Brother to the water ! 

I crave permission to enter on your domain, 
And to tie my nooses to this tree." 

This preliminary invocation is over in a few seconds. 
The pawang then opens the strings that bind the still 
coiled-up nooses, takes hold of the rope at the end 
of the main line of the sidin, and brings this rope 
round the tree at about five feet from the ground, 
so that it will be ready to be tied when he has 
finished the next invocation. Then in the same 
guttural tones he begins the charm against untoward 
influences. It is of four lines and in rude verse, being 



A DEER-DRIVE. 55 

the only one of this collection that is so. As is 
always the case in Malay verses, the first two lines 
mean little, and are only there to rhyme with the 
last two. In such manner does the artless Malay 
evade a difficulty that poets of more civilised 
countries struggle to surmount. 

" Sirfli unt& pin&ng untS, 
Marl tanam tSpl blukar 
Hantu buta malang but& 
Jerat aku k&tak&n ak&r." 

The lines may be thus translated : 

Betel leaf, Camel, Betel nut, Camel. 
Come, let us plant at the edge of the young forest. 
Evil spirit be blind ! Evil influence be blind ! 
Say that my nooses are but forest creepers ! 

The pawang then ties the rope round the tree, and 
leaves the indefinite to address the jinggi, bahdi, and 
genaling, who are more particularly interested in the 
work that is toward. 

" evil spirits ! 

Down with your powers, may my power defeat them ! 
Down with your charms, may nay charms defeat them ! 

One hundred and ninety charms ! 

Move ye from hence ! 

Go to birdless forests, 

To fishless seas, 

To reckless mountains, 

To grassless plains ! 

Go in the name of Allah." 

The pawang now opens the first three nooses of the 



56 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

sidin, and moves back a pace or two from the tree. 
He calls on the deer 

" Hail ! all hail ! 
Ye that trample the earth ! 
Ye that pass like lightning-flash ! 
If ye pass the nooses' farthest end, 
Ye fall into the deepest seas ; 
And if ye pass the nearer end, 
Ye reach the great volcano's fire. 
Take ye the broad road by the high land ! 
Here is the way for ye to follow 
To return to the fold of Nabi Sleman" 

This last line is illustrative of the Malays' belief in 
an animal's sanctuary, the fold of their master Nabi 
Sleman (King Solomon, who is one of the prophets 
of the Muhammadan religion). Within this sanc- 
tuary only animals that have obeyed the laws of 
their kind are admitted. It is imagined that the 
deer which live close to the habitations of human 
beings, and which feed on the crops of man, are 
trespassers, and have done wrong by wandering too 
far from their proper home. By so doing wrong 
they have forfeited in part, but only in part, the 
protection of forest spirits. It follows, therefore, 
that the deer which frequent the haunts of men 
are an easier quarry than the purely forest-dwelling 
deer; and it is the former, for obvious reasons con- 
nected with the accessibility and nature of the 
ground, that are more often caught. A further de- 
velopment of this idea of wrong -doing is seen in 
the case of man-eating tigers and crocodiles, which 
are imagined, by their unnatural appetites, to have 
put themselves outside the pale of God's creatures, 



A DEER-DRIVE. 57 

and to be surrendered by the spirits to traps and 
snares that animals which have not so transgressed 
would detect. 

But to return to our deer. They are warned of 
the perils of fire and flood that lie to right and left 
of the only way back to the fold of Nabi Sleman. 
Across this way lies the long line of nooses, and 
they are to return if they can. 

When this invocation to the deer is concluded, 
the strength of the knot and rope is tested by a 
strong pull, and lastly the sidins are addressed 

"Hail! all hail! 
Thou long and trembling line ! 
If two deer pass, hold thou two ; 
If only one pass, hold thou him ; 
Be he big or small, hold him ! 
And I will speak good, not ill, of thee. 
If thou breakest, I will not mend thee ; 
If thou art lost, I will not seek thee." 

Ptu ptu ptu. The pawang spits three times on 
the knot, and rapidly unrolls the rest of the sidin. 
Every one gives a long breath, for the ceremony, 
which has lasted two or three minutes, is over. The 
extremity of the sidin is tied to a convenient tree 
on the line that has been cut through the forest, 
and another bundle of nooses is brought up to the 
pawang, who unrolls it and ties one end of it to 
the tree where the first sidin stops, and continues 
his way along the line. Where the second ends 
the third begins, and in a few minutes the sidins 
are transformed from a number of circular bundles 
of rattans into a continuous line of nooses some 



58 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

hundreds of yards long, and stretching right across 
the narrow "neck" that lies between the ground to 
be driven and the virgin forest. The series of sidins 
which form this line of nooses are independent of 
one another, for each is supported by the trees to 
which it is tied at either extremity, and in no way 
by the adjacent sidins. Thus, if any one is torn 
down by a deer, the displacement does not affect 
the others. To prevent any sagging, the long line 
of nooses is propped up between the supporting 
trees by forked saplings. The main line is about 
five feet from the ground, and the bottom of the 
nooses is at the height of one's knee, or about 
eighteen inches above the ground. While tying to 
a tree the end of the last sidin, the pawang makes 
the following petition : 

" Tjah-tree at the head of my sidin ! 
Casuarina-tree at its foot ! 
Remain ye here, I go to hunt 
The deer, the raiats l of Nabi Sleman." 

The preparations for the drive are now complete, and 
the men are divided into three groups one to drive, 
another lot to " stop " along the edge of the swamp 
to turn the deer in the unlikely event of its attempt- 
ing to break away in that direction, and the third 
lot to watch the sidins. There is little doubt as to 
which is most favoured work. 

1 The derivation of this word shows how apt its use is in this con- 
nection. Yule and Burnell's ' Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words ' has 
the following : " Ryot. Arabic ra'iyat (from ra'a, to pasture), mean- 
ing originally, according to its etymology, ' a herd at pasture,' hut 
then ' subjects ' collectively. It is by natives used for a ' subject ' 
in India." 



A DEER-DRIVE* 59 

The drivers have to make a detour of some two 
or three miles to reach the point from which the 
drive will begin, and then to form into line and 
advance upon the line of nooses where the whole 
party now stands, and where, of course, the drive will 
end. This to the indolent Malay is no light work ; 
moreover, the drivers see but little of the game. The 
stops have not so far to go, but they also have small 
share of the fun ; while those who are detailed off 
to watch the sidins not only remain where they are, 
but have all the excitement of seeing the deer crash 
headlong into the noose and of hamstringing the 
entangled animal. The manoeuvres to secure these 
last most favoured spots are amusing, but the head- 
man is stern and will stand no nonsense. He relaxes 
his strictness in favour of an old man who success- 
fully pleads a combination of headache, a cut finger, 
dizziness, and stomach-ache, and who is accordingly 
allowed to stop and watch the sidins. But two or 
three skulkers who are found hiding behind trees are 
ignominiously ordered off to join the drivers. At 
last diplomacy and argument are exhausted, and the 
arrangements are complete. The drivers and stops 
move off, and the watchers take up their station at 
intervals along the sidin, and about thirty yards away 
from it on the side from which the deer are expected. 
They put a few leafy boughs together to screen 
themselves from view, and, settling themselves in 
the smallest possible space, crouch concealed and 
motionless. 

The men told off to drive reach their places at last, 
and as soon as the line has been formed they advance 



60 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

upon the sidins with shouts and yells. When the 
pawang hits upon the fresh deer tracks, he lets loose 
the dogs that have hitherto been in leash, muttering 
as he slips them 

" Go, my dogs ! Si Panji Lela ! Si Panji Ladang ! 
Go hunt ye the raiats of Nabi Sleman, 
Who trample the earth, who pass like lightning-flash, 
Wearing earrings of gold and waistlets of gold, 
Who wait outside the fold of Nabi Sleman." 

When the dogs give tongue, the owner shouts a long 
tu-u-u-u to encourage them, adding under his breath 
the mystic words 

Telekul lam telekul, 

This is in the hands of Kaja Una. 

(Kaja Una is the Mmrod of Malay mythology.) Soon 
the dogs are in full cry, and after a few minutes of 
tremendous excitement, during which the deer at- 
tempts to break out, but is judiciously turned by 
one of the stops, the hunted animal, with the dogs 
close upon its heels, dashes into one of the nooses. 
The sidin for some yards at either side is torn from 
the slender saplings that support it, and gives to the 
impetus until the strain is felt at the two extremities 
where it is tied to the trees. It then suddenly 
tautens and throws the deer down. The nearest of 
the ambushed watchers runs out, hamstrings the deer, 
and, if he happens to be a haji, cuts its throat, 
repeating as he does so a verse of the Koran ; but if 
not, with that callous indifference to pain in animals 
so marked in all Asiatics, he allows the animal to 
live until a haji comes up. But in the meanwhile he 



A DEER-DRIVE. 61 

hastily and roughly replaces the sidin, which has 
been disarranged in the struggle, calls off the dogs, 
and quickly goes back to his hiding-place, in the hope 
that there may be another deer in the ground. The 
stricken animal is not released from the fatal noose 
that holds it ; but it rarely struggles after being ham- 
strung, apparently giving itself up to death. 

While this is going on at the sidin, a shot is heard 
from the beaters' side, and before long they come up, 
and the drive is over. Questions and answers are 
shouted on every side. The success that has attended 
the nooses is equalled by that of Che Mamud, the 
headman's son, who was with the beaters, and who 
has shot a deer that was concealing itself in a thicket 
in the hope of breaking back through the line. It is 
lucky that he succeeded in so doing, for his neigh- 
bour would probably otherwise have got the bullet, 
the jinggi the blame, and the poor pawang the re- 
proaches. Nothing, however, goes wrong to-day, and 
the second deer is brought up by four men and de- 
posited close by the still living animal. The throat of 
the latter is then cut with all ceremony. The throat 
of the other deer was cut as soon as it was shot, for 
fear of its dying of the wound, in which case it would 
not have been lawful food for Muhammadans. It is 
interesting, as showing the distinction between the 
Malays' present religion and their pre-Muhammadan 
superstition, that this ceremony is not performed by 
the pawang. 

There is now an interval for rest and refreshment, 
and while the cigarettes and betel-leaf pass round, 
the incidents of the day and the weight of the deer 



62 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

are discussed. The man who turned the first deer 
and the man who hamstrung it tell their story with 
many details and some improvements, and Che 
Mamud shows them all how he saw and aimed at 
and shot his deer. Every one congratulates the 
pawang, to whom the credit of the success is con- 
sidered to be entirely due ; and the enthusiastic or 
ingenious compare the present success, with obvious 
deductions, to the failure that attended the efforts of 
his rival in the neighbouring village on the occasion 
of the last deer-drive undertaken there. The con- 
gratulations generally take the characteristic Malay 
form of an address to the speaker's nearest neighbour, 
in a tone of voice that is most obviously meant for 
the general ear, and especially for the ear of the 
subject of the eulogy. It is a somewhat artificial 
method, but none the less sweet; and really to-day 
the pawang is to be congratulated, for mishaps are far 
from rare. Often the deer breaks back or escapes at 
the side. Sometimes the noose is old and rotten, and 
snaps; and even when caught, a hind will, if not 
quickly hamstrung, extricate itself by getting its fore- 
feet into and loosening the catch round its neck. A 
stag can rarely get free because of its antlers. 

But to-day everything has gone well, and when all 
are sufficiently rested the pawang rises to complete 
the ceremonies. He first goes up to Che Mamud 
and takes his gun from him ; then, going to the deer 
which Che Mamud had shot, he stands between its 
fore -legs and hind -legs. Holding the gun with his 
left hand near the lock and his right hand some way 
up the stock, he points the muzzle at the head of the 



A DEER-DRIVE. 63 

animal. He then slowly passes the muzzle of the 
gun over the deer from the head over the neck, along 
the back, and down to the extremity of the hind-legs. 
When he gets to the end he carries the gun smartly 
off from the body, with the action of one sweeping 
something away. Going through this performance 
three times, he repeats the following words 



I know whence ye got your powers. 
With the fall of Adam your powers began. 
I have the means to destroy your powers. 

Malik Zabaniah ! 

Keeper of the gate of the end of the world, 
Open a secret door for me ; 
I wish to throw away all the powers of bahdi. 
Open a place from which there is no return ; 
I wish to throw away all the powers of genaling. 

Let no claim be made against me, 
Against my house and family, 
Against my friends and companions, 
Or against my hounds. If claim is made, 
Thou shalt be doomed to Hell by Allah." 

He then, in the low muttering tone he has used 
throughout, counts one two three up to ten, 
and then shouts " Lepas ! " " Be free ! " Every one 
echoes the cry, and the deer is now freed from 
evil influences. 

This performance is called sapu bahdi, or sweeping 
away the evil influences, which are supposed to follow 
the direction of the gun, and be thus expelled from 
the body of the deer. Until this is done every one 
takes great care to avoid standing behind the deer, 



64 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

for soon after death the bristles on the back move, 
and stand on end with the contraction or relaxation 
of the muscles ; and to come within the range of the 
aim of these bristles, which have the position they 
assume when the living animal is enraged, is to invite 
the attacks of the lahdi. It is thought that they are 
waiting to avenge the death of the deer, and that the 
movement of the bristles is caused by their prepara- 
tion to leave the body of their protdge : until driven 
out by the pawang, they will dart out upon any one 
who passes, and inflict upon him such ill as is in their 
power. No one, of course, is absolutely safe from 
them, for they can move freely anywhere, but a 
position at which the bristles point is one of supreme 
danger. The pawang then hands the gun back to the 
owner, proceeds to cut a leafy branch from some tree 
close by, and lops a second branch, of which he makes 
a small stake. He goes up to the deer, which still 
lies with the noose round its neck, and drives the 
stake into the ground close to its heels. Then stand- 
ing in the same position to the deer as in the last 
case, he passes the branch three times over its body 
in the same way that he had done with the gun 
before, and using the same words. The ceremony is 
not, however, complete when he has done this, for he 
next works the noose from the neck of the deer 
down over the body and along to the heels of the 
hind -legs. Here he draws the noose tight again, 
and then suddenly slips it from the heels on to the 
stake placed in readiness, upon which he tightens 
it, and shouts "Lepas!" 

The shout is again echoed, and the ceremony com- 



A DEER-DRIVE. 65 

plete. The idea is the same as that already men- 
tioned, and the evil influences are imagined to be 
transferred with the noose to the stake, and there 
to be localised. The two deer are then cut up, the 
pawang taking a quarter of each animal, and the 
rest of the meat being divided among the men: the 
antlers go to the village head-man. Cigarettes and 
betel -leaf are again produced. After a short rest 
the fatal noose is slipped from the stake, which is 
not again touched, the sidins are rolled up, and 
the men return to the village contented. 



66 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 

WE were in the back verandah of my bungalow, and 
in front of me a Malay squatted on the floor, and 
beside him were weird implements some gigantic 
hooks, four or five coils of rattan, a basket full of 
odds and ends, and four dead fowls. 

Manap was his name, Abdulmanap bin Muhammad 
Arsad, to give him his full ceremonial name, and 
Manap Kimau or Tiger Manap, to give him his dis- 
tinguishing name. He was a professional crocodile 
catcher, making his living out of the reward offered 
by the Government for the extermination of these 
animals. His skill and extraordinary daring in shoot- 
ing tigers, also of course for the Government reward, 
had earned him his sobriquet. He lived near the 
sea, close to the mangrove swamps where his work lay, 
and had come up to Taiping in answer to a letter 
from me. As he sat on the floor amid his parapher- 
nalia we talked of indifferent subjects for the period 
prescribed by etiquette, and then I asked him to show 
me the lines he had brought with him. 

" It is cooler in the house than by the lake," he said, 
picking up the basket ; " shall I bait the hooks here ? " 
He pulled out a knife, with a cutting edge some 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 67 

twenty inches long, and carefully thumbed the blade. 
" And the Tuan wants to know not only how to catch 
crocodiles but learn the charms and lore in connection 
with it ? Well, whatever it be that one intends to 
learn, one must start from the beginning. The boys 
at school begin with Alif, the first letter of the 
alphabet, and to catch crocodiles one must know 
the beginning of crocodiles. The first crocodile had 
its origin in the following manner. Siti Fatimah 
was the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, and 
Petri Padang Gerinsing was the name of her nurse. 
One day the nurse took the sheath of a betel-nut palm- 
leaf, and on it moulded some clay into the shape of 
what is now a crocodile ; and the palm-leaf sheath 
formed the belly of the animal. Of the joints of some 
sugar-cane she made its ribs. On its head she placed 
a pointed stone, and bits of turmeric formed its eyes ; 
its tail was a leaf of the betel-nut palm. She then 
tried to give life to it, but at once it fell to pieces. 
Twice this happened, but the third time she prayed 
to the Almighty God for life for it, and at once the 
animal breathed and moved. For many years it was 
the plaything of the prophet's daughter, but at last, 
with increasing size, it became disobedient, and, Petri 
Padang Gerinsing being by this time old and feeble, 
Siti Fatimah cursed the animal, saying, ' Thou shalt 
become the crocodile of the sea, nothing that thou 
shalt eat shall have taste for thee, and pleasure and 
desire shall not be known to thee.' She forthwith 
drew out all its teeth and pulled the tonsils from its 
mouth, and then to close its mouth drove nails through 
from the upper to the lower jaw and from the lower 



68 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

to the upper jaw. The crocodile was allowed to 
escape, but soon found a way to open its jaws, and 
the nails driven in by Siti Fatimah have become the 
teeth that it now has." 

Manap knew the folk-story off by heart, and prob- 
ably repeated it in the identical words in which he 
had first heard it. 

"Now," he continued, "we must remember this: 
the eyes of the first crocodile were made of turmeric, 
and to this day a crocodile cannot struggle success- 
fully against a man who knows the properties of 
turmeric. A piece of it rubbed on the line weakens 
the crocodile's resistance, and if we sprinkle the boat 
with water in which it has been soaked the crocodile 
will not attack it. Turmeric, if rubbed on a crocodile's 
head, when the proper charms are repeated, will 
quickly kill it." 

"And this is the way to bait the hooks." 

From the coil of rattans he produced one about 
twenty yards long ; a piece of stout native-made rope 
about three yards long was attached to one end of it, 
and at the end of the rope was a hook. The fine 
strands of which the rope was composed were separate 
from one another, and when the hook was taken by a 
crocodile they would slip into the interstices of its teeth 
and afford nothing on to which the animal could bite. 

The hook was some seven inches long, and three 
and a half inches across from point to shank. It was 
of native- wrought iron, and half way up the shank on 
the side towards the point of the hook was a loop. 
The rope was attached to the hook at this loop ; that 
is to say, it was attached to the hook half-way up the 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 69 

shank, instead of at the end of the shank, as is the 
case in the ordinary hook. The point of the hook was 
not barbed, and the end of the shank was sharpened. 

The effect of this curious attachment is obvious: 
supposing the bait to be swallowed, a strain on the 
line would tend to pull the hook transversely across 
the gullet of the crocodile; the point of the hook 
would catch in some part of the throat, and, as soon 
as this happened, the sharpened shank-point would 
catch in the opposite side of the throat. An animal 
thus hooked could only escape by breaking the line. 

"I brought fowls for bait because I was hurried. 
White fowls are the best, for the crocodile can see 
them farther, but if I had had time I would have shot 
a monkey. There is nothing that a crocodile likes 
better than one of the grey long-tailed kind. He sees 
them playing and leaping in the mangrove-trees at 
high tide, and trooping over the mud flats at low tide : 
at all times they scream and scold and chatter at him, 
for between the crocodile and the monkey there is an 
old standing feud. It is seldom that a crocodile catches 
a monkey, but when he does it is very sweet to him." 

Manap then took a fowl, whitfh he had previously 
gutted and half-plucked, and eyed it carefully, and, 
after looking at it and at the hook from every point 
of view, split it open down the breast. He then 
buried the length of the hook in the incision he had 
made. The bend of the hook fitted closely to the 
curve of the fowl's rump, and the hook's point was 
hidden under the wing, while the sharpened point 
of the shank could be felt near the fowl's neck. With 
some native fibre he then bound the bait as tightly as 



70 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 

possible to the hook near the loop, taking great care 
not to impede the pivotal action of the loop. At the 
two extremities of the hook he tied the bait on with a 
much finer fibre, and tied it so that, while the meat 
could not slip and uncover the hook, yet at a sudden 
jerk on the main line the slender bands would snap, 
and the hook-point and shank-point would start from 
the protecting covering and stand ready to pierce any 
part of the crocodile's gullet that they might touch. 

It did not take him long to bait the four hooks he 
had brought, and he was then ready to make a start. In 
the meantime I had explained the reason of my having 
sent for him. Taiping, the town in which we were, is 
the capital of the leading native state of the Malay 
Peninsula, and is happy in the possession of a beautiful 
public garden and an ornamental lake. Until they 
were made, their site had been a wilderness of aban- 
doned mine-holes and spoil-banks. The Chinese method 
of winning alluvial tin ore (the mineral on which the 
source of the wealth of Perak at present depends) is 
to open an enormous pit and to bodily remove the 
earth from it until the substratum that carries the tin 
ore is exposed. When the mine is worked out and 
abandoned, there is left a hole which may vary from 
twenty to sixty feet in depth, and which, in excep- 
tional cases, may extend for half a mile in length and 
a hundred yards or more in breadth ; and beside this 
gigantic excavation, which in the rainy climate of the 
Peninsula quickly fills to the brim with water, there 
are mounds of corresponding extent where the over- 
burden has been taken out and deposited. To form 
the Taiping lake a series of such abandoned mines 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 71 

were connected, a dam erected at their lower end, and 
a small mountain-stream deviated into the enclosure. 
Many of the old spoil-banks were left to form islands 
in the lake, some of them covered with closely-mown 
turf and dotted with palms, while others, by way of 
contrast, were allowed to remain under the wild, rank, 
luxuriant growth of nature. A circular road, some 
two miles long, runs through the gardens and round 
the lake, and here the European community rides and 
drives in the afternoon ; the golf-links are on one side, 
and on the other is the race-course. It is not the sort 
of place where one would expect to find crocodiles : 
one looks for them in tidal rivers or backwaters, but 
not in an artificial lake in a public garden. Crocodiles 
have, however, the most extraordinary roving pro- 
pensities, and often leave their native river to make 
journeys of many miles overland. In the interior of 
Perak they have been found in abandoned mine-holes 
so far from any stream that it is difficult even to guess 
from which direction they have wandered, or to tell 
whether it was by an accident or design that they 
have discovered an isolated pool in a limitless extent 
of tropical forest. It made it none the less extra- 
ordinary, but it was easy to see how the crocodiles 
had got into the Taiping lake: the Squirrel Kiver, 
though a small, shallow, gravelly stream, incapable of 
affording food or shelter to a crocodile, runs close by, 
and lower down joins a tidal river. A crocodile could 
make its way either up the channel of the Squirrel or 
through the forest on its bank for a distance of some 
three miles, and it would then be opposite the lake. 
After that, to travel some two or three hundred yards 



72 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

overland and to cross a metalled cart-road would afford 
but little difficulty. It is easy to see how it is done, 
but who can say why it is done ? Why should a 
crocodile leave a river stocked with food, and explore 
an utterly unsuitable tributary for miles and then 
wander inland until it strikes a pool ? All that one 
can say is, that it does ; and rumour had it that three 
of these brutes had found their way into the lake. So 
long as they confined their attention to the fish, and 
perhaps an occasional duck, no one objected to their 
presence; but when one of them began to take the 
sheep off the bank as they came down to drink, and 
had even gone so far as to make an attempt on a cow, 
it was felt that the brutes ought to be exterminated. 
When children and ayahs were playing at the water's 
edge anything might happen. The crocodiles never 
came up to sleep on the bank in the heat of the day, 
for they had not yet so far made themselves at home 
as to dare to expose themselves to the public gaze. 
There was therefore no chance of shooting them, and 
so I sent for Manap. 

When the baits were all ready Manap and I went 
down to the lake and pushed off in a Malay dug-out to 
reconnoitre. The lake was fairly shallow toward the 
sides, but in the centre there were some very deep old 
mine-holes, and to approach these pools, which were 
almost certainly where the crocodiles were to be found, 
one had to pass by one or another of the islands. We 
decided to leave a baited line at each entrance between 
the islands, and Manap proceeded to unwind one of 
the coils of rattan, and straitened out the curves in it 
until it followed the canoe, floating on the top of the 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 73 

water like a yellow snake. Out of his basket he 
produced a piece of wood large enough to carry the 
hook and bait, and buoyant enough to support its 
weight above the level of the water. To this wood he 
fastened the bait with some bamboo pegs, and then 
gently stopped the canoe at a narrow entrance that 
led between two islands to a deep secluded pool. 
Carefully placing the bait and its wooden support in 
the water, so that it floated true and upright, he 
muttered the following invocation : 

" Sang Kaga, Sang Ragai, 
Receive this gift from Siti Fatimah. 
If thou receive it not, 
The water will choke thee, 
The bones of animals will choke thee, 
The skin of animals will choke thee, 
The blood of animals will choke thee ! " 

He then picked up the paddle and struck the water 
three resounding blows with the flat blade. " The 
crocodile will hear that/' he turned to say, " and will 
come the sooner." He then pushed the bait about 
two or three yards away from the land so that it 
floated in open water, and carefully disposed the 
rattan-line along the bushes that fringed the island 
in such manner that none of it lay in the water. 
The end of the rattan was not fastened to anything, 
and the crocodile was free to carry off hook, line, and 
bait whither it chose, but whithersoever it might go 
the rattan would float on the water's surface and 
betray the presence of the crocodile. We placed 
the three other baits in suitable localities, and then 
had done all that we could do for the present. The 



74 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

sun was setting, and as he paddled back Manap ex- 
plained that a gorge-bait is necessary and a snap- 
bait impossible; even if, as sometimes happens, a 
crocodile seizes the bait the moment that it is put 
in the water it must be given time to swallow it, 
for the hook will find no hold in the bony cartilage 
of its mouth. What surprised me more than any- 
thing was the smallness of the bait ; it seemed sur- 
prising that any animal addicted to carrying off cattle 
should deign to notice so insignificant a morsel as a 
chicken. "They will eat anything," Manap said 
"frogs or rats, if they can get nothing bigger." 

We were back at the lake a little after sunrise the 
next morning, and as soon as we got near the place 
where we had set the first line we saw that the bait 
had disappeared. Manap's eyes glistened. He put 
everything in order in the canoe, pushed the boat- 
pole, his enormous knife, and compendious basket 
into the bows of the canoe, and paddled gently towards 
the spot. Suddenly his face fell. "Misbegotten 
child of Satan ! " he muttered. Then he turned to me, 
" See, it was not a crocodile, but a scoundrelly iguana 
that has taken the bait. There is the rattan still 
hanging on the bushes. A crocodile would have 
swum away to its retreat with line and all before 
it swallowed the bait." We paddled up and found 
that the " scoundrelly iguana " had taken the bait 
out of the water, dragged it a few yards on to the 
land, and had then stripped the hook clear, leaving 
nothing but the bare metal. There was nothing to 
be done but to coil up the rattan and take it away. 
Most loathsome animals are these iguanas, to call 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 75 

them by their popular name, though " monitor lizard " 
is their more proper name. They have wonderful 
powers of scent, and are always to be found near 
carrion. When sitting up for a tiger over a " kill," 
one often sees them ; they come shambling awkwardly 
through the undergrowth, and after a careful scrutiny 
on every side tear huge mouthfuls of flesh out of the 
carcass. 

We found that the three other baits had not been 
touched, and all that we could do therefore was to 
objurgate the iguana and go home to hope that a 
crocodile would soon feel hungry. 

On the way back Manap told me the story of 
the feud between the crocodile and the monkey, to 
which he had alluded the day before. 

" Once the crocodile's wife was very sick, and it 
seemed as if she would die. The doctors and 
sorcerers who were attending her declared that the 
only chance of her recovery was that she should 
eat a monkey's heart. So the crocodile set off in 
search of a monkey. He left the sea, and ascended 
a river until he met a monkey playing on the 
banks. The crocodile called to him, ' Oh, Sir 
Monkey ! who is the wisest and cleverest doctor in 
this land?' 

" And the monkey of course said ' I am/ 

"The crocodile then explained that his wife was 
very ill, and that he would be for ever grateful if 
the monkey would prescribe for her. An enormous 
fee was demanded and agreed to, and the monkey 
stepped on to the back of the crocodile, who at once 
swam away down river. 



76 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

"When they got out to sea, the crocodile was so 
pleased with his skill and address in having duped 
the monkey that he could no longer keep the joke 
to himself. So he explained to the monkey that 
he was going to give his wife the monkey's heart 
to eat. 

"The monkey, though he nearly died of fright, 
showed no outward signs of alarm. On the contrary, 
he said that his heart was entirely at the disposal 
of the crocodile's wife, but declared that it was a 
thousand pities that the crocodile had not explained 
his purpose earlier, for he had left his heart hanging 
on a tree on the bank where he had been playing 
when the crocodile had met him. 

" He suggested that they should return to get the 
heart, and to this the crocodile, who realised that the 
monkey without its heart was of no use to him, 
agreed. 

" Back they went, therefore, and at the bank where 
they had first met the monkey pointed out a tree 
and was allowed to land. He sprang ashore, and 
climbed to the top of the nearest tree, whence he 
screamed and chattered his wrath and defiance at 
the astonished crocodile. 

"Ever since then the crocodiles and the monkeys 
have been enemies, and whenever a family of monkeys 
see a crocodile, they gather round him and ask him 
rude questions about his wife, and inquire whether 
he has lately met many monkeys' hearts hanging on 
the trees." 

The same afternoon, when the heat of the day 
was over, we went out again and found another 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 77 

bait gone. Eattan-line and all had disappeared, and 
there was no doubt that it was a crocodile this 
time. We carefully examined a deep pool that lay 
close by, and then a second pool, and afterwards a 
third inner pool from which the others led, and here 
we found the piece of wood on which the bait had 
floated. There were marks of crocodile's teeth on 
it. At the farthest end of the pool we saw the 
end of the rattan -line floating on the water, and 
knew that the crocodile was at the other end of 
it. Decks were cleared for action: Manap was of 
course barefooted, and I took off my shoes and 
stockings so that my bare feet might have as good 
a hold as possible on the smooth bottom of the 
dug-out. Everything was pushed up into the bows 
except the barbed spear which was to play an im- 
portant part in the proceedings. This spear was 
made on the same principle as a harpoon: a rope 
is attached to an iron spear -head, into a socket of 
which a shaft loosely fits ; as soon as a blow has 
been driven home with the spear the shaft detaches 
from the head, and the stricken animal is held by 
the rope and the barb. 

I stood up in the middle of the canoe, and the 
spear with its coil of rope lay at my feet. Manap 
sat in the stern paddling gently. As we approached 
the rattan-line glided away mysteriously. The croco- 
dile had seen us coming, and, unconscious of the fatal 
rattan that marked its course, had moved into deeper 
water. I seized the line and pulled in the slack 
rapidly; in an instant I felt the crocodile on the 
line, and jerked the line hard so as to snap the 



78 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

slender fibre bands round the bait and to set the 
hook free to catch in the crocodile's gullet. 

Then I held on and drove the hook well home. 
The curious electric sensation that thrills a line 
when a fish is on it told that the crocodile was 
well hooked. At once it moved off into the deep 
water at the centre of the pool, dragging the canoe 
after it. The sensation of blind terror that the brute 
felt at the pain of the hook, and of the force that 
bound it to it knew not what, was plainly trans- 
mitted along the tautened line. For some few yards 
it sullenly resisted, as I slowly hauled in the line 
hand by hand. It was numb and sick with fright; 
but only for a few yards, and then it burst into a 
wild fury. For years it had been the tyrant of the 
lake, and, since it had left its native river, had never 
come into contact with anything stronger and more 
powerful than itself, and it would not yield the 
supremacy, much less its life, without a struggle. 
Wildly lashing the water, it turned to dive to the 
bottom and to break the rattan-line. I was brought 
almost to my knees, and had to pay out the line 
I had pulled in; and it was all that I could do to 
hold on to the end of the line while the crocodile 
towed us, canoe and all, towards the second pool. 
Again I hauled in the line with all my might, and 
Manap skilfully kept the canoe head on to the 
crocodile. In the contest I had the great factor in 
my favour that I had not so much to pull the 
crocodile up to the canoe as to pull the canoe up 
to the crocodile; but, on the other hand, my foot- 
hold in the unstable cockleshell of a canoe was not 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 79 

always as sure as might be desired. After a lengthy 
struggle I managed to get the crocodile within three 
or four yards of the canoe, and in the clear blue 
water of the pool we could see its yellow length 
under the canoe fighting and snapping at the line, 
and turning and twisting as it fought. But the sight 
of the canoe was too much for it, and with a des- 
perate effort it tore the line out of my grasp until 
again only the end of it remained in my hands, and 
continued the struggle in the depths of the pool. 
Again I pulled in the line, and yard by yard it 
yielded. This time I saw that I could get it within 
reach of the canoe, and when it was within three or 
four yards of us I handed the line to Manap, in 
accordance with a preconcerted arrangement, and 
picked up the spear. 

"Stab it in the soft part of the throat, Tuan, or 
under the stomach, not in the back or sides ; and 
stab quickly, for the line may be partly bitten 
through." With straining muscles Manap hauled on 
the line, and, swirling like " Ugudwash, the Sun- 
Fish," the crocodile came up fighting through the 
water. As it came to the surface, the water that 
heaved and rocked to our exertions burst into a 
fury of foam. In the middle of the turmoil one 
could see four outspread claws with every nail out- 
stretched, a swingeing, lashing tail, and a long flat 
head with open jaws; all were mixed into a horrid 
inextricable knot like the drawing of a Chinese 
dragon on a plate. For a second it straightened, 
and as it did so Manap hauled its head above the 
level of the water, and I had a clear view of a 



80 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

whitey-yellow throat, at which I stabbed with all 
my strength. Who is responsible for the traveller's 
tale that the crocodile's skin is impervious to steel 
weapons, and even to bullets ? Under my thrust I 
felt the spear slice its way, parting the soft yielding 
flesh before it. The spear - head entered up to its 
hilt, and then I wrenched the shaft free from the 
socket and seized the coil of rope at my feet. Thus 
we now had a double hold on the crocodile Manap 
holding by the rat tan -line and hook, and I by the 
barbed spear and rope. If there had been a storm 
before, there was a tornado now. At one moment 
the open jaws would surge out of the broken water, 
and snap together in unpleasant proximity to our 
legs; the next moment the heavy tail would swing 
free of the water, and, lashing through the air with 
the cut of a flicking whip and the weighted swing 
of a falling tree, would hit the side of the canoe a 
blow that made it shiver. 

More than once the taloned claws got on the 
gunwale of the canoe, and it seemed as if in the 
blind turmoil the brute would get on board. We 
were both drenched from head to foot in the water 
that flew in every direction, and the little canoe 
rocked so violently in the waves of the commotion 
that there was no small risk of losing one's balance 
and falling in on top of the raging brute. 

"We have him too close to the boat," Manap 
shouted. "Let out more line!" We slowly paid 
out the two lines, with the result that not only 
was the struggle continued at a safer distance, but 
that the crocodile entangled itself in the lines. As 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 81 

it writhed and twisted and turned on every side 
and in every direction, the rope caught an out- 
stretched leg on one side, made a loop round it, 
and then caught in a leg on the other side. As 
each limb was caught we let out more line, so that, 
while of course the line was always taut, there was 
sufficient length of it between the crocodile and 
ourselves to enable it to entangle itself still further. 
In a few minutes all four legs were caught, and 
the animal's struggles became less violent ; for 
though most of its power lay in its tail, yet the 
legs were needed to balance the body in the water, 
and without this balance its muscular efforts became 
ill-directed and uncertain. Twice in its contortions 
the crocodile slipped the ropes from its legs, and 
the struggle began anew until they were again 
entangled. In the restraint of the entangling ropes 
the crocodile's efforts, though they increased rather 
than otherwise, had only a diminishing effect, and 
a few more minutes were all that was necessary. 
" I think that we can manage now," Manap said. 
We both pulled our lines in until the crocodile was 
a few feet from the canoe. "Will you take both 
lines one in each hand?" Manap handed his line 
over to me, and picked up a piece of stout box- 
cord some three or four yards long with a running 
noose at one end of it. "Now hold steady with 
the line on the spear-head and pull hard on the 
hook-line, so as to bring his head as far as possible 
above the water." I followed the directions, and as 
the open mouth appeared above the water Manap 
dexterously slipped the noose over the animal's 

F 



82 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

upper jaw and pulled it tight, some six inches 
behind the point of its nostrils. Then, snatching 
his opportunity, with a quick turn of his wrist he 
slipped the slack of the cord round and under the 
lower jaw. By pulling on the cord he could now 
bring upper and lower jaw together and close the 
animal's mouth. He then asked me to pull the 
crocodile closer into the boat. I did so, and for a 
part of a second the animal lay quiescent, with its 
mouth bound by the single turn of the cord. Like 
lightning, Manap in that time had twisted his 
wrist, and a second circle of the cord lay round 
the closed jaws. He drew the cord tight, and the 
teeth of each jaw pressed home into the sockets 
of the other. " Now pull his head over the gun- 
wale of the canoe." As the long pointed head 
appeared over the side of the canoe Manap firmly 
seized it by the nostril. It seemed the maddest 
thing possible. Here was a brute that a few 
seconds before had been raging like a devil incar- 
nate. We were still half blinded by the spray it 
had flung in our faces, and the dug-out still rocked 
in the waves its wild struggles had raised. For a 
moment it was still, and a cord was round its 
mouth; but the cord might so easily slip with any 
sudden movement either of the crocodile or of our- 
selves, and there was nothing to show that the 
struggle was over far from it. One shuddered to 
think of what would have happened had the cord 
slipped. The hand that pressed so confidently on 
the brute's nostrils would be snapped and seized in 
a second, Manap would be taken overboard and 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 83 

worried and shaken like a rat by a terrier, and 
would drown before my eyes in the crocodile's 
embrace. But no such thing happened. Manap 
grasped the point of the long narrow head with 
one hand, and with the other rapidly wound the 
cord round the clenched mouth, ending it off with 
a half-hitch knot. The extraordinary thing was that 
while Manap did this, though the time as a matter 
of fact was only three or four seconds, the crocodile 
remained comparatively still. The front feet, it is 
true, clawed wildly at the canoe's side, but they 
could not reach Manap's hands. The surging, swirl- 
ing turmoil ceased, and from the moment that the 
cord had just been slipped round its jaws the 
crocodile appeared to give up all heart. No sooner 
was the knot tied round the crocodile's mouth than 
Manap produced another cord and slipped it over 
a fore-leg. Pulling the leg up to the animal's side, 
he then slipped the line over its back and caught 
up the other fore-leg with it. He pulled the two 
fore-legs together over the crocodile's back as far as 
he could, and, passing the cord round them once or 
twice, tied it in a knot. With a third cord he 
noosed and tied together the two hind-legs. 

" Sudah," he said. That is finished." 

What he had effected was perfectly marvellous. 
In two minutes he had transformed a ravening 
water-devil into a trussed-up monstrosity, and his 
only weapon had been three pieces of box - cord. 
The furious monster that, all open mouth, whirl- 
ing tail, and outspread claws, had bent itself into 
strenuous coils like the Dragon of China, now lay 



84 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

long and limp beside the canoe. The tightly closed 
mouth and the legs tied awkwardly over its back 
made it look almost ridiculous. The fight was over. 
I held the rattan - line, and Manap paddled the 
canoe ashore. The crocodile did not make another 
effort. A deep groan burst from its clenched mouth 
twice or three times, and it allowed itself to be 
towed alongside the canoe like a dead thing. When 
we reached the edge of the lake Manap dragged it 
ashore by the golf - links and killed it with a few 
blows of a heavy wooden bar. It was between nine 
and ten feet long, and the clear water of the lake 
had given it a most beautiful bright yellow colour. 
The girth of its body and its weight showed that 
it had been feeding well, and as it had taken to 
attacking cattle it was time that it was caught. 
A man seized by it would have had no possible 
chance of escape. 

Such was the taking of the first crocodile that 
Manap and I caught together. Though we often 
set baits for the other two crocodiles that were said 
to inhabit the lake, we never caught them. But in 
the old mine -holes round Taiping I caught many 
afterwards, sometimes with Manap and sometimes 
without him. The second time that I went out I 
took the cord myself to tie up the crocodile's mouth. 
It was one of the most exciting moments I have ever 
experienced. As in other hazardous enterprises that 
require some nerve, such as playing with poisonous 
snakes or making parachute descents, what one most 
needs in the first essay is the confidence that can 
only come from practice. 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 85 

On another occasion B. and I set some lines in an 
abandoned mine - hole near a big mine where some 
twelve or fourteen hundred Chinese coolies were 
working. A crocodile was hooked, and when the 
coolies saw us playing it at the water's edge, they 
flocked round us to satisfy their curiosity, and so 
thickly and so closely did they press upon us that 
we were nearly pushed into the water on top of the 
struggling animal. It was only by threatening them 
with the spear that I was able to keep the barest 
space around us. Another time S. and I set two lines 
in an abandoned mine at Kamunting, and when we 
returned the next morning could find no sign of 
them. We paddled round the water's edge and 
examined every inch most carefully; then we in- 
spected a little creek that flowed into the hole, and 
followed it for half a mile or so. Not a sign of 
any rattan. We followed the creek where it led 
out of the pool, and went down it for about a mile. 
Again not a sign anywhere, and coming to the con- 
clusion that some rascal of a Chinaman had seen 
the rattans and had stolen them, we returned home 
in disgust. About a week later a note was brought 
to me from the police-station to say that a Malay 
had come there with a crocodile, which he said he 
thought belonged to me. I went over at once to 
the police-station, and there saw one of my missing 
lines, and attached to it a young crocodile. The 
Malay's story was that he was cutting firewood in 
the forest about a mile from the pool in which I 
had set my lines, and had seen the rattan lying on 
the ground. He naturally picked it up, and was 



86 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

considerably surprised to find a crocodile at the end 
of it. It was a small one, and with assistance he 
killed it. Having heard of my lost lines, he naturally 
concluded that this was one of them, and brought it 
to the police-station. To his delight I told the police 
to pay over to him the Government reward for killing 
a crocodile. Nothing was ever heard of the other 
missing line. I imagine that both lines were taken 
by crocodiles, and that the animals, after swallow- 
ing the baits, had felt suspicious of the rattan-lines 
which followed them wherever they went, and had 
left the pool in the hope of getting rid of them. 
That the animal which the Malay came across 
should have been resting so far from water is 
remarkable; and that the two animals should have 
taken the baits on the same day, and that both 
should have abandoned the pool to wander overland, 
is extraordinary. 

Sometimes one hooks a crocodile that is too big 
to be tackled. A crocodile more than twelve feet 
long has such weight and bulk and strength that 
it cannot be played from a boat without an undue 
amount of danger. " Have a rifle handy," was Manap's 
advice, " if you think that you have hooked a big 
crocodile, and play it from the bank if possible, for 
sometimes it will ' amok ' and attack a boat. If 
the crocodile floats up to the top and looks over 
the water to see what it is that pesters him, then 
do one of two things at once : shoot him if you 
have a rifle, or else drop the line and go home. 
For the next thing that he will do when he feels 



CROCODILE CATCHING. 87 

the line again will be to dash at the boat and 
board it. And then what is one to do ? " 

In the Taiping Museum hangs a crocodile twenty- 
four feet eight inches long, and when one stands in 
front of it and pictures the scene suggested by Manap, 
one cannot but echo his question 

" And then what is one to do ? " 



88 



S L A D A N G. 

THE Indian bison, known to the world at large as 
the gaur, is called by the Malays sladang. 1 It is 
only found in India, Burmah, and the Malay Penin- 
sula. There is a tradition in Ceylon that it formerly 
existed in the island but has become extinct, and 
this would seem to be true, for Robert Knox, who 
nearly two and a half centuries ago was a prisoner 
amongst the Cingalese for twenty years, gives in his 
"historical relation of the island" the following ac- 
count of the "Creatures Rare in their kind" 

Here are also wild Buffalo's; also a sort of beast 
they call Gauvera, so much resembling a Bull that 
I think it one of that kind. His lack stands up 
with a sharp ridg ; all his four feet white up half 
his Legs. I never saw but one, which was kept among 
the Kings Creatures. 

This description, though excellent so far as it goes, 
will bear a little amplification. A big bull sladang, 
the largest and noblest of all the splendid creatures 
of which the tribe of oxen and bisons is composed, 
stands eighteen hands, or six feet, at the shoulder. 
But it is the animal's massive bulk rather than its 

1 Pronounce slfi-dkng. 



SLADANG. 89 

height that is impressive. The fore-legs are short, 
and the body comes down to within two feet of 
the ground; at the shoulder, therefore, the sladang 
presents an expanse whose breadth and depth are 
most imposing, and suggestive of enormous weight 
and power. A big bull will weigh nearly a ton. 
The "ridg" to which Knox refers, runs from the 
point of the shoulder half-way down its back, where, 
with a sudden drop of about three or four inches, it 
disappears: it is caused by the elongation of the 
vertebrae above the spine, and, unless the eye can 
take in the noble girth of the animal, is apt to 
give it a somewhat "humped-up" appearance. Ex- 
cept on its forehead and below its knees, the colour 
of a bull sladang is a rich black, the hair being 
fine and sleek, and so short that the hide shows 
through it. The legs have cream-coloured stockings, 
which well set off the prevailing black. The hooves 
are fine and neatly shaped, and very small in pro- 
portion to the size of the heavy animal they have 
to carry much smaller than the splayed-out hooves 
of the buffalo, which is a far smaller animal. The 
head is very broad, the distance between the eyes 
being exceptionally wide, and the muzzle is very 
square. The forehead rises between the horns into 
a high arched ridge, that gives the animal a peculiar 
look of lofty dignity, and this frontlet is covered 
with short, crisp curls of ashy -grey hair. Lower 
on the forehead the hair gets shorter, and at the 
level of the eyes gradually shades into the glossy 
black of the rest of the body. 

But it is in the massive girth and shapely curve 



90 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

of the horns that the great beauty of the sladang 
lies. At their base, the base of an old bull's hoins 
are deeply annulated and indentated, and covered 
with many scars and rugged pits that would seem 
to tell of much battering. The horns sweep out 
boldly from the brow, curving in again at their 
extremities ; and in a most beautiful head, belong- 
ing to the first sladang that I shot, the distance 
between the points is exactly the same as the dis- 
tance between the eyes thirteen inches. These 
horns measure six feet and a few inches from tip 
to tip along the outer curve and across the fore- 
head, and their circumference at the base is nine- 
teen inches. But on the living animal the head 
looks small in proportion to the gigantic bulk of 
the body. It is the relatively small head and ex- 
traordinarily small hooves that give the sladang an 
appearance of high breeding, which goes far to make 
it so noble -looking a creature. The disproportion 
between the size of the head and the bulk of the 
body is so marked, that my disappointment at the 
head of the first sladang that I shot is still fresh 
in my memory. It was a splendid animal, exactly 
eighteen hands at the shoulder, and of enormous 
girth ; but I had not seen a sladang before, and the 
head looked very small. T. and I were in the wilds 
of the forest of the Semantan district, and when we 
returned to the boat we sent his five boatmen to get 
the head and as much of the meat as they required. 
I was surprised to find on their return that it was as 
much as they could do to carry the head alone, 
and still more astonished to discover later that, 



SLADANG. 91 

with the luck of a beginner, I had obtained one of 
the finest heads ever seen in Pahang. 

T.'s head boatman, whose visions of preparing a 
vast supply of sun-dried meat were dispelled, was 
seriously annoyed. "The meat is left in the forest 
while the bones are preserved in the house/' was 
his scathing comment. 

The Malays have, I think, an exaggerated opinion 
of the savage disposition of the sladang. They be- 
lieve that it will often charge unprovoked, and they 
always take great care to avoid any place where 
fresh tracks are to be seen. But I have not heard 
of an authenticated case of an unprovoked attack, 
and in the instances where men have been charged 
unawares, the cause may perhaps be reasonably 
ascribed either to their stumbling upon an animal 
that was nursing a wound inflicted by some one else, 
or to their meeting the mother of a newly -born 
calf. 

A wounded sladang is probably the most danger- 
ous of all big game. Not only will it charge, but 
it will hunt down a man with the utmost vindic- 
tiveness and tenacity of purpose. Of this, a striking 
instance came under my notice in an inquiry re- 
garding the death of a Malay in the Tembeling dis- 
trict. Two men had gone out to shoot sladang, 
and the survivor, who told the story, had wounded 
a bull. It charged him, and he tried to seek refuge 
behind a gigantic merbau tree that, luckily for him, 
stood in a little open spot, unencumbered by under- 
growth or creepers. But the sladang saw him, and 
came round the tree after him, like a terrier after 



92 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

a rat. Kound the tree dashed the Malay, keeping 
an outspread finger on its trunk, and round after 
him came the sladang. He could not gain on it, 
and it could not catch him ; but, as he ran, its 
jaws slobbered blood and saliva upon his back. 

While the animal followed him with outstretched 
muzzle, its horns, of course, lay innocuous upon its 
shoulders; and the moment that it tried to get its 
head down to throw its horns forward into action, 
the circle in which the two ran was so small that 
the man gained ground. The other man watched 
this performance from behind another tree, and 
after a while rashly shouted to his friend to make 
a rush to another tree. The sladang heard the call, 
stopped, saw the man, and charged him straightway, 
goring him so that he died a few minutes later. 

To corroborate his story, the survivor produced 
his coat, the back of which was drenched and 
clotted with blood and saliva. 

Of the supreme courage of a sladang I once saw 
a striking instance when a bull, so badly wounded 
that it could only manage a shuffling hobble, pre- 
ferred to charge me at this slow and painful pace 
rather than to die with its back to a foe. 

When I was in charge of Ulu Pahang some years 
ago, sladang were comparatively common in the down 
river districts, but my official duties kept me so busy 
in the mining area up river that it was only rarely 
that I was able to visit that part of the country. 
I had no regular tracker, and when I could get away 
took with me as gun-carrier one of my boatmen, or 
a local Malay. 



SLADANG. 93 

On one occasion I was able to take advantage of 
some Government holidays, and as the long, hot, lazy 
hours of the afternoon were wearing away my house- 
boat gently drifted alongside a landing-stage at the 
village of Pulau Tawar. 

There we tied up, and as soon as we had made 
fast my old friend the district chief came on board 
to hear my news and tell me his. I had intended 
to go on farther to Padang Tunggal, a plain some 
distance farther down the river, but he suggested 
that instead of that, the next morning I should go 
to a plain, some three miles inland on the opposite 
bank, which was periodically visited by a herd of 
sladang. As soon as I had decided to act upon his 
recommendation, he sent for his two local Malays, 
brothers named Saleh and Yusuf, who had some 
reputation for tracking and shooting deer, to go 
with me as guides. The discussion which followed 
their arrival abundantly proved two things, first, 
that we ought to arrive upon the plain at the 
first dawn, and secondly, that in order to do so 
we ought to start about two hours before daylight. 
This being the case, the two men, after some 
expostulations and promises, acquiesced in my de- 
mand that they should sleep the night upon my 
house-boat. 

At three o'clock the next morning the alarum went 
off just as I was striking a match to see what the 
time was. I tumbled the blanket off me for, though 
we were little above sea-level, and only three or four 
degrees north of the equator, the nights in the Malay 
Peninsula are cool all the year round and pulled 



94 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

on my clothes while the crew and the servants 
bestirred themselves lighting lamps and setting a 
fire. Breakfast was soon prepared, and at about a 
quarter to four we were ready to start. The night 
was pitchy black, the sky weighted with heavy 
clouds, and the air full of the smell of rain. By 
the light of a lamp we lowered ourselves from the 
house-boat into a little dug-out that lay alongside. 
It was an unstable little craft at any time, but the 
darkness seemed to make it more perilously sensitive 
than ever to the slightest motion of an occupant. 
Hurricane lamp and rifle were placed in front of 
me, the Malays took the bow and stern, and then, 
with barely an inch of free-board, we pushed out 
into the full current of the broad, black, swiftly- 
flowing river. The stream swept us away, and the 
darkness swallowed up the house-boat. The Malays 
kept the dug-out in a diagonal line across the river, 
ever aiming at unseen points, below which we were 
ever drifting, and at last, after hard and long 
paddling, we made the farther bank. We landed 
safely, and then by the light of the lamp had to 
make our way along a path through the forest. 
Everything was very still in the darkness. Occa- 
sionally we disturbed some small bird that broke 
into frightened twitterings, and then after a sleepy 
chirp or two fell asleep again. Sometimes a cicada 
awoke to utter one sudden piercing shrill, to be 
followed by as sudden a silence ; and now and again 
some brown thing would scuttle from under foot. 
After half a mile, made long and slow by the dif- 
ficulties of the darkness, we emerged upon an open 



SLADANG. 95 

plain. It was covered with a strong rank growth 
of lalang grass that reached up to our waists. It 
dripped with dew. On every blade hung beads so 
full and so weighted that they could scarce hold to 
their support. As we forced our way through the 
long grass, the swathes bent themselves to the 
pressure of our bodies, clung closely and heavily 
to every curve and movement of the limbs, and, as 
it were in an agony of self-abnegation, rubbed off 
on us all the moisture that they carried. 

In a minute we were wet through, and I had to 
transfer my cartridge-belt from my waist to my neck, 
and to hold my rifle above my head. And in the 
darkness of the night how cold the clammy wetness 
was. Long dead, fallen trees lay across the path at 
intervals, and over their trunks, covered sometimes 
with loose treacherous bark that slipped under our 
feet, we had to clamber. Smaller trees and unex- 
pected branches formed every now and again painful 
traps to the shins of one or another of us. After 
a time we came to a little stream. This in its normal 
state was not more than knee-deep, but a local rain- 
storm at its source a few miles away had swollen it 
into flood, and now in petty vehemence it swirled 
almost breast-high. 

The wet lalang grass had thoroughly chilled us, 
but this forest torrent was icy cold. As we lowered 
ourselves carefully from the bank into its black 
depths, toeing to find the bottom, it took our breath 
away. Holding lamp, rifles, and cartridges high above 
our heads, we had then to stem the rushing water, 
while step by step we felt for foothold among the 



96 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

loose boulders that strewed its bed. Though the 
stream was not more than a few yards wide, the 
passage was in the darkness that our lamp but feebly 
pierced far from easy or even safe. At last we stood 
upon the farther bank, dripping and miserably shiver- 
ing. Our path continued through the plain for some 
little way, and then we re-entered the forest. A 
short walk took us to another plain, which was the 
place where we might expect to find the sladang, 
We were slightly before our time. There was a grey 
light in the east, but it was still so dark that an object 
at a distance of more than a few yards was invisible. 
The light increased momentarily, and as it spread 
higher and wider through the sky the grey grew clear 
and pure and ivory-like in a seeming transparency. 
The birds awoke to shake themselves and to utter their 
first morning twitterings, and among the tree-tops a 
family of gibbons called to one another in melancholy 
piercing cries. The nightjars, that had sat silent for 
the hours since midnight, bestirred themselves to 
swoop and circle, uttering their plaintive call, for a 
few minutes before they sought a shady shelter for 
the day. We could soon discern the line of forest 
that surrounded and shut in the plain. The ivory 
grey of the sky quickly turned to saffron, and the 
saffron to yellow. The yellow turned to gold, and 
then we could see the extent of the plain that lay 
before us. A light mist rose from the open expanse. 
It broke up into curling flocks, which blew lightly 
away with the first gentle breeze of morning, fading 
as they rolled over the tree -tops into thin steam- 
like streaks. 



SLADANG. 97 

Far away in the corner of the plain to our right I 
could see, in the still uncertain light, a brown mass 
like an ant-hill : then it moved a few paces, and we 
knew that it was a sladang. The first thing to be 
done was to test the wind. The direction taken by 
the mist showed that the little wind that moved was 
in our favour, but to make doubly sure I pulled out 
my Malay knife from the wooden sheath in which it 
hung at my belt, and peeling off a shaving or two 
from my thumb-nail watched the particles flutter to 
the ground. In a hurried consultation we decided 
that our best chance was to cross the open plain at 
the point where we were, and then to skirt along the 
forest on the farther side. Crouching low in the tall 
lalang grass, we made our way with little difficulty 
through the plain, and noiselessly crept through the 
forest undergrowth to make for a point whence I 
wished to get another view of the sladang. 

We reached the spot in safety, and saw, some 
300 yards away, two magnificent animals grazing 
in the open plain. Now that it was daylight, they 
were seeking the cover of the forest, but, as it was 
yet early dawn, they walked quite leisurely, browsing 
as they went, moving forward a step or two at a time 
and stopping again to feed. Towards our left, some 
quarter of a mile away, the plain ran into the forest 
in a little secluded bay, and the sladang had their 
heads turned in this direction. I again tested the 
direction of the wind with a shaving from my thumb- 
nail, and then we crept back into the forest to inter- 
cept the sladang. We had no time to lose, for the 
animals would certainly not remain in the open much 

G 



98 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

longer, and any sudden alarm a squirrel's chatter or a 
sudden meeting with a wild pig might send them 
trotting into the safety and cover of the forest. On 
the other hand, we had to move in perfect silence, 
for every animal knows the risks to which the ex- 
posure of the open plain subjects it, and is doubly 
watchful. 

Even when one hacks a path, it is not easy to make 
a way through the wild profusion and tangled thorny 
growth of a Malay forest. But when one is tracking 
one dares not use a knife, for the sound of the first 
chop would give the alarm. It is bad enough to have 
to crawl and creep and wriggle and struggle with 
every obstacle that thorn and spike can offer, but that 
is not all. Far from it. You see a bough barring 
your way. In its present position it is too low to be 
crawled under, too high to be stept over : you must 
raise it slightly with your left hand and then insinuate 
yourself underneath it. Your right hand holds your 
heavy rifle. While you are in this strained attitude, 
looking for a place where you can noiselessly set 
down your right foot, you see that the bough is 
covered with red ants, which ran down to it from 
their nest on the parent tree the moment that your 
touch communicated the alarm. Their little black 
beady eyes gleam with fury, and their red mandibles 
are open to their widest extent. They carry the after 
part of their bodies high in the air, so that the slim 
waist is strained almost into a right angle, and they 
seem to writhe in a frenzied anticipation of the 
moment when the time to bite will come. You cannot 
draw back : you must go on, and you cannot afford to 



SLADANG. 99 

wait. An ant or two runs up your wrist, while others 
bide their time, waiting until you are under the bough 
to drop on to you. One bites at your coat, but miss- 
ing the responsive twinge of sentient flesh, races over 
you until it finds the nape of your neck. Here it stops, 
and gives you a bite so full of formic venom that it 
feels more like a sting than a bite ; and though you have 
been expecting it, you cannot help wincing. The 
ant holds on in fury, the mandibles, legs, and fore- 
part of the body so tightly clenched to your skin that 
they are almost motionless, while the after part of the 
body wriggles convulsively to put more force into the 
bite. Other ants bite your face, or dive into your hair 
to bite your scalp. Suddenly you find that an ant has 
found its way down your neck under your vest, and 
has run on until it has reached the small of your 
back. There, when retreat is impossible and death 
certain, it bites and bites and bites until you kill it. 
And then, when you attempt to pluck it away, often 
you pull it in two, and leave the head hanging on to 
the skin in which the mandibles are embedded. 

But the ants are not as bad as the leeches. Walk 
you never so lightly, the weight of your footsteps gives 
the news of your approach, and upon the leaves and 
grass -stalks and the decaying vegetation that lies 
everywhere underfoot, the brown forest leeches stand 
up in eager anticipation. They are of all sizes, from 
the baby that is scarcely thicker than a thread to the 
full grown one of an inch and a half long. They stand 
on their tails, swaying their bodies and bowing their 
heads on every side to discover the direction from 
which the sound comes. They have a quaintly fantastic, 



100 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

mincing appearance, from which the Malays borrow a 
simile to express the affected walk of the damsels of 
their country. 

But when a leech sees the object of its search there 
is no further delay no more bowing and curtseying ; 
it races towards its goal. The head is thrust out as 
far as it will reach, and the mouth seizes hold of what- 
ever it may touch, a leaf or blade or the bare soil. 
The body is bent into a great loop that brings the 
tail up to the head. Then the long body straightens 
again, and the head is thrust forward once more. Each 
step is the full length of the body, and the leech 
covers the ground in graceful sinuosities that remind 
one of galloping greyhounds. 

And when the leech gets on to you it wastes no 
time. Should there be no opening at the top of your 
boot, and should the folds of your putties afford no 
entrance, it climbs until it reaches the place where 
your knickerbockers button at the knee. This is the 
place where it generally finds access. But it is im- 
material to the leech where it gets at you : get at you 
it will. If every other opening is unavailable, it will, 
if not picked off sooner, climb until it reaches your 
neck. The sense of smell seems to be strongly 
developed in these pests, for when your blood begins to 
flow after a leech has dropped off you, gorged and pear- 
shaped, all the leeches that get upon you subsequently 
make their way to the one place. Sometimes you may 
pick off a handful of leeches that hang in a cluster, all 
clotted with gore and slime, round the side of your 
knee, and find that you have only three or four other 
leeches on the whole of the rest of your body. 



SLADANG. 101 

It adds to the difficulties of attempting to pick a 
way over a carpet of fallen twigs and crackling leaves, 
when you see that a leech is racing to catch your boot. 
In another two or three strides it will reach you. To 
move your foot before you can seize hold of it may 
mean that you may snap a dry branch underfoot, and 
alarm the animal you are stalking; to let the leech 
get on to you, means that unless you stop to pick it off 
it will leave a punctured wound upon you that will 
cause you some days of considerable irritation ; and to 
stop to pick it off may mean that another leech, or 
perhaps two, will take advantage of the delay to climb 
upon you unawares. Among your winged worries are 
mosquitoes, horse-flies, and an occasional skirmisher 
from a wasp's nest. 

I well remember the leeches in this patch of forest, 
for one of the bites ulcerated, and some months elapsed 
before it was cured. When we got to the forest edge 
I got on my hands and knees, and crawled until I 
could peer over the plain. What a sight it was ! 
Instead of the two sladang that I had seen, a herd of 
eleven of these magnificent animals was quietly grazing 
in the open plain in front of me. Not thirty yards 
away, and just opposite to me, were a couple of bulls. 
A huge gaunt cow was a little distance behind them, 
and beyond her the farthest of all but not more 
than seventy yards away, was the big bull of the herd. 
A smaller bull and some cows with calves were feeding 
a little way apart, and somewhat to my right. The 
little bay or inlet, where the plain ran into the forest, 
was slightly to my left. The wind blew from them to 
us, bringing a faint odour of the sweet rich fragrance 



102 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

of cattle. Only once have I had a sight of animal life 
that could compare with this herd of sladang; and 
that was when a Malay and I were alone in the depths 
of the wildest forest far from any human habitation 
and at midnight saw a great solitary wild elephant 
taking a bath at a sulphur spring, peacefully drinking 
and besprinkling himself, while the moonlight poured 
down through the silent trees and shone upon its 
black glistening body and long gleaming tusks. 

But I had little time to watch this herd of sladang. 
The big bull had his head in the air, and was staring 
in my direction over the ridge of the gaunt cow's 
back. As he seemed suspicious, I was afraid that he 
had seen us move, and made haste to fire before he 
should give the alarm. How clearly I see it all the 
great noble head, the grey hair upon the brow, the 
glossy jet black of the rest of the head, the massive 
size and shapely curve of the horns. 

I only saw his head, for the gaunt cow covered the 
rest of him, and, aiming to shoot clear of the cow, 
I aimed too high, and missed. 

The whole herd dashed away to my right, leaving in 
the first alarm the little bay for the open plain. The 
four animals in front of me presented their broadsides, 
but the big bull was hidden by the cow, and I was 
unable to get a second shot at him. With my left 
barrel I fired at one of the other bulls. Then suddenly 
the sense of the dangers of the open plain overcame 
the first panic, and the whole herd turned sharply 
and, with the big bull leading it, galloped back again 
over the open plain, making for the nearest cover, 
which was the opposite point of the little bay. They 



SLADANG. 103 

were not more than a hundred yards away, and broad- 
side on. 

I turned for my second rifle to Saleh, who had 
been standing close behind me when I fired. But to 
my horror I saw that he had slipped away a yard or 
two to one side of me ; and, even as I turned, I saw 
him fire both barrels into the air high over the backs 
of the galloping animals. I reloaded my own rifle 
as quickly as possible, but before I could get the 
stock to my shoulder the animals had reached the 
cover of the forest. It was all over. I turned again 
to Saleh, who was reloading the rifle, and, now that 
the madness of the moment had left him, was looking 
somewhat sheepish in anticipation of my displeasure. 

But I could not trust myself to speak. It was 
bad enough to have missed such a shot at seventy 
yards, and to know that the chance of a lifetime 
had presented itself only to be thrown away; but 
it was far worse to feel that there had been such 
an extraordinary opportunity of retrieving a failure, 
when the big bull's great shoulders had offered so 
easy a shot as he galloped by at the head of his herd, 
and that this wretched man had spoilt everything 
by his miserable imbecility. It was not as if I had 
not told him what to do, I said to myself miserably. 
It was not as if he had not known perfectly what he 
had to do. If there had been any possible good in 
what he had done, one could have stood it; but to 
think that he had senselessly, uselessly, loosed off 
both barrels into the sky ! It was excruciating. I 
realised helplessly that the big bull and the herd 
that had been so close to me were still galloping 



104 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

madly, scattered in several directions, through the 
forest. Though they had passed out of earshot, I 
knew that they were still crashing their way through 
every obstacle, and that it would be hours before 
they recovered from even the first shock of the firing. 
It was out of the question to follow them. 

But as the herd had wheeled about in its gallop 
through the plain, I had seen the bull, at which I 
had fired with my second barrel, leave the others 
and turn away to the right, alone. I told Yusuf to 
take the gun from Saleh and to give him the lantern 
and luncheon case instead; and then the two men 
followed me into the plain. We soon found marks 
of blood. When the rest of the herd had turned, the 
instinct of the wounded animal had led it to leave its 
fellows, and to nurse its pain and wound in seclusion. 
We followed the tracks in gloomy silence. As we 
left the plain to enter the forest again, the unhappy, 
disgraced Saleh spoke to me for the first time. 

"Pardon, but there is something that we should 
do before we follow farther." 

I stopped, and he explained what he wanted to do. 
Plucking a couple of leaves from the nearest tree, he 
folded each leaf in two, and slipped one into the 
other, so that the fold of the top leaf enclosed one 
half of the lower leaf, and the fold of the lower leaf 
enclosed a half of the top leaf. Then with a small 
twig he pegged the leaves into a footprint of the 
wounded animal, and muttered over them a charm 
to prevent the sladang from turning to charge us. 
The folding of the leaves is symbolical, and is the 
expression of an idea that is common to many coun- 



SLADANG. 105 

tries. An insect that crawled along the folded leaf 
from its stem to its tip would find itself, at the end 
of the journey, no farther than it had been at the 
beginning. In the same way the animal against 
which the charm is directed is supposed to be unable 
to advance, and to be forced to retire by the way 
that it had come. The shape of a horse-shoe conveys 
the same idea. The shoe that is so often nailed to 
the stable or the dairy door in English farmyards is 
placed there to turn back any fairies and sprites that 
might cause mischief among the horses or cows. The 
superstructure of a Chinese grave is built in the 
shape of a contracted crescent, in order to repel any 
evil spirits that may attempt to enter the tomb. 
And the folded leaves are supposed to prevent the 
big game of the Malay forests from charging its 
pursuers. We followed the tracks for some little 
distance, going slowly and carefully through the thick 
undergrowth, for we knew that we should probably 
be charged. On every side, where the thickets spread 
a leafy covering over the darkness that they enclosed, 
and the tree-trunks massed closely one behind the 
other to intercept the line of vision, we tried to make 
out, pausing between each step, the form of the great 
animal we sought. At last I heard its heavy laboured 
breathing. I crept up cautiously, and saw it lying 
down. As it leapt to its feet I fired, and it fell, 
struggling in the convulsions of death. The Malays 
saw that it' was helpless, and rushed upon it to cut 
its throat before the breath of life should have 
departed. 

When this was done, and the sting of the " might- 



106 IN MALAY FOEESTS. 

have-been " somewhat deadened in the comparative 
success of the day, Saleh found a fit time to make his 
apologies and excuses. 

" I could not help it," he explained ; " when your 
gun said rap, my gun had to say rap too. It would 
not be resisted. I was wrong, and any punishment 
that is inflicted I will undergo. But but I did it 
because I could not help it." 

The appeal was irresistible: not that I had any 
desire to resist it, and we made friends again. The 
Malays produced their inevitable cigarettes coarse 
Java -grown tobacco, wrapt in the inner skin of a 
palm-leaf, and we sat down to discuss the points 
of the dead animal. They both considered it a matter 
for congratulation that I had shot this young bull 
rather than the old patriarch. To soothe any bitter- 
ness that they imagined might, despite the final 
success, still remain at the thought of the preceding 
failure, they explained to one another, for my benefit, 
that the flesh of the old bull would have been far too 
tough. This animal was exactly right, just young 
enough to be still tender, and just big enough to 
provide meat for every one. Of course, there would 
have been more to eat on the old one, but without 
doubt things were far better as they were. The 
difference in the size of the trophies did not enter 
into their calculations, but the memory haunted me 
of those grand horns and that massive head. 

Saleh turned the conversation to the subject of the 
charm of the folded leaves, and having, with all the 
deftness of a folk-lorist stalking a folk-tale, invited 
my confidence by telling me all about its meaning, 



SLADANG. 107 

asked me in return to impart the nature of the charm 
that I had used when I had peeled the shaving from 
my thumb. I am afraid that it was in vain that I 
explained that I had only wished to test the wind, 
and in vain that I assured the two men, in reply to 
further questions, that it had nothing to do with 
preventing the sladang from taking alarm or from 
winding us ; and I should not be surprised if to this 
day they believe that an interesting bit of European 
hunting lore had on this occasion come under their 
observation, and that the secret of it had been jeal- 
ously preserved and kept from them. 

After a short rest we finished our cigarettes and 
returned to the river to get men to cut up the carcass. 
It was nearly midday, and the open lalang plain 
through which we had so painfully stumbled in the 
darkness was baking in the sun. The dew had long 
since evaporated, and the grass blades stood stiff, 
hard, and dry. Long wavy lines of heat rose from 
the plain and quivered against the background of a 
cloudless sky. Dragon-flies, iridescent and bejewelled, 
poised themselves over the grass, or, darting with 
crisp, crackly noises, hawked for wasps and flies. 
Eosy - breasted swallows circled overhead, and bee- 
eaters, with gorgeous plumage of purple and green, 
were making short flights with sudden upward swoops 
to catch the dragon-flies. 

On the topmost branch of a small shrub, conspic- 
uous by its isolation in the middle of the plain, an 
extraordinary bird called a crow-pheasant seemed to 
be drying itself in the sun. Its tail and wings were 
spread out to their fullest extent, and every feather 



108 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

seemed either to be awry or on the point of dropping 
out. One felt sorry for the ungainly and awkward 
appearance of the poor thing, which looked like a 
very dilapidated and badly stuffed pheasant ; but any 
sympathy was misplaced, for, in reality, it was show- 
ing itself off for the benefit of a mate which lay 
hidden on its nest in a lalang tussock close by. 

When we reached the bank, the great Pahang 
river, so dark and fiercely flowing when we had 
crossed it in the little dug-out not many hours before, 
lay at our feet, a broad, smooth, untroubled sheet of 
silver. 



109 



THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH. 

ON the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, between the 
Perak and the Selangor rivers, lies the great Bernam 
river. The Perak river is thickly populated, and 
steamers and launches churn up its tidal waters every 
hour of the day. Near its mouth are large sugar 
and cocoanut plantations, and a railway runs inland 
to feed the busy mining centres where tens of 
thousands of Chinese coolies work, like yellow ants, 
to dig out the tin-ore that affords the greater part 
of the world's supply. It is the same in Selangor. 
But the Bernam river lies untouched. At its mouth 
a fishing village, evil - looking and evil - smelling, 
huddles on either bank : then the great river sweeps 
inland; it is navigable to steamers for a greater 
length than any other river in the peninsula, but 
an occasional Government launch is the only vessel 
that disturbs its waters. About a hundred miles in- 
land it opens into a vast, dreary, dismal morass, named 
Simpang Kadangsa, and loses itself in a wide spread 
of floating vegetation through which the Malays with 
trouble hack a way for their boats. Above this 
horrible pathless expanse it is a clear mountain 
stream flowing through magnificent forest, inhabited 



110 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

only by herds of elephants and numbers of rhino- 
ceroses. Near the hills from which it takes its 
source, at a place where the stream is little more 
than knee -deep, one suddenly comes upon a Malay 
village of considerable size. It is a lovely spot, and 
its beauty is intensified by its contrast with the 
sombre forest from which one emerges : a wide plain 
of crisp springy turf, grazed short by buffaloes and 
cattle, with cocoanut palms waving over the brown 
thatched houses that fringe the river-bank, and padi- 
fields covered with the rich and tender green of the 
young rice-plants. 

Tin-ore was found in small quantities in the hills 
behind this village, and the consequent immigration 
necessitated a magistrate being stationed there. I 
was sent there in 1895, and Tanjong Malim as I 
knew it was a purely Malay village. 

My quarters were placed on the river-bank, and 
facing the house, a little more than a mile away, a 
hill named Changkat Asah rose abruptly from the 
level plain that stretched out on all sides around it. 
The cultivated area extended to its base, but thence 
to its summit, some 700 feet high, it was clad in 
virgin forest. The huge dark mass dominated the 
beautiful village at its base. It was of course the 
feature of the place, and an object of superstitious 
dread to the Malays. Many were the stories told 
of the spirits that dwelt there, and no searcher of 
rattans or gutta dared to remain on its slopes after 
dark. Every Jin and Efrit known to the Eastern 
mind ; the malignant demons that change their form 
at will the familiar spirits of sorcerers ; heads of 



THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH. Ill 

women that roam the forest to suck the blood of 
men; the Voice-Folk whom all can hear and none 
may see, every kind of spirit lived on Changkat 
Asah. The mass of stone that forms its highest 
point was said to be a bilek hantu, " a spirit's room." 
The Malays believed that this formless mass took 
shape at night; and men have told me that the 
lights in this meeting - room of the spirits might 
occasionally be seen from the plain below. 

Some twenty years ago the Trigonometrical Survey 
Department wished to have the summit of the hill 
cleared for an observation station, and, as might be 
expected, experienced the greatest difficulty in get- 
ting any Malay to take up the contract. Finally a 
foreigner from Sumatra a man named Baginda 
Sutan was induced by the high price offered to 
undertake the work. He persuaded some other 
foreigners from the states of Kedah and Kelantan 
to join him, and at first they climbed the hill every 
morning to their work and returned before dusk. 
But they thus lost half their day's work, and after 
a while Baginda Sutan asked them if they were 
prepared to sleep on the hill. This, though he made 
light of the local reputation of the hill, and pointed 
out that hitherto they had met with no supernatural 
obstacles, they absolutely refused to do. As no 
promises of higher pay would move them, Baginda 
Sutan decided to shame them into compliance, and 
announced his intention of staying on the hill the 
next night by himself. He felt confident that after 
a night or two, when nothing had happened, his men 
would be encouraged by his example, and that they 



112 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

would all sleep on the hill, and be able to put in 
a full day's work. The next day, therefore, when the 
Malays returned down the hill in the afternoon, 
Baginda Sutan chaffed them cheerily for a lot of 
cowards, and remained behind hard at work felling 
a tree. When the men returned next morning they 
found only a raving lunatic. 

The contract not unnaturally terminated abruptly, 
and when, some years later, I came to Tanjong Malim, 
the Trigonometrical Survey Department was still 
without a station on Changkat Asah. I saw Baginda 
Sutan once by chance in a Malay house, and thus 
heard the story of his fate. The poor man, who had 
once been a flourishing energetic petty contractor, was 
in a state of absolute idiotcy; and never since the 
day that his terrified men had conducted him down 
the hill, had he been able to give any account of 
what he had experienced. 

Soon after my arrival an officer named B. was sent 
by the Survey Department to put up a station on 
Changkat Asah. He employed Javanese coolies, and 
at first lived with me, climbing the hill daily with 
his men until they had put up a shanty for him and 
another for themselves. He then went to live on 
the hill while superintending the clearing of the site 
and the erection of the station, and the fact of his 
being a white man gave his men sufficient confidence 
to follow him. Two or three days later he tottered 
into my house. Never have I seen a man in such 
a state of absolute collapse. Ghastly white, as if all 
the blood had been drained from him, with shaking 
hands and trembling mouth, he told me his story. 



THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH. 113 

I hasten to say that it had nothing to do with the 
supernatural inhabitants of Changkat Asah; his ad- 
venture had been with a tiger. On Changkat Asah 
his apology for a house consisted of palm-leaf walls, 
a split palm flooring, and a palm-leaf roof. It was 
built on the side of the hill close to the summit, and 
the slope of the ground was such that, while on one 
side the flooring was on the level of the ground, on 
the other it was some two feet above it. His Chinese 
servant occupied a small lean-to, which was built a 
few feet lower down the hill, and his Javanese coolies 
lived nearly two hundred yards away by the source 
of a small stream whence they got their water-supply. 
The second night that he had slept on the hill he 
had been awakened by some animal breathing and 
moving outside his shanty, but, imagining the sound 
to be that of wild pigs, had turned over and gone 
to sleep again. The next morning his coolies pointed 
out to him the tracks of a tiger that had walked 
round and round him during the night. He had 
no weapons with him, and very foolishly did not 
think of sending down the hill for any. He went 
to his day's work forgetting all about the matter, 
and at night went to bed without a thought of any 
danger. Soon after he had gone to sleep he awoke 
with a start and heard the tiger close beside him 
outside the house. 

His mattress lay on the floor close to the wall, on 
the side near the summit, and here, as I have said, 
the floor was on a level with the ground outside. 
The tiger was on this side of the house, on the rising 
ground above him, and only a few feet separated 

H 



114 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 

them a few feet and some palm-leaves loosely strung 
together. His first idea was to make a rush for the 
door on the other side of the house, but this he 
did not dare to do, for fear that the tiger hearing 
him attempt to decamp might forget its caution and 
jump in upon him. He therefore lay motionless and 
shouted for his Chinese boy to bring a lamp but 
then, getting a sleepy answer from the boy, unluckily 
told him to hurry up, as there was a tiger outside. 
After that the boy not unnaturally refused to move, 
and so B. lay there on his mattress absolutely de- 
fenceless and in the dark. When he had shouted to 
the boy the tiger had kept quiet, but as soon as he 
stopped shouting he heard it again. He heard the 
tiger smelling at him, and the sniff-sniffing of its 
nostrils as it tried to take in all that there was to 
be smelt, in the same way that a hound snuffs up a 
stale scent or tries to make out what some strange 
food may be. The heavy fetid breath of the animal 
was over him, and the deep body sound that is half 
purr half growl vibrated in his ear. 

Again B. shouted until he had to stop for want of 
breath, and again the tiger kept perfectly quiet. 
When B. stopped shouting, and lay with gasping 
lungs and throbbing heart, hoping that he might 
have frightened the animal away, he would hear after 
a minute or two a gentle sniff outside which told that 
the tiger was still there. Again he would yell as long 
and as loud as he was able, but all in vain ; when his 
voice ceased, he would hear the quiet sound outside, 
within perhaps two, perhaps three, feet of him not 
more patient as the mouse within the wainscoting, 



THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH. 115 

imminent and awful as death incarnate. The wretched 
man soon despaired of making himself heard by the 
coolies in their shed below : they were a considerable 
distance away, and as they were on a lower elevation, 
B.'s voice did not reach down to them through the 
heavy forest. There was nothing to be hoped for 
from the Chinese boy, who had seen that his best 
chance of safety lay in perfect silence though, poor 
wretch, he too would probably have been glad to have 
been able to relieve his feelings by yelling. Let those 
who, under like circumstances, would have carried 
unarmed a lamp from one house to another accuse 
him of cowardice. 

B., though he had no hopes of obtaining assistance, 
had no option but to continue shouting as long and as 
often as he could, for the brute outside seemed to gain 
encouragement, as evidenced by deeper and louder 
sounds from anything longer than a momentary silence. 
Twice he tried to rise stealthily from his mattress 
to make a rush from the door, but, though he at- 
tempted to cover the sound of his movements by his 
shouts, the creaking of the light flooring betrayed any 
movement, and a savage growl warned him to desist. 
Though in this agony of mind and utter physical 
exhaustion, B. was, he said, beset by a curious diffi- 
culty : he was at a loss for words to shout. He had 
to shout to keep the tiger from leaping in upon him, 
and he could not shout unless he could think of some- 
thing to articulate. He had ceased to call for his 
men, and for hours yelled furious orders to the tiger. 
Finally, as hour after hour passed by in the alterna- 
tions of the paroxysms of the man and the subdued 



116 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 

contented sounds of the tiger that held him at its 
mercy, he was so wrought that, without hope of any 
chance of life, he shouted out at the top of his voice 
the prayers he had learned as a child. Every time he 
ceased for want of breath it seemed as if the strength 
to begin again would fail him. More than once he 
was tempted to hasten the end he felt could not be 
far off by getting up from his bed and thus bringing 
the tiger upon him. But this he could not bring him- 
self to do. In this way the poor man passed the 
night. He first heard the tiger at about nine o'clock, 
and it was not until the day began to break that it 
left him. 

After hearing B/s story, I decided to go up the hill 
with him and to wait for the tiger that night. In the 
afternoon two Malays came up with us and tied up 
a goat outside the house in which B. had slept, making 
a seat for us on the trigonometrical station that was 
being erected a few yards away. I was surprised at 
the tracks outside the little palm-leaf house: the 
tiger had walked up and down, up and down, beside 
the house, and deep prints showed where it had lain 
facing the place on the bed where B.'s head had been. 
The two front paws were within two feet of the bed, 
and the impression showed that the tiger had been 
there for many hours. The palm-leaf wall was so 
flimsy (any cat could have jumped through it) that 
the only human reason for B.'s marvellous escape 
must be that the tiger had imagined the house and 
its inhabitant to be a trap like those often set by the 
natives, and, though obviously hungry, had lacked the 
courage to put it to the test. Our men returned down 



THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH. 117 

the hill, and after an examination of the paths leading 
to the place we climbed into our seats. It was about 
five o'clock, and the sun was dipping to the western 
forest. The cultivation and clearing that formed 
Tanjong Malim lay all open at our feet. On every 
side it was shut in by forest: to the east it ran up 
to the great densely-timbered mountains that form 
the main range of the peninsula ; to the south it con- 
tinued miles upon miles towards Selangor; to the 
north the same featureless expanse of heavy-leafed 
trees extended to Perak; and to the west it swept 
away past the hill on which we were to the low-lying 
hills of the Wild Dogs, and beyond them to the wide 
pathless swamps of Simpang Kadangsa. In the midst 
of this sombre dark-green sea of eternal forest, like a 
jewel fixed in some plain setting, lay the beautiful 
clearing of Tanjong Malim. Several bends and 
stretches of the Bernam river lay clear and cool in 
an atmosphere permeated by the setting sun, and in 
the far background gradations of light and shadow 
showed its valley and its source in the distant moun- 
tains. The village seemed to be almost at our feet. 
Every house stood distinct, and we could clearly hear 
the " moo-ah " of the buffaloes, and the barking of the 
dogs. Beyond the small row of shops was the police- 
station, beyond it my quarters, and a path from the 
village led past my house to the mines farther up the 
valley. As the sun sank over the mountains a little 
breeze sprang up and alleviated the heavy heat of the 
day-time, and then, as the Malays say, " the day turned 
to become night." As evening approaches a little 
breeze, wandering imprisoned among the tree-trunks, 



118 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

like a disembodied creature, blows chill upon one's 
cheek, and there is an eerie feeling of expectancy that 
will not be dispelled from the mind of any one who is 
alone at this time in the forest. The darkness increases 
rapidly. It seems to settle down among the tree-tops 
in layers, and to sink thence slowly to the ground, 
falling like black, impalpable snow and shutting out 
the light above. Even at sunset I doubt not that 
Baginda Sutan felt that he had been over daring. 
One knows that at nightfall the animals whose tracks 
may be seen on every side, but which themselves are 
rarely seen in the daytime, will be moving in search 
of food. The great tree-trunks stand like enchanted 
giants, and seem only to await some signal to escape 
from the charm that binds them. Again the little 
damp breeze puffs upon the belated Malay, and this 
time it seems to have been blown by some unseen 
mouth. The animals that have slept all day are 
stirring now, and he cannot but doubt that so too are 
the spirits. A shadow seems to move from one tree- 
trunk to behind another, and as he turns his head sud- 
denly towards it, he sees at the side of his eye other 
shadows move at the spot from which he has just turned. 
Then, as it gets darker, everything around him alters 
its appearance; where stood a bush now looms the 
shadowy form of a rhinoceros, and something with the 
outline of a tiger crouches at the foot of a black tree- 
stump. The more his eyesight strains, the less real 
does the object on which he gazes become, and lights 
and spots dance and flicker beside his eyes. Curious 
squeaking, chirping noises become more frequent as 
the darkness increases, and as they cannot be defin- 



THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH. 119 

itely assigned to bird, frog, mammal, or insect, 
suggest a supernatural origin ; and if by chance any 
of the awful eagle-owls scream uttering an ear-pierc- 
ing yell, like that of a woman suddenly seized and 
tortured the nerves of the man are strong who can 
repress a shudder, and the Malay would be rare who 
would not think that it was connected in some way 
with the forest spirits. When night had closed in, 
and the darkness prevented any possibility of retreat, 
it cannot but be that Baginda Sutan bitterly repented 
him of his foolhardiness. 

The lights of the valley below us twinkled brightly. 
We could see the outline of the village streets, the 
police-station, and my quarters, while little specks of 
light marked the scattered houses up and down the 
river- banks. The unhappy goat, after a few plaint- 
ive bleats, followed at intervals by heartrending and 
consumptive coughs which seemed to be directed at 
us, settled itself to sleep and silence. The moon was 
in its last quarter, and would not rise until past mid- 
night. So we sat lonely on our peak waiting for the 
hours to pass. Suddenly I saw two lights far up the 
Bernam valley hurrying down towards the village. 
"Fight among the Chinese in the mines," was my 
comment ; " and here are two men coming down to 
the police-station to make a report." We watched the 
progress of the two lights down the valley, seeing 
them pass the miniature blaze that marked my 
quarters and go on towards the police-station on the 
river-bank. Then in an instant the two lights flew 
up into the air, and rushed straight at us. So fast 
did they fly, and so directly did they aim at us, that, 



120 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

before we could realise that they were not the lamps 
of Chinese miners clamouring far below us outside 
the distant police-station, two great balls of light 
sped by within fifty feet of us. To say that we were 
frightened is to put it lightly. I gave a gasp, and but 
for the support at my shoulders would, I believe, have 
fallen backwards out of my seat. The suddenness 
of the assault was overwhelming. From our lonely 
eminence we had watched the lights making their way 
down the valley, my interest tempered with thoughts 
of the court case they might portend for the next 
morning ; and in a second, even as we watched them, 
the tiny lights had turned to fiery globes of the size 
of a man's head, and their speed had become almost 
that of a cannon-ball. However, as our visitors passed 
us, we saw that they were natural phenomena, and 
either chemical gases or electric fluids that is to 
say, they were either of the nature of a Will-o'-the- 
wisp or of a St Elmo's light. 

These two lights seemed to us to have arisen from 
the marshes above the village. Thence they were 
gently borne by currents of air down to the river- 
bank, where they were caught by the night breeze 
and carried up to where we sat. Soon after several 
more came drifting down from both sides of the 
valley towards the river - bank, and all, as they 
reached it, were seized and whirled by the wind 
in all directions. Before long there were over a 
hundred to be seen. The wind was fickle and vari- 
able, and sometimes a dozen of these balls of light, 
which were now all round us, would fly down the 
river together and meet others floating lazily by : 



THE LIGHTS OF CHANGE AT AS AH. 121 

they would play round one another as though in 
doubt which way to take, and then a current of 
air would come eddying round the hill and catch 
them up and hurry them out of sight. When the 
wind dropped and there was perfect calm, six or 
eight would rise, moving in and out among one 
another as if in some game, and mount up through 
the air, playing and dancing until they became small 
bright specks, then slowly sink, revolving and inter- 
lacing, until again a breeze would spring up and 
send them flying helter-skelter up or down the river. 
"We noticed that the lights as they moved were not 
quite round, but slightly pear-shaped. Thus one rising 
would have a tapering tail below it, making its 
outline something like that of a balloon with a car, 
and one falling would have the tail above it. I 
imagine that this shape is caused by the pressure 
of the air upon the moving body. Thinking of this 
curious shape, I realised what we were watching. The 
dancing and flying lights were the spooks known as 
penanggal. The Malays believe that sometimes when 
a woman dies in childbirth she becomes a penanggal, 
and that at night her head, with a short part of an 
entrail, breaks from the grave and flies through the 
country, flame-coloured and with open mouth, to suck 
the blood and life of any man who may fall within 
its power. "That which is detached," is the literal 
meaning of the word. The head with its gruesome 
appendage can only detach itself at night-time, and 
must return to the grave before daybreak ; and if it 
should lose its way, or become caught in any thicket 
so that it is overtaken by the light of day, there is 



122 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

an end of it. It falls to the ground or remains 
held by the thorns, and the passer-by sees it there 
no longer luminous and nebulous as at night-time, 
but in the materialised form of the head of the 
woman that had been. It was, I have said, the 
peculiar shape of these balls of fire that made it 
flash upon me that they were penanggal, and we 
could then understand the terrors of Baginda Sutan 
when he found himself alone on the hill known 
and feared by all as the home of spooks and devils, 
and saw himself surrounded by numbers of these 
unholy phantoms. What was really a wonderful and 
beautiful sight meant to him a diabolical orgie at 
the meeting-house of the spirits ; and he must have 
looked upon himself as lost and doomed to a lingering 
death amongst these horrible graveyard ghouls. 

All night long the lights beguiled the tedium of 
our vigil, for they did not disappear until a saffron 
light over the eastern mountains heralded the coming 
day. Damp with dew, and chill and stiff, we clam- 
bered down from our seats. The wretched goat awoke 
and bleated at us reproachfully. We had not seen 
nor heard anything of the tiger; and the goat had 
thus been luckier than it knew of, while we had 
seen something far more interesting than any tiger, 
and therefore did not take it much to heart. When 
we emerged from the forest path at the foot of the 
hill, and were making our way through the padi- 
fields, we happened to meet the district headman, Haji 
Mustapha, who was, under me, the chief Government 
official of Tanjong Malin. I told him of what we 
had seen, explaining how we had first observed the two 



THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH. 123 

lights come running down the path above my house. 
" By the Mercy and Grace of Allah," he exclaimed, 
" you have been marvellously preserved ! Penanggal 
in truth were they; for know that the direction 
from which those lights came is that of our old 
disused burial-ground." 

The question is, What were these lights? They 
certainly seemed to us to come up from the swamps 
of the valley, and this would point to their being 
of the nature of a Will-o'-the-wisp, which is only 
marsh-gas, CH 4 , a chemical compound of carbon and 
hydrogen. But in England, at all events, a Will-o'- 
the-wisp is a small, feeble, flickering light hovering 
only a few feet (if so much) above the level of the 
marshes. These lights, on the other hand, were the 
size of a man's head, shone with a phosphorescent 
glow, and, as they passed over the summit of 
Changkat Asah, were at least 700 feet above the 
level of the plain. Perhaps they were St Elmo's 
lights. The objection to this is that St Elmo's lights 
are supposed to be caused by an electric disturbance 
of the atmosphere, and are generally stationary, at- 
taching themselves to a fixed point like the mast- 
head of a steamer; whereas the night on which we 
saw these lights was clear and bright, and, as I 
have said, the lights flew upon the wings of the 
wind. I cannot say what they were. If they were 
composants the sailor's name for St Elmo's lights, 
and his corrupted form of the words corpo santo 
(holy body), there is a curious parallel between the 
superstition of the British sailor and the Malay. 

I never saw the lights again ; and neither did B., 



124 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

though he spent some weeks on the hill. The tiger 
roared close to his camp a few nights later, and he 
and another officer in the Survey Department sat up 
for it several times without success. 

No other European that I know has seen these 
penanggal, but Malays have told me that they have 
seen them ; and the people of Tanjong Malim agreed 
that these must be the lights that were occasionally 
seen on Changkat Asah from the village. 

I wish I knew what those flaming balls were. But 
of one thing I am certain: when we watched those 
flying and dancing lights, we looked upon that which 
had robbed Baginda Sutan of his mind. 1 

1 Since writing the above I have seen the following account by Mr 
Andrew Lang in the ' Illustrated London News ' : 

" I am well acquainted with a set of lights which are often seen by 
the people of Ballachulish and Glencoe, villages on the south side of 
the salt-water Loch Leven (not Queen Mary's fresh-water Loch 
Leven), on the west coast of Argyllshire. They are bright lights 
which disport themselves on the north side of the loch, where steep 
hills descend to the level, and to the road along the level, leading to 
the head of the loch. They rush, as it were, along the road, then up 
the hill, then down to the water edge, and so on, and are visible, not 
only to the Celtic natives, but to the English tourist. The ground 
is not marshy, even on the level, and the phenomena, though doubt- 
less natural and normal, have not yet found a scientific explanation. 
They are not what people call 'corpse candles,' and a local myth used 
to attribute them to the agency of a dead laird an explanation in 
itself improbable, and now abandoned as inadequate to the facts of 
the case." 

These Loch Leven lights would appear to be the same thing as the 
lights of Changkat Asah ; and I have been tempted to rewrite the 
paragraphs about the Will-o'-the-wisps and St Elmo's lights. On the 
whole, however, I prefer to leave my account as I originally wrote it. 



125 



TAPIR 

VERY few men have shot a tapir, one of the chief 
reasons being that very few have considered it worth 
while to take the trouble. Its size does not entitle it 
to inclusion among " big game " in the proper sense of 
the word. It is inoffensive, and, though it can inflict 
a severe bite, is not, even when wounded, in any way 
dangerous. It has no trophies, and no spoils of 
market value. There is, therefore, little inducement 
to seek it, and the few European residents of the 
Malay Peninsula who care to give up their time and 
money to big-game shooting, devote their attention to 
news of elephant, rhinoceros, sladang, and tiger, and 
trackers seldom think of bringing information of so 
inglorious an animal as a tapir. Some possibly would 
not even turn aside to follow its fresh tracks should 
they come upon them by chance in the forest. On 
the other hand, the men who do not aspire to big 
game, and, contenting themselves with deer and pig, 
hunt with dogs, seldom visit the localities where 
tapirs are to be found ; and as they do not attempt 
"still -hunting" the American expression for the 
silent tracking and overtaking of an unsuspecting 



126 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

animal, have little or no chance of seeing a tapir 
except by some rare accident. 

But though the tapir carries no trophies, it is not 
without a fascination of its own. When one has a 
little imagination, what can be more interesting than 
to follow through vast gloomy forests the tracks of an 
animal that is one of the oldest mammalian forms, 
an animal that once existed in England, where fossil 
bones, practically undistinguishable from those of the 
living species of to-day, are found in the Miocene 
deposits of Suffolk ; and an animal of a date so much 
earlier than that of the hippopotami, elephants, and 
rhinoceroses that once roamed through the valley of 
the Thames, that in the days of the Pleistocene period, 
when they played and fought on the river -banks, it 
had already become in England as extinct as they are 
to-day. 

When one follows its tracks one can see imprinted 
upon the ground the history of its incalculable 
antiquity, for the front foot has four toes, and the 
hind-foot has only three. That is to say, the tapir, in 
its efforts to leave the primitive five -toed type, has 
only succeeded in discarding one toe of the fore-foot 
and two toes of the hind -foot. It is, therefore, a 
stage behind the rhinoceros, which has three toes to 
each foot ; and both are far behind the horse, which 
has arrived at the irreducible minimum of a single 
toe. Long before the days of the hipparion, the three- 
toed ancestor of the horse, the tapir existed in its 
present form ; and while the three-toed horse evolved 
through countless generations, species after species 
passing away to be replaced by a form more nearly 



TAPIR. 127 

approaching the one-toed ideal, the tapir has remained 
unchanged. A rhinoceros-like animal, with the awe- 
inspiring name of titanotherium, a contemporary of 
the tapir in the Miocene period, also reached the stage 
of having four toes to the fore-foot and three toes to the 
hind-foot. The titanotherium has passed away, but 
the tapir is still with us. 

Then, too, the tapir's little proboscis, a mere elonga- 
tion of the upper lip and snout, with the nostrils at its 
extremities, seems to be only an early rudimentary 
effort to attain a feature which has reached such high 
development in the elephant. It is true that it is 
useful to pluck a bunch of leaves or a tuft of grass, 
but it gives the animal the ridiculous appearance of 
wearing a false nose. Weirdly primitive, too, is the 
coloration of the Malay species. The head, shoulders, 
and fore-feet are a jet glossy black, the body is pure 
white, and the hind - legs are jet black. The two 
colours do not in any way melt into one another 
where they meet ; on the contrary, the line of demar- 
cation between the white and the black is most boldly 
and vividly drawn. 

At its birth the baby tapir, a most laughable little 
caricature of its ungainly parents, is striped from head 
to foot with narrow bands of yellow and brown. 1 

1 In this respect the young tapir resembles the young of the wild 
pig, an animal with which, inasmuch as the one is an odd-toed and 
the other an even -toed animal, it is in no way connected. The 
stripes are particularly interesting, for the theory of recapitulation 
namely, that in the embryo and young of an animal is recapitulated 
the history of that animal's evolution would lead us to believe that 
the adult tapir was once striped, and therein resembled other 
members of the odd-toed group, such as the zebras and, perhaps, the 
primitive horses. 



128 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

After a few months the young tapir loses its stripes 
and assumes a marbled mottled coat, which later 
becomes covered with irregular spots of black and 
white. Gradually some of the black spots turn 
white, and some of the white spots turn black, 
until eventually the adult animal assumes the fan- 
tastic particoloured coat which I have described, and 
which can best be imagined by picturing to oneself a 
gigantic black pig with a white sheet pinned round its 
body. Yet the extraordinary thing is that, despite 
this weird marking and strong contrast of colour, the 
tapir in its native haunts is not a conspicuous animal. 
In the heavy forest which it inhabits, where the 
chequered light and shade fall irregularly, it seems as 
though the shade darkened the whiteness of the skin, 
while the light mitigated its blackness, and when the 
animal is alarmed and seeks safety in flight, black and 
white melt into one another to form a strangely 
invisible grey the grey of a fleeting mist. It takes 
the two strong colours to produce this effect, for if the 
animal were really the grey that it appears to be, it 
would, in its surroundings, be almost as conspicuous 
as if it were white. 

I was stationed at Ipoh, the principal town of a 
large tin-mining district in the state of Perak, when 
my attention was first drawn to shooting a tapir. It 
was a miserable place for sport, for almost all the big 
game had been driven out of the district by the wood- 
cutters and charcoal-burners, who ransacked the forest 
to supply the tin-miners. A sladang or two, it is true, 
remained in a secluded corner; there were a few 
rhinoceroses within reasonable distance ; and tigers, 



TAPIR. 129 

though shy, were not uncommon. But the number of 
head of game was very small. 

My official duties kept me in court throughout the 
week from Monday morning until Saturday midday, 
and it was not easy, therefore, for my tracker Malias 
to arrange the time and the place together. He was 
often able to come and tantalise me by a story of an 
animal within comfortable reach, so far as distance 
was concerned, but inaccessible until another three 
days should pass and Saturday come round. And 
then the usual result would be that we devoted the 
whole of Sunday to tramping through a forest in 
which we could find nothing more recent than four- 
day-old tracks. 

After a long series of disappointments, Malias 
suggested that we could break the run of luck by 
shooting a tapir, which, he said, we should have no 
difficulty in finding. There was a number of tapirs 
scattered through the district, but we had never 
thought of going after them. Malias, however, had 
in his mind a particular animal that frequented a 
sulphur spring near his house. Jenali was the 
name of the place, and at one time, before the dis- 
trict had been opened up by roads and railways, 
and overrun by prospectors and miners, it had been 
visited by every kind of big game; but now they 
had all been driven away, and the only animal 
that still dared to resort thither was this solitary 
tapir. It seemed, however, to make amends for 
desertion of the others by its constancy, for, ac- 
cording to Malias, seldom a night passed that it 
did not drink at the spring. 

I 



130 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

The following Sunday, therefore, we set off to 
seek the tapir. Leaving my house shortly after 
daybreak, we drove some three miles along the 
Kuala Kangsar Koad, a magnificent highway that 
forms part of the main trunk system of the state. 
Through the suburbs of Ipoh, the road was thronged 
with rickshaws and bullock carts; at a level cross- 
ing we had to pull up while the express for the 
north clanged past. A few minutes later we met 
a file of elephants, moving with solemn and majestic 
pace along the strip of grass that lies between the 
road metalling and the drain side. At a whirl of 
dust in the distance, they stepped with quiet dignity 
into the drain, and turned broad backs upon the 
indecent turmoil and offence of a motor car, driven 
by some European or Mongolian barbarian. Near 
the third mile-stone was a little roadside shop kept 
by a Malay, who catered for the simple necessities 
of native housekeeping, and for the luxuries of 
passers-by, whose dust -racked throats demanded 
such products of Western civilisation as orangeade 
and rose - champagne. At this shop we stopped. 
The mare was taken out of the trap, and, while 
the sais walked her up and down to cool, Malias 
unpacked the rifle. I buckled on my cartridge-belt, 
and he packed the sandwich -box and water-bottle 
in a cloth, which he disposed sideways on his back 
in the awkward Malay fashion, which is to pass the 
cloth enclosing the bundle over the right shoulder 
and under the left arm. After a few minutes' 
gossip with the shopkeeper we started for the 
sulphur spring. Following a native track for a 



TAPIR. 131 

mile or two through secondary forest, we came to 
the Pari river. This we crossed by a primitive 
bridge, consisting of a series of shaky poles resting 
upon insecure posts. A mile farther on we came 
to a little opening in the forest, where some en- 
terprising Chinaman had boldly ventured to find 
alluvial tin, and had lost his capital. In the middle 
of a few acres of felled timber, which was fast being 
covered and smothered by a dense growth of en- 
tangling vegetation, was the pit, some fifteen yards 
square, in which his money had been sunk. It was 
now full of water, to which the clayey soil lent a 
colour of a weirdly unnatural blue, a dull dead 
turquoise. Like a glassy eye, it directed an unre- 
sponsive stare at the brilliant sky above it. Beside 
this chill pool stood the abandoned coolie-house, a 
tottering ruin. In the high grass that grew beside 
it, we found some old tracks of the tapir, which had 
found something palatable in the alkaline taste of 
the refuse -soiled earth around the kitchen. From 
this point we proceeded slowly, for we were not 
far from the sulphur spring, and it was possible 
that the tapir, after wallowing and drinking there, 
might turn its steps in our direction, in which case 
we might, if unawares, stumble upon it, or might 
pass its tracks unwittingly, and later suffer one of 
the most annoying experiences of a tracker, to find 
the tracks some miles farther on, to follow them 
patiently, cautiously, warily, and then, after an in- 
finity of ungrudging toil, to find oneself at a place 
where, gaily tramping down a path in the gladness 
of the early morning, with eyes full of what the 



132 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

day might bring forth, and heedless of the signs 
upon the ground, we had passed, and overlooked, 
these self -same tracks. We found no fresh signs, 
however, and after a while left the little path. 
Malias pointed out the general direction that we 
were to take, and I gently opened a way for our- 
selves through the tangle of the forest undergrowth. 
Soon we came upon a path made by the tapir, and, 
following this cautiously, found the ground open 
suddenly into a narrow, swampy valley. Through 
a marsh, in which thick reeds and heavy grasses 
grew, a little stream wound a tortuous way. At 
our feet, under an overhanging rock, it ran through 
an unsavoury, inky -looking sludge. This was the 
sulphur spring of Jenali. It seemed a fetid little 
pool. The leaves that had fallen in it were heavy 
with a black, slimy deposit, and a sulphuretted odour 
clung to the soil, and even to the surrounding trees. 

Here we found fresh tapir tracks. The animal 
had come down in the early evening, and then, after 
drinking and wallowing, had fed through the swamp 
grass in circles, returning three or four times in the 
night to seek in the strong mineral deposit a correct- 
ive to the rich lush vegetable diet. The tracks 
were like a tangled string: loops of various sizes 
were drawn into a tight knot at the sulphur spring, 
and we had to find the end of the skein, that is, 
the route by which the tapir had left the place. 
We spent some time in following tracks that ap- 
peared to be taking us directly away, only to find 
that the tapir, unable to resist the temptation of 
the sulphur spring, had turned once more to its 



TAPIR. 133 

fascinations. At last we found the end of the 
ravelled skein, and then for half a mile followed 
the tracks along a wood-cutter's path. The animal, 
having once made up its mind to go, had walked 
steadily along the path without stopping to feed. 
After a while it turned aside to ascend some rising 
ground. For some time we followed the path that 
it made for itself through the thick forest under- 
growth, and then, after we had left the sulphur 
spring some two or three miles behind us, saw 
that the tapir had begun to dawdle and to pluck 
such young shoots and leaves as had tempted it. 
The distance that we had travelled had been covered 
very slowly ; for, apart from the necessity of making 
our way as silently as possible through all the 
obstacles that the dense undergrowth of a tropical 
forest can offer, the hard, dry ground had made 
tracking difficult. By this time it was between ten 
and eleven o'clock. Before long we came to a 
place where the tapir had lain down, but not find- 
ing itself comfortable, perhaps, had moved on again. 
We were almost certain, therefore, that it was asleep 
somewhere close by, and the greatest care and silence 
became trebly necessary. In tracking a herd of 
animals that are feeding one may move fairly freely, 
for the noise that they themselves are making will 
generally prevent them from hearing the sound of 
any snapping twig or crackling leaf : even a solitary 
animal, if walking or feeding, may miss an accidental 
sound, but a solitary animal lying down will take 
alarm at the slightest thing. We moved with the 
most elaborate caution, therefore, every step being 



134 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

carefully considered and thought out. And at every 
yard we peered through the dense foliage to dis- 
cover anything that might be the black and white 
of the tapir. 

But before we had gone much farther we suddenly 
heard the sound of an animal in flight crashing 
through the forest some forty or fifty yards in front 
of us. We could see nothing, of course, for the forest 
was so thick that even at half the distance we 
should have barely caught more than the most 
fleeting glimpse. There was nothing that we could 
do. We stood in silence until the sound died away 
in the distance, and then, somewhat disheartened, 
followed up the tracks. 

The great, wide -splayed marks where each out- 
spread toe had cut deep into the ground showed 
the frantic haste of the first panic. Gradually, as 
the pace slackened, the spread of the toes and the 
depth of the impression decreased, and before we 
had covered half a mile the tracks regained the 
normal appearance of the animal's usual walking 
pace. We traversed some gently falling ground, 
and then came to a swamp. At its edge the water 
was knee -deep, and as we waded in we found a 
treacherous bottom of rotten soil and tangled roots 
that cheated the feet and turned the ankles. Gaunt, 
starveling trees grew at intervals, and from the 
water's edge to a height far above a man's head 
the swamp was covered with a dense mass of 
mengkuang palms, whose leaves, shaped like clay- 
mores, but eight or nine feet long, are covered with 
double rows of saw -like teeth. Through this we 



TAPIR. 135 

painfully made our way, and emerged upon the 
farther side, where we found ourselves faced by a 
small hill. We reached its summit, and continued 
along it for some distance. We had no idea how 
far in front of us the animal was, and had to set 
our pace as best we could, avoiding impatience on 
the one hand and over-caution on the other, mindful 
of the Scylla of carelessly disturbing the game and 
the Charybdis of progressing at a slower rate than 
it. After some time we heard the alarm again, the 
sound of the headlong flight through the forest under- 
growth, but again no call or cry of alarm. Then 
suddenly there was a heavy crash, then another, then 
another, a series of crashes, and then the sound of 
a tremendous bump. The direction and nature of 
the sounds told us what had happened. Somewhere 
in front of us there was a ravine, and the tapir's 
blind flight had taken it headlong down it. 

" Quick ! quick ! he has fallen," urged Malias, 
pushing past me as, in my haste to follow, I caught 
in a tangle of rattans. But I could not move. I 
had fallen into the clutches of an enemy as beautiful 
as it is vicious. A delicate-looking tendril, light as 
the air upon which, far flung from the parent stem, 
it bent in a graceful curve; bare for half its length, 
and all along the lower half lovely with a wealth of 
slender drooping leaves; strong as wire, and armed 
throughout with rows upon rows of hawk-like talons, 
had seized me by the shoulder. As I stooped to 
free myself, two other airy tendrils, agitated by the 
pull upon their stem and vindictive as hornets, leant 
forward to dig a row of claws into my topi and my 



136 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

bare neck. My topi was plucked from my head and 
flung into a thicket, but the hold upon my neck was 
fast. It was useless to struggle: to have done so 
would only have meant being caught by other fronds 
that, with all the beauty of kittens at play, swayed 
toward me with every movement that I made. 
Keeping as still as I could, I had to lop off with 
my knife such tendrils as I could reach, and then 
endeavour to unhook myself from the grip of the 
bands upon my neck and shoulder. And all the 
time Malias, who did not see my plight, maddened 
me with a senseless reiterated " Quick ! oh, be quick ! " 
After a moment of desperate calm I freed myself, 
and having paid toll in the form of a long tear in 
the cloth covering of my topi and a row of little 
jagged punctures on my neck, ran quickly forward. 
We soon saw what had happened. The tapir, when 
startled by us, had run for some twenty yards, and 
then a steep ravine had interrupted the way. Down 
this it had gone headlong. Saplings, rattans, creepers, 
everything had given way before it; for, luckily for 
itself, it had not run into a tree of any size, and it 
was only a thick tangled clump of rattans that, by 
receiving the impact of the fall and by acting as a 
buffer, had saved it from a broken neck. We got 
to the bottom of the ravine as best we could, and 
heard the tapir moving slowly, and apparently pain- 
fully, in front of us not more than a hundred yards 
away. It was quite hidden from sight. That ravine 
contained as murderous -looking a mass of twisted 
trees and knotted creepers as one could wish to see. 
Every inch of stem and branch and twig of every 



TAPIR. 137 

growing thing seemed to be studded with spikes 
and hooks. I think the very roots had thorns. And 
every gnarled and knubbly tree had interlocked its 
branches with those of every other tree; while sin- 
uous coils of rattans, enwrapped in thorny sheaths, 
bound all together into a compact and solid whole, 
which offered a resistance as unyielding as that of 
a barbed-wire entanglement. To move forward even 
a step was a matter not only of difficulty but one 
that called for considerable ingenuity : ten or perhaps 
fifteen separate branches, creepers, or rattans would 
bar the way, and it was necessary to decide which 
one would pull down, which press down, which shove 
upwards or sidewards, and which, in such silence as 
was possible, one would slice through with the heavy 
knives we both carried. Sometimes the opening 
would look clearer to right or to left, and hope 
would lead us thither; but generally we found that, 
after a comparatively open space of a yard or two, 
we were confronted by a thicket so impenetrable 
that it seemed better to retrace our steps and try 
to find some other way. 

Although the tapir was so close to us, we found it 
impossible to catch it up, and within half an hour it 
was obvious that it had been moving faster than we 
were. We also saw by the impression of the feet that 
it was not even going lame, and that our expectations 
of its having broken a limb had not been realised. 
After following the tracks for some distance farther, 
we reluctantly came to the conclusion that there was 
no chance of seeing it again that day, and therefore 
decided to return home. 



138 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

On the following Sunday we returned to the 
sulphur spring of Jenali, and again found fresh 
tracks ; but again only succeeded in disturbing the 
tapir's slumber, and in driving it in headlong flight 
through the forest. And after that, two or three 
times a month, whenever, in fact, there was no 
news of bigger game elsewhere, Malias and I went 
to the sulphur spring. "We seldom failed to find 
fresh tracks, but for some months did not catch 
sight of the tapir itself. Between the two of us, 
though we were somewhat apprehensive of being 
laughed at by others, our lack of success became 
rather a joke, and we always talked of the animal 
in a friendly spirit of possession as "our tapir." 

After a week's work in court, hearing interminable 
cases from Monday to Saturday, endless civil suits 
except during my criminal assizes, long lists of 
criminal cases except in my civil sessions, it was 
good to get away, even for one day, into the vast 
forest, which, although traversed by wood -cutters 
and charcoal-burners, retained much of its pristine 
mystery and wonder. And in the pursuit of the 
tapir there was added to the charm of the forest 
the fascination of following the tracks of an animal 
of the Miocene period, a contemporary of such fear- 
some creatures as the titanotheria an animal, in 
fact, that might well have become extinct ages before 
ever the first semi-human man was born. 

Almost every Sunday that we went after the tapir 
the same thing happened. Leaving my house at 
daybreak, we arrived at the little roadside shop at 
half -past six; by half -past seven we were at the 



TAPIR. 139 

sulphur spring ; and between eleven and one o'clock 
we came upon the sleeping tapir. 

We were never able to get up to it before it had 
lain down for its siesta, and we invariably disturbed 
it before we came within sight of it. Sometimes a 
nodding tree or waving branch showed the line of its 
flight, but that would be all. Once we were close 
behind it, when it plunged into the Pari river and 
crossed to the farther bank. It would have been 
especially interesting to have seen it then, for we 
might have learned whether it swam or whether, as 
the South American species is said to do, it walked 
upon the bottom of the river-bed. How far we 
followed the tapir after we first disturbed it would 
depend upon many things the time, the distance, 
the heat or the rain, and, more than all else, the 
degree of our patience. 

Sometimes the tapir was alarmed by getting our 
scent, and sometimes by a sound we made. Kegard- 
ing the scent, we were unable to do anything; we 
could only follow the tracks, and as it was impossible 
even to guess at the line the animal was taking, or 
where it would lie down to sleep, it was out of the 
question to make any devour if we found the wind 
unfavourable. As to the sound, the difficulty was 
not so much underfoot as in working a silent way 
through tremendously heavy foliage. But, neverthe- 
less, I paid every attention to my foot-gear. Malias, 
like every Malay, was barefooted, and walked with 
ease on a matting of prickles and thorns. I tried 
india-rubber shoes, but found them too slippery on 
greasy ground ; then I tried long stockings made of 



140 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

stout canvas, but found that they had all the dis- 
advantages of a boot with none of its advantages. I 
even tried going on my bare socks when we discovered 
that the animal was close, but found that I had to 
devote an undue amount of attention to my feet. 
After many experiments, I decided that for silent 
tracking nothing that I could find beat a pair of stout 
English leather boots with plenty of big nails. 

Our knowledge, derived from the tapir's tracks, of 
its habits was that it left the sulphur spring a little 
before daybreak, moved away through the forest for 
an hour or two, then fed, and afterwards lay down to 
sleep from ten to three o'clock. The length of the 
midday slumber depended very considerably upon the 
weather and the season, and it was sometimes broken 
up into two siestas, with a short interval between 
them. At three o'clock it moved away in the direc- 
tion of the place it had chosen as the site of its 
evening meal and drink. This was almost invariably 
the sulphur spring, where it generally arrived an hour 
after sunset. Here it would drink, feed, wallow, and 
sleep at intervals until the first grey light of early 
dawn. 

Malias was anxious to build in a tree over the 
spring a platform from which I could shoot the tapir 
at night. But this I would not hear of. One of the 
unwritten laws of big-game shooting, and one which 
is not always sufficiently followed, is that every 
animal should be attacked in the most sporting way 
possible. No one would attempt to take with a worm 
a salmon that could be tempted with a fly. The 
same principle applies to big game. No one should 



TAPHL 141 

shoot from a platform in a tree an animal that can 
be driven or tracked, and no one should drive an 
animal when it can be tracked. 

Tigers, for instance, leave no impression upon the 
ground, and, as they cannot therefore be tracked, 
may be driven, or, failing the possibility of a drive, 
may be shot from a tree. Pig and deer are not always 
worth tracking, and may therefore be driven. But 
tracking "still -hunting" is the highest form of 
big-game shooting, and should not therefore be dis- 
carded for the lower forms without strong and suffic- 
ient reason. 

We knew that we could not come up with the tapir 
before it lay down for its siesta, and admitted that it 
was hopeless to attempt to surprise it in its sleep: 
the only solution of the problem was, therefore, to 
arrange our start so as to come up with it after it had 
awakened again in the afternoon. But when I sug- 
gested this to Malias, he pointed out some obvious 
objections. Even if we arrived at the place where 
the tapir had slept a few minutes after it had left it, 
we should only have three hours of daylight for 
tracking, and might easily be benighted. Of this, 
however, I decided that we must run the risk: we 
could take torches, and by this time we knew the 
lay of the forest fairly well. Malias' next objection 
was that even if we did get a shot and merely 
wounded the animal, we should not have time to 
follow up the tracks. His greatest objection, how- 
ever, was one of which he said least, and that was 
that it was not the custom to begin tracking in the 
afternoon. In a land where they have a proverb, 



142 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

"Custom encompasseth all," innovations are not 
welcomed. 

The next Sunday we did not start until midday. 
At about three o'clock the tracks brought us to a 
little gravelly stream not more than knee-deep. We 
crossed this, and followed up a well-beaten path that 
the tapir had used regularly in coming to and going 
from the sulphur spring. On the hard ground it was 
very difficult to track ; there was a number of foot- 
prints, leading in both directions, and of every age 
days old, weeks old, months old. And from these 
we had to distinguish the lightly superimposed fresh 
prints that we were following. Before long we both 
suspected that we had lost the fresh tracks, and 
were following up a stale trail. We accordingly went 
back to the little stream, and cast round to discover 
where the tapir had left its usual path. We could 
discover no other tracks, however, and therefore 
returned to the beaten path. Soon we saw that 
we had undoubtedly lost the fresh tracks, and again 
went back to the stream. We walked in its bed 
down-stream for some little distance, and then dis- 
covered that we were doing exactly what the tapir 
had done. 

Lower down we found the tracks where it had left 
the water, and hurried up the bank to follow on, for 
we had lost some little time on the stale trail. We 
had not gone more than a hundred yards when we 
heard the well-known sound of the tapir crashing 
through the forest. 

We stood still to listen. 

Then Malias gasped. " He is coming this way ! " 



TAPIR. 143 

A grey form burst through the undergrowth not 
more than twenty yards away, running, it seemed, 
blindly. Its pace was a lumbering gallop, the head 
being held low between the two fore-legs that were 
flung high up and far out in front of the body. It 
passed by us broadside on. The first bullet from my 
rifle hit it too high in the shoulder, but the second 
dropped it dead. 

And our long quest of many months was over. We 
examined the tapir's weird features, its ridiculous 
little proboscis, its bizarre colouring, the strangely 
numbered toes, whose tracks we knew so well, and 
then we fell to discussing the extraordinary chance 
that had led the tapir's flight in our direction. An 
inspection of the ground showed that a curious thing 
had happened. The tapir had been returning to the 
sulphur spring along the beaten path, which we had 
followed when we had gone astray on the stale trail, 
and had there come upon our fresh tracks. This it 
was that had alarmed it. It was from the danger 
presented by our tracks that it was running, and its 
blind flight had led it up to us. As Malias put it, 
it was a singular case of "turning from the corpse 
to clasp the ghost." 

I have already said that Malias had never approved 
of my idea of starting to track in the middle of the 
afternoon. Our success in no way appeased his sense 
of the violation of the " custom," and he was glad to 
find an opportunity of having a quiet hit at me. 

" Well," he said, " when we chance to kill our game 
in the morning time, we can find use for the sun- 
picture-box [my camera]; but if in future we go 



144 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

shooting in the evenings, it may perhaps be necessary 
to buy a box that will make pictures by moonlight." 

The sun was sinking fast, and we were hurrying to 
make our way back to the main road to seek assist- 
ance in removing the trophies, when we heard the 
calls of some Malays in the distance. We answered, 
and they soon came up. Luckily they were rattan- 
cutters, and their heavy knives soon hacked off the 
head and feet, which we carried back in triumph to 
the little roadside shop. 

Towards the end of the next week Malias came to 
me to receive instructions for the following Sunday. 
He had no information regarding big game: the 
sladang had not been seen for some time, there was 
no news of any rhinoceros, and he had no suggestions 
of any kind to make. The sulphur spring of Jenali, 
of course, no longer availed us anything. We were 
therefore forced to come to the lamentable conclusion 
that there was nothing to be done on the following 
Sunday but to stay at home, and then for the first 
time we realised what a blank in our lives the death 
of " our tapir " had made. 



145 



A FISH-DRIVE. 

SCHOOLS, railways, and foreign immigration are mak- 
ing the Perak Malays of the present generation a 
class of men very different from their fathers; and 
old Alang Abdullah was one of a type that is fast 
disappearing. 

He and the men of his age saw the younger men 
hurry in to the towns and mining centres to pit 
their brains and energies against those of the im- 
migrant Chinese and Indians ; but they themselves 
stood back from the press and turmoil, and watching 
the fever of the money-getting around them with un- 
comprehending eyes, explained their want of under- 
standing by saying that they were Orang Hutan 
"forest men." 

Alang Abdullah had been born within a few miles 
of the spot where his present house stood, and all 
his life long he had never been any greater distance 
from it than he could cover easily on foot within 
two days. The year for him was one uneventful 
circle, marked only by the padi time, the fruit time, 
the rainy season, and the dry season. He was a 
Muhammadan, of course " there is no God but Allah, 
and Muhammad is His Prophet " ; and he would have 

K 



146 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

died rather than renounce a syllable of the profession 
of his belief. He fasted most strictly throughout the 
month of Eamthan ; and every Friday he attended 
the village mosque, where he heard the imaum read 
extracts of the Koran in the original Arabic, a 
language of which neither the reader nor the audience 
understood a single word. He would have been 
horrified to hear that any person should say of him 
that a belief in the Spirits of the Forest and the 
Water had more meaning for him than had any 
teaching of Muhammad, but such was nevertheless 
the case. Among the Malays who live, remote from 
the civilisation of the ports and towns, in the up- 
river districts, where the villages are sparse and few 
and the forest vast and all-encompassing, the veneer 
of Islam is as thin as the pre-Muhammadan belief 
in spirits is deep : Allah and Muhammad are far 
from this life, and six heavens in six layers lie 
between their heaven and this world; but the Jins, 
the Dewas, and other demons and spirits, actually 
walk the earth. 

To Alang Abdullah, Batara Kala and Hana Taskun, 
the great Water Jins, were very real, very terrible, 
and very present. He had recognised them riding 
by his house on the roaring December floods, and in 
the silence of the night he had heard the Earth Jins 
hunting and holloaing through the forest. Less than 
three miles from his house was a hill where one 
might chance upon the Voice-Folk, the spirits whom 
all may hear but none may see ; and not many miles 
down the Perak river was a district named after the 
Demon Bota, where to this day the spirit deludes 



A FISH-DRIVE. 147 

men into the forest with sights of gorgeous palaces 
and lovely female forms, and promises of feasts and 
delights, and leaves them when morn appears fainting 
or dying in some gloomy thicket close by the scene of 
the night's phantom pleasures. 

The river ran by the door of Alang Abdullah's 
small house, and at the back of his holding lay the 
great forest ; and the Jins were no farther away than 
either the forest or the river. 

The old man was a pawang, and was skilled both 
in the casting out of devils when a sick person had 
to be treated for some malady, and in the propitia- 
tion of spirits when any enterprise or excursion had 
to be undertaken. 

But the old order was changing ; the hajis and 
the immigrant Arab sheikhs looked with disfavour 
upon his incantations, and they instructed the boys 
who attended the Koran classes to have nothing to 
do with his heathen superstitions. 

In every way the country was not now as it had 
been. In his youth foot-paths and elephant-tracks 
had (other than the rivers) been the only means of 
communication between village and village. Then 
the British had come into the country, and bridle- 
paths and agricultural roads had soon taken the 
place of the native tracks. Later came the "great 
roads " with their metalled surfaces and iron bridges 
and now there was a "way of the fire carriages.' 
All had been change and progress. It had affected 
even his river, the great Perak river. He well re- 
membered the institution of the Government ferry, 
when the first bridle-path had reached the river's 



148 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

banks on either side. Then the great trunk road was 
made, and hundreds of yards of pontoon bridging 
connected the two banks ; and now, on huge frames 
of iron -work, the fire carriages screamed as they 
crossed the river safe above the highest flood level. 

But all this progress had passed by Alang Abdullah 
and had left him on one side. He did not under- 
stand the white men, and he knew that they did 
not understand him. He was afraid of the Govern- 
ment offices with the punkahs, the peons, and the 
police, the Court-house where they shouted " silence," 
and the Land Office, where even the officials were 
hot and hurried. 

He knew that his lot was far better than it had 
been. The days of slavery, of forced labour and 
forced contribution, were over: he recognised that 
the ways of the Government were good, but he did 
not in the slightest degree comprehend them. 

In his mind (so far as he thought of it), he re- 
cognised the Government as a fact in exactly the 
same way in which he recognised the existence of 
telegraphic communication. But the ways of the 
Government were as much beyond his understanding 
as was the working of the telegraph. 

His second son was a forest guard in the Forest 
Department, and his youngest son was learning 
English and qualifying for an appointment in the 
clerical service. Only Alang Abdullah was himself 
too old to learn the ways of the new regime. "A 
new custom and an old man," he would say, shaking 
his head. 

The scene he looked upon called forth reminisc- 



A FISH-DRIVE. 149 

ences of the " old custom," for among the throng 
on the sandy bank of the Perak river below him, 
where in his youth no white man had dared to 
venture, some dozen Englishmen mingled with the 
crowd of Malays. 

The occasion of the gathering was the great fish- 
drive which was to take place the next morning. 
Every year during the dry season, when the river 
was at its lowest, the datoh, the native chief of the 
district, organised a drive, and Alang Abdullah, ever 
since his father's death, had been in charge of the 
operations ; for whatever the hajis and sheikhs might 
say, things had not yet come to such a pass that 
any .one would think of attending a fish-drive unless 
the spirits of the wood and of the river were duly 
propitiated. To Alang Abdullah the fish-drive was 
by far the most important event of the year. 

It was an animated scene down by the river. 
Some of the Englishmen had returned from shoot- 
ing, others had been spinning with a minnow for 
the Malay perch, and some were swimming in 
mid - stream. The shelving bank was fringed with 
boats. There were craft of every size, from the tiny 
dug - out which carried a single occupant, and made 
its way through the press like a darting needle, to 
the huge be-flagged house-boat which lay anchored 
bow and stern. On the bare sandy stretch little 
clusters of Malays gathered round rice -pots and 
improvised fireplaces : others were hurrying on 
various errands between the boats and the datoh's 
house, and some were overhauling the casting-nets 
which were to be used the next morning. From a 



150 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

young raja's boat came the booming notes of the 
assembly call of the war -gong. Every one was 
wearing his gayest and brightest sarong pink, and 
green, and yellow, and purple ; every one was excited, 
and every one was happy. 

Only old Alang Abdullah, standing on a bluff 
behind the river-bank and looking up to the range 
of mountains at the river's source, was uneasy. 
Until three days ago the whole month had been 
rainless, and the river had been so low that a man 
might wade dry above the hips from bank to bank, 
and so clear that the water flowing over its sandy 
bed seemed, but for its ripples, to be of molten 
glass. This was the condition of water requisite 
for a really successful drive. But in the last two 
days there had been heavy rain in the hills, and 
the river was now charged with mud and silt, and 
was running more than a foot above its former 
level. His disappointment was the more bitter 
because he had originally selected a day in the 
preceding week as a propitious one, and it was to 
suit the datoh's European guests that the day had 
been postponed. Ever since the day when the datoh 
had decided to have a drive, Alang Abdullah had 
made every offering that he knew to be acceptable, 
and had used every incantation and observed every 
mystic rite to keep the rain from falling until after 
the appointed day. But despite it all the rain had 
fallen : and if it rained again that night it would 
be impossible for the drive to take place. It was 
with a sinking heart that he eyed the lowering 
clouds which wrapped the mountains at the river's 



A FISH-DRIVE. 151 

source, and from time to time muttered to himself, 
"It is not right; it is not right at all." 

On an island in mid - stream thirty or forty men 
were busy putting the finishing touches to the 
enclosure into which the fish were to be driven. 
The drive was to begin some seven or eight miles 
up - stream, and a rope through which glittering 
strips of palm-leaf were threaded would be dragged 
through the water between two boats to scare the 
fish and send them down- stream. This rope is known 
as a relap, and when it reached the door of the 
enclosure the gate would be shut, and the imprisoned 
fish be caught by means of the ordinary casting-net. 

Alang Abdullah had staked the river on one side 
of the island and thus prevented any fish from 
passing that way, and had decided to make his 
enclosure on the other side. 

His original intention had been that the island 
and the river - bank should form the two sides of 
his enclosure, and then all that would have been 
necessary would have been a barrier at the lower 
end, and a barrier and an entrance - way at the 
upper end. But the swollen river had made him 
alter his plan. The water by the river -bank was 
now so deep that the barriers would barely show 
above water, and if the river were to rise another 
six inches the fish would escape over their tops. 
He had therefore been compelled to stake off this 
deeper water, and his enclosure now hugged the 
shallower waters beside the island, alongside of 
which it ran in a narrow strip. 



152 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

The enclosure was simply made: into the sandy 
bottom of the river stakes were driven a foot or two 
apart, and were firmly bound together with lengths of 
bamboo. From these hung "chicks" (blinds of fine 
split bamboo laced together with rattans), which men 
had been making for the past month under the datoh's 
house. The top of the chicks appeared a few inches 
above the surface of the water, and the bottom was 
firmly pegged into the sand of the river-bed; the 
chicks overlapped, affording no means of escape, for 
the fish rarely if ever attempted to leap over them. 

At the lower end of the enclosure was a purse, 
known as a magun, which was built on the same 
principle as the ordinary crab-trap. The fish could 
find their way into it from the enclosure, but could 
not get out again, and round it the palisading was 
carried to some height above the level of the water, 
and was made of double strength. 

The men worked with a will, and by midday the 
enclosure was finished, and in the early afternoon all 
the boats that were to join in the drive were poled 
up-stream. 

By four o'clock they reached an island with a 
beautiful sandy bank, and here all the house-boats 
tied up for the night. 

In the cool of the afternoon the majority of the 
Englishmen set about practising the use of the casting- 
net, for few of them had realised that it was the 
only weapon that would be used on the morrow, 
and fewer still had ever thrown one. Other men 
went in search of jungle-fowl, and some took out 
their rods again 



A FISH-DRIVE. 153 

Alang Abdullah went up-stream another mile or 
two to a spot which he had selected. Here he and the 
men who were to drive spent the night. His men 
disposed themselves to sleep as soon as they had 
finished their evening meal ; but he spent most of the 
night in burning censers full of fragrant resin, and in 
making small offerings to the Jins of the Water and 
of the Forest. He promised them further offerings of 
rice, and eggs, and limes should the drive yield a good 
catch of fish, and implored that they would assist him, 
and save him and his party from harm and mischief. 

The next morning the men were astir early, and 
when they had had their morning meal Alang Abdullah 
drew the relap out from his boat. It was merely a long 
line of native rope ; at intervals of about a foot strips 
of thin yellow palm-leaf were threaded into the line at 
right angles to it, and that was all. When the line 
was dragged through the water the palm-leaves whirled 
madly round, like windmill arms, and the unnatural 
appearance and weird glitter that were due to the 
sparkle of the river and the rapid revolution, were 
well calculated to strike panic into any fish. 

With his final invocations, Alang Abdullah gave 
one end of the relap to his eldest son, and sent him 
with it to the opposite bank of the river. 

He himself remained with the other end under the 
nearer bank. The line with its bright streamers thus 
stretched from bank to bank, a distance of some two 
or three hundred yards. Special men were then told 
off in boats to take poles and splash and thrust under 
the river-banks where the trees overhung the water, 
and where the line could not therefore be dragged. 



154 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

Then a row of boats carrying men with casting-nets 
was arranged in front of the drag-line. Their main 
object was to add to the splashing, and the odd chance 
of catching some fish that might be breaking back was 
only a secondary consideration. 

Soon the array was set in order, and amid the shout- 
ing of men and the booming of gongs the drive started 
away down-stream. 

By eight o'clock the line of boats came in sight of 
the island where the house-boats were tied up. Every 
one on the island bestirred himself, and in a few 
minutes the palm - leaf awnings, under which the 
Malays had been sleeping on the sand, were pulled 
from their supports and rolled up; boat poles were 
brought out, cooking-pots were shoved away somewhere 
out of sight, and by the time the drivers approached, 
the island, on which a large party of men had en- 
camped, was abandoned. The drag-line was cut in two 
at the head of the island, and the drive continued in 
duplicate on either side of it. The house-boats natur- 
ally followed the wider stream, and as they swung out 
into mid-stream, each sounding the assembly call on 
its war-gong to take up their places in the drive, they 
were greeted with the Malay sorak or battle -yell. 
" Sorak," shouted old Alang Abdullah, " Whoo ! Whoo ! 
Whoo ! " and a series of whoos, terminating in a final 
screaming " Whooi ! " issued from his throat. Every 
man in the boats that were drifting down with the 
drag-line joined in the yell. " Reply ! Reply ! Sorak ! 
Sorak ! " shouted the datoh ; and the men in the 
house-boats roared back a mock defiance, every man 
shouting the final " Whooi ! " at the utmost pitch of his 



A FISH-DRIVE. 155 

voice, and prolonging the sound until he strained his 
throat nearly to cracking. 

At the bow of every house-boat stood an Englishman 
with a casting-net over his shoulder, and such as could 
not get the firm footing of these heavy craft betook 
themselves to those of the dug-outs which looked most 
stable. 

There was really no necessity for them to commence 
operations at this stage of the proceedings, for, as I 
have said, the present object of the casting was only 
to scare the fish from the deeper pools, where they 
might not be affected by the glitter of the revolving 
palin-leaves on the drag-line and the surface splashing 
of the poles. Of course some fish might by chance be 
caught, but it would only be a few that might be 
trying to break back up-stream. The Englishmen's 
initial display was not edifying, for even those who 
could give the net some little spread when standing 
on dry land found it a very different thing on the un- 
stable support of a dug-out. However, no one thought 
of the figure he was cutting, for every one was simply 
" at play." The whole party, from their point of view, 
was a schoolboy's game, and they entered into it just 
as they would enter into any other game that was 
going on, without caring whether they were good at it 
or not, so long as there was fun to be got out of it. 

When one considers that these men were with one 
exception Government officials, and remembers the 
extent to which their race owes its position to its 
prestige, this schoolboy frolic without loss of dignity 
cannot but be striking. Not a single one of them 
could throw a net even moderately well, and the 



156 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

majority had only the barest notion of how it should 
be done. And of course every one of them knew that, 
judged by Malay standards of casting, he was making 
an exhibition of himself. The first net thrown fell 
with but a half-open spread, but a chorus of approba- 
tion went up and down the line. The second man's 
net hurtled into the air like a bag of buckshot let 
loose from a sling, and plopped into the water in a 
solid lump. The thrower was greeted by a volley of 
chaff from the other men, who feared that they would 
do no better, but the Malays, who made a perfect 
spread at every cast, had only encouragement for 
him. And the old Malay who was steering his dug- 
out leant forward and said, "The flower is not yet 
full blown; but time may bring the bud into open 
blossom." 

In contrast with the efforts of the Englishmen, 
watch the Malay. He uses the ordinary bell-shaped 
casting-net which a few years ago might be seen on 
any English river, and with which I presume most 
people are acquainted. His net is sixteen feet high 
from the summit of the bell to its foot, and the leaden 
ring of chains at its base has a circumference when at 
its full spread of nearly forty feet. He collects the 
whole of the upper part of the net into his right hand, 
holding it about two and a half feet above the leaden 
chains. He then raises it, shakes out any dead leaves 
it may have caught, and straightens the lines of the 
net until they all hang true. He disposes one-third 
on his right arm so that it covers his forearm and 
extends a little over the crook of the elbow which 
keeps it in position; one-third he takes in his right 



A FISH-DEIVE. 157 

hand, and the remaining third he holds in the left 
hand. 

As he stands ready and poised in act to cast, he is 
a magnificent subject for a sculptor. And now watch 
him cast. The curve of the movement starts from the 
waist, and a sweeping line of action rises to the right 
shoulder ; then simultaneously there is a swing of the 
right arm, a turn of the left hand, and a swooping 
lateral movement of the right shoulder ; straightway 
the part of the net that had been held in the right 
hand flies out horizontally over the water, followed by 
the part that had hung on the right forearm and elbow. 
As they fly out the left hand moves forward, and when 
held out in front of the body gives a fan-wise lateral 
motion to the meshes and checks them as they slip 
over the fingers, and thus gives the net its full spread. 
The sweeping curve of the right side of the net is 
given by the swing of the right hand and the right 
wrist ; the full curve of the left side is given by the 
restraining action of the fingers of the left hand. As 
the net reaches its full spread it falls in a level ring 
upon the surface of the water. In a level ring it 
sinks at once to the river-bed. The thrower then 
slowly draws it in by a string attached to its summit : 
as he draws, the ring in which the net fell contracts, 
until, finally, when he is about to raise it from the 
river-bed, a solid mass of lead hangs together. Any 
fish that was inside the outspread ring when it fell in 
the water is now somewhere enmeshed in the net. 
The net is carefully brought to the surface and the 
fish taken out. 

The flotilla drifted slowly down the stream. In the 



158 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

front line was the row of boats carrying the men with 
casting - nets and the men who were splashing with 
poles. Alang Abdullah, holding one end of the drag- 
line close under one bank and his eldest son holding 
the other end under the opposite bank, formed the 
second line. Behind them came the rest of the people, 
happy and careless and holiday-making, watching the 
work of the men in front, excited by the sunshine and 
the water-borne boom of the gongs, by the laughter, the 
shouts, and the throng. Alang Abdullah never for one 
moment relaxed his anxious care : where the stream 
was deep he let the drag-line sink lower in the water, 
using all his skill and science to prevent any skulking 
fish from dashing up-stream under or over it. The 
pools were well known, and the nets explored them 
thoroughly ; under the banks on either side, where 
the forest-trees came down and bent over the stream, 
the men with poles were beating and prodding and 
splashing. Suddenly a cry arises, " Sangkut ! Sang- 
kut ! " The line has caught. Then there is a yelling 
and a shouting. The line has caught in mid-stream. 
Immediately the men who imagine themselves to be 
nearest the obstacle plunge overboard, and swim and 
dive to find the submerged line. Keep back the 
boats; back water; splash with your poles, every 
man of you; the line has caught, and the fish will 
turn back and escape up-stream. Overboard with 
you, sluggard; jump in and splash with your arms. 
Who is that sitting idly in his boat? Overboard 
with him ! 

Every one yells to every one, while two or three 
boats, deserted by every man that they had held, drift 



A FISH-DRIVE. 159 

idly down-stream. Then amid the shouting and the 
splashing a little old man, with thin grey wisps of 
hair hanging over his streaming face, emerges from 
under the surface, and we see that he holds on to the 
end of the line. He pulls himself along it hand over 
hand up-stream, until he reaches the snag on which 
it is caught. Three or four men, swimming, leaping, 
and diving, reach the snag almost as soon as he. 
They lift the line clear. " All right ; no harm done ; 
it is clear ; go on." And on we go again. 

Then a young raja uplifts his voice as he hauls in 
his net, and, carolling cheerily, holds it up for the 
inspection of the throng, with a silvery two-inch tish 
struggling in its fold. " Lu-lu-lu, I've caught the first 
fish," and every boat shouts congratulation and ap- 
plause. But even as he turns the net round for all to 
see his prize, the little fish with a despairing wriggle 
slips through the meshes and falls back into the river. 
"Adohi! [alas!] adohi!" he cries in genuine dismay; 
and up and down the line condolence follows fast on 
compliment. 

And so we went on. There was but little incident. 
Now and again the line got hung up on a snag or 
rock; occasionally a man caught his net on some 
submerged obstacle, and had to extricate it amid 
volleys of chaff; more than once a man fell or was 
pushed overboard. And after some time a few fish 
were caught at rare intervals in the casting-nets. By 
eleven o'clock the sun was very hot ; the mists and 
rain-clouds that had brought the cool of the early 
morning had melted away, and a blazing sun striking 
on to an expanse of glittering water through a cloud- 



160 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

less sky of purest blue set our skins a-tingle. But 
just as the faint-hearted began to weary, a whisper 
went round of rice and curry. Soon dug-outs with 
steaming bowls were seen to leave the datoh's boat 
for the men with the drag-line, and then of a sudden 
the house-boats converged with one accord. Alang 
Abdullah only let go his hold of the line for a few 
minutes, and as soon as he had finished his bowl 
resumed his careful handling of the glittering line. 
The Englishmen put their nets aside, and, all dripping 
with water, devoted themselves to huge platters of 
piled up rice and innumerable little saucers and 
bowls of sambal and curry. 

By the time that the meal was finished the flotilla 
turned a bend of the river, and we found ourselves 
within a mile of the enclosure. We saw that the 
head of the island was thronged with Malays, and 
their gongs rang back a challenge to ours. " Who is 
for the water?" shouted our host the datoh. As 
he called he plunged in, and before he had wiped 
the water from his eyes the river was full of Malays. 
A long line of men, leaping, yelling, splashing, ex- 
tended from bank to bank. In the deeper places 
they had to swim, but for the most part the stream 
was not more than breast-high. 

By this time Alang Abdullah saw that the drive 
would not be a success. Had it been in proper 
condition, we should have been able by now to see 
the masses of fish that we were driving in front of 
us. We should have seen them racing through the 
clear water just before us, or else leaping in mad 
fright in the distance. The Jin of the Water has 



A FISH-DRIVE. 161 

not been appeased, and the efforts of the men who 
are now driving, the work of the men who have 
toiled at the bamboo frame of the enclosure, and 
his own long strivings, have all been of no avail. 
And the meaning of it all is that the water is too 
deep and too much discoloured, that the fish have not 
therefore seen the drag-line sufficiently clearly, and 
that at the splashing of the nets and poles they have 
scattered almost as much up-stream as down. 

But we who were at play shouted and splashed 
none the less cheerily. Shame on him who would 
make the little less. We worked our way steadily 
through the water to the head of the island; the 
drag -line was brought up to the gate of the en- 
closure (which was an opening some thirty yards 
wide), and then a number of men ran out with a 
bamboo "chick" frame and closed the entrance. 
Dug-outs were allowed into the enclosure by a 
shallow spot at the edge of the island. Every one 
rushed forward with his casting -net. Those who 
would not wait their time in the press of craft 
struggling through the narrow entrance ran down 
the island, and rushed waist deep into the water to 
get their haul of the fish. For although the drive 
was held to have failed, there was a very considerable 
quantity of fish in the enclosure. At first the nets 
took them three and four at a time, but these were 
mostly fish of not more than half-a-pound. Every 
one was furiously at work. We cast our nets, drew 
them in again, extricated our fish from its meshes, 
strung the catch on the rattan -line we carried at 
our waists; and before we had breathing - time we 

14 



162 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

hurriedly disposed the nets on our shoulders, and 
dashed on to make another cast. Some magnificent 
fish were caught. The heaviest turned the scale at 
fifty pounds, but any fish over three pounds were 
rare. The man who caught the fifty -pounder fell 
on to it as soon as he saw it gleaming in his net, 
wrapped the folds of his net round it fighting it 
spider-wise, and then, hugging the encircling meshes 
to his breast, struggled to the island with his capture. 
But soon the yield of fish diminished and the nets 
more and more often drew nothing, and at last we 
wandered up and down the enclosure drawing blank 
at every cast. Then we shook the water from our 
heads and faces, and said that it was over, and 
making for the welcome shade of the house -boats 
wondered to what extent the sun had taken toll of 
our skins. The men's " work " was now over, and 
we collected round the magun to see the " play " of 
the women begin. It will be remembered that the 
magun is the trap into which the fish could find a 
way from the enclosure but from which there was 
no escape. This had not yet been touched, and we 
could see that it held a very fair supply of fish. 
Malay chivalry leaves the magun to the womenfolk. 
Soon the Malay ladies, headed by our host's wife, 
all gay in wonderful silks, emerged from their boats 
and stepped into the water. The entrance to the 
trap was sufficiently opened to let them enter, and 
one by one they filed in. They were armed with 
things like short-handled shrimping-nets, and began 
to scoop about in the water. At once there was a 
tremendous leaping and splashing. Little fish jumped 



A FISH-DRIVE. 163 

high into the air, spluttering and squattering and 
trying to work their way up the bamboo paling 
that hemmed them in; large fish, with their broad 
backs surging high out of the water, dashed vainly 
round the fatal enclosure. 

The women scooped wildly in every direction, 
missing the fish and banging one another, and 
screaming wildly the while with expectation and 
annoyance, excitement and despair. Then, amid 
cheers from the throngs of men on the boats which 
surrounded the enclosure, one woman got a fine seven- 
pound fish in her net. " What am I to do with it ? " 
she screamed, as she held the fish high above the 
water. The roar of contradictory instructions she 
received from the boats, and the vain efforts of her 
friends to assist her efforts which she insisted to be 
meant to rob her of her prize so confused her that, 
when another fish leapt up close beside she scooped 
at it wildly with her net, and of course released the 
fish she already had. At this she all but wept, and 
was about to retire to one side to compose her 
shattered nerves when luckily another fish was 
caught, and she immediately dashed forward to 
claim it as the one she had released. 

Suddenly a splendid forty -pound fish launched 
itself out of the water, fair between the arms of a 
buxom dame. She gave a piercing yell of agony, 
but by some reflex action of the mind flung both 
arms round it and clasped it to her breast. When 
she realised what she had done, she screamed again 
with pure fright ; but the power failed her to open 
her arms and let it go. The heavy massive body of 



164 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

the fish writhed and struggled in her arms, its broad 
tail splashed the water on every side, and its great 
fleshy lips gasped into her face. But though she 
was half dead with fright, her terror only made her 
clutch the tighter. The other women rushed to help 
her, and the first, not knowing what she was doing, 
put her hand into the fish's mouth. 

Luckily it was a toothless carp-like creature, but 
she was so surprised to find her hand there that she 
could only stand still and scream. Another lady 
seized the first round the waist, and with some 
frenzied idea of rendering assistance wrestled with 
her and nearly pulled her under water. It really 
looked as if the fish was more than a match for 
them all, when a man passed a rattan over the top 
of the palisade, and a cool-headed lady slipped it 
through the fish's gills, and it was eventually hauled 
out by the men outside. 

A few of the ladies were however quite dexterous, 
and set to work in the most business-like way, strung 
each fish to their rattan-line as soon as they caught 
it, and without a moment's delay scooped about for 
another. 

The fish that gave the most play were the half- 
pounders. One of them would leap high into the 
air, at least three women would scream, and two or 
three nets would be swept like butterfly-nets near 
the place where it had been, and would wildly clash 
in mid-air. 

By this time the fish would have fallen back into 
the water, and a m&Ue of nets would wheel and dash 
madly into the water after it. It was the wildest 



A FISH-DRIVE. 165 

sight imaginable, but eventually the last fish was 
caught and the whole drive was over. 

The datoh gave the order for the bamboo " chicks " 
to be detached from their supports and to be put into 
boats for removal to his house, and then every one 
turned to estimating the weight of the catch. There 
were perhaps a dozen fish between ten and fifty 
pounds each, two or three dozen between three and 
ten pounds each, a considerable number of fish over 
a pound, and some hundreds of fish averaging half a 
pound. 

But this was very little when the size of the river 
and the distance the drive had covered is considered, 
and it was obvious that the drive had passed over a 
very large percentage of the fish. In other words, 
the drag-line had had no terrors for the fish, and 
Alang Abdullah could not but feel that this meant 
that the fault was his. 

He knew that he was not really to blame, and that 
the failure was entirely due to the postponement of 
the date he had selected. But it meant that he had 
done his best to keep back the rain, and yet the rain 
had fallen ; that he had invoked the help of the Jins 
of the earth and of the water, and that they had not 
heard him ; that he had used all his charms to make 
his drag-line a blinding, driving terror, and that a 
large proportion of the fish had disregarded it, it 
meant, in short, in spite of all excuses that could be 
made, that he had failed. 

The Englishmen were using their towels in the 
house-boats or lying down on their mattresses. They 
had enjoyed themselves thoroughly. It had been 



166 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

capital fun, and there had been enough fish for every- 
body. " A pity, though," said one of them, " that rain 
on Wednesday and Thursday." 

But it was far otherwise that old Alang Abdullah 
thought of the rain on those two days. He thought 
of the successes and huge catches of bygone years, and 
thought of the fish that he might have caught on 
this occasion; he thought of Batara Kala and Hana 
Taskun, and the assistance vouchsafed by them in 
former drives and denied this year: and he turned 
away from the river with tired back and weary steps. 
He saw the gathered rain-clouds settling lower on the 
mountains, and deep in his heart he murmured, " It 
was not right! It was not right at all!" 



167 



THE WILD GOAT. 

" THE unicorn, a very curious animal, is found in 
the vicinity of this lake." The lake is Atdza, and 
the author of this grave statement is the editor of 
the Chinese Official Itinerary of the road between 
Lhassa and Peking. M. Hue, the French missionary 
who more than two hundred and fifty years ago 
travelled from Peking to Lhassa and back, quotes 
the Itinerary and writes as follows : 

" The unicorn, which has long been regarded as a fabulous 
creature, really exists in Thibet. You find it frequently rep- 
resented in sculptures and paintings of the Buddhic temples. 
Even in China you often see it in the landscapes that ornament 
the inns of the northern provinces. The inhabitants of Atdza 
spoke of it without attaching to it any greater importance than 
to the other species of antelope which abound in their moun- 
tains. We have not been fortunate enough to see the unicorn 
during our travels in Upper Asia." 

M. Hue then gives the following extract from 
M. Klaproth's translation of the Itinerary of Lon- 

Hoa-Tchon : 

" The unicorn of Thibet is called in the language of this 
country serou, in Mongol kere, and in Chinese ton-kio-cheou, 
which means the one-horned animal, or Ido-touan^ the straight 



168 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

horn. The Mongols sometimes confound the unicorn with the 
rhinoceros, called in Mantchou bodi-gourgou and in Sanscrit 
khadga, calling the latter also kere." 

The Thibetan tradition of how a unicorn saved 
India from the Tartar hordes that overran the rest 
of Asia is not as widely known as it deserves in a 
land where a lion and a unicorn are the supporters 
of the Crown. 

"When Jengis Khan had subdued Thibet in A.D. 1224, 
he set out to conquer India. As he was ascending Mount 
Djadanaring he perceived a wild beast approaching him. It 
was one of the species called serou, which has but one horn 
on the top of the head. This beast knelt thrice before the 
monarch, as if to show him respect. Every one being aston- 
ished at this event, the monarch exclaimed : ' The Empire of 
Hindustan is, they say, the birthplace of the majestic Buddhas 
and Buddhistavas, and also of the powerful Bogdas or princes 
of antiquity. What, then, can be the meaning of this dumb 
animal saluting me like a human being ? ' 

"Having thus spoken, he returned to his country." 

This " curious animal " is the one known to 
Indian sportsmen as the serow, and to zoologists as 
Nsemorhsedus or the " goat-antelope." It is not, of 
course, one-horned ; and the only foundation for this 
belief that I can imagine is, firstly, its rarity, and 
secondly, perhaps, an artistic cult of drawing the 
animal in profile, and thus only showing one horn. 

Nsemorhsedus has a range from Cashmere along 
the Himalayas to Thibet, from Thibet to the Burmo- 
Chinese frontier, and from Burmah down to the 
Malay Peninsula. It is also found in Sumatra. 

Bubalinus, thibetanus, and sumatrensis are the 
names with which scientific men have thought fit 



THE WILD GOAT. 169 

to afflict the three species of an animal already bur- 
dened with the name of Nsemorhsedus and branded 
with the designation of " goat-antelope." Kambing 
Grrun is the Malay name for this polysyllabic animal. 

It is the only goat-like creature found in the Malay 
Peninsula, and I content myself with calling it a goat. 
Its distribution is as scanty as its range is wide, and 
its extremely shy and retiring habits, even in the 
parts of Asia where it is least scarce, make it one of 
the animals that fall most rarely to the rifle. 

In the Malay Peninsula, Sir Frank Swettenham, 
the late High Commissioner for the Federated Malay 
States, is, so far as I know, the only European who 
has shot one. Very few white men have ever set eyes 
on a living specimen, or even come across the animal's 
tracks, and a considerable proportion of the European 
community is unaware of the animal's existence in 
the country. 1 

The limestone hills that are studded over the allu- 
vial plain of Kinta, in the State of Perak, are the 
home of a considerable number of these goats. The 
sides of these hills are sheer precipices, and one gets 
a good idea of their general appearance when one 
learns that, in some period of geological pressure 
and upheaval, the limestone was forced up in a 
liquid state through the granite in the same way 
that oils in a painter's tube are squeezed out : the 
hills stand up above the plains in exactly the same 
way that the oil stands up above the mouth of the 

1 Since this was written I have heard that a young goat has been 
captured in Selangor and presented by the Government to the 
Zoological Society. It may be seen in the Gardens at Regent's Park. 



170 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

tube. The trees and plants that cover them, wher- 
ever seed can find root, do not differ greatly from 
those of the forest that covers the surrounding 
plains, but so precipitous are the hills that in the 
landscape each of them looks as solitary as any 
crag that thrusts its head above the level of the 
waves in the wide sea. When one is close, the 
first general impression is that of an expanse of 
chill grey limestone, so sheer or overhanging that 
not even a fern can find root-hold on its bare side, 
and of a line of forest trees growing upon the summit 
in bold outline against the sky, and completely cut 
off by the precipice from the forest of the plains. 
A second glance, however, generally shows that the 
precipice is broken in places where the stone appears 
to have crumbled away, and that here the trees of 
the hilltop come down to meet the trees of the plain. 
The hills vary in size, some being little more than 
gigantic isolated boulders, whilst others are two thou- 
sand feet high and many miles in circumference. 
The slopes of the granite mountain-ranges that run 
down from the Burmo - Siamese frontier, and form 
the backbone of the peninsula, are infested by tigers 
and panthers, and it is probably from a fear of these 
animals that the goats have betaken themselves to 
the isolated and precipitous limestone hills, where 
they live in perfect safety from molestation. One 
of these island-like crags is called Gunong Kroh. 
I first came upon it by accident, and spent a night 
in a Malay house at its base, whilst in search of 
the tracks of a rhinoceros. The hill rose, like a wall, 
out of the level plain, within a few hundred yards of 



THE WILD GOAT. 171 

the house. Its highest point was some seven hundred 
feet above the plain. It was perhaps a mile long, 
and half a mile in width a great roughly rectangular 
mass of limestone that lay upon the plain like a 
brick upon a smooth floor. There were places where 
the precipice was broken, and there, though the fall 
appeared to be only a few degrees less than perpen- 
dicular, trees and bushes grew so closely and so 
directly under one another that the tops of the 
lower trees seemed to brush against the trunks of 
the trees that sprang from the rocks above them. 

Hussein, my host, described the hill as not difficult 
of ascent, its precipices being easily avoided, and said 
that it was the home of a number of wild goats. He 
told me that from the house, where we sat, he often 
heard them bleating, and that whenever men climbed 
the hill in search of the rare and valuable Kamuning 
wood they generally saw fresh tracks. It was seldom, 
however, that any one saw the animals. 

" Shoot them ? " he said, in answer to a question. 
" No, no one ever tries to shoot them. Why should 
a man climb a rock as high and as steep as that to 
shoot a goat when, with half the trouble, he could 
shoot a deer twice its size on the plain below ? " 

It was certainly an alluring prospect. There were 
some goats, perhaps even a considerable number, 
living upon this isolated rock, whose area was com- 
paratively small and most strictly circumscribed. 
Even if they wanted to do so, the goats could not 
get away, and from the moment that one set foot 
on the hill one was within a mile of them. Viewed 
from below, the summit of the hill appeared to be 



172 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

fairly level, and it seemed to me that there was 
less undergrowth on it than there was on the plains, 
and that the trees were less closely packed together. 
I hoped, therefore, that when we reached the top 
we might have a fairly open view, and, if we moved 
quietly, perhaps have a chance view from one crag 
of a goat standing upon another crag. 

I decided to return at the earliest opportunity to 
climb Gunong Kroh, and went on the next morning 
after the rhinoceros, which I was lucky enough to 
shoot. A few weeks later W. and I slept in Hussein's 
house, and early next morning, accompanied by our 
host, began the ascent of Gunong Kroh. A nearly 
perpendicular climb of a few hundred feet, which 
was much easier than it looked, brought us to a 
ledge, and then we saw that the hill was not the 
solid mass of rock that I had imagined it to be, 
but really basin-shaped, and that a considerable area 
of ground on the same level as the plain of the 
Kinta valley was enclosed within its limestone 
walls. Hussein, who had often climbed the hill 
before in search of forest produce, was of course 
aware of this formation, but had omitted to tell 
us. We clambered down to explore the extent of 
this secret hollow, and found goat tracks all over 
it. In the side of the hill there was a cave which 
seemed to be used as a place of shelter, for inside 
it and round its mouth the ground was trampled 
deep with hoof-prints. 

After a careful examination of the ground we came 
to the conclusion that it was only at night that the 
goats came down to the level ground in the basin. 



THE WILD GOAT. 173 

The highest points of the hill were at its western and 
eastern extremities, and the sides of the basin on the 
north and south dipped considerably below the level 
of the two highest peaks. To reach our present 
position in the hollow we had climbed over the rim 
of the basin at one of its lowest points, and decided 
to climb up the opposite side of the basin, and to 
make our way round its rim to the western higher- 
most point, and thence back, also along the rim, to the 
place where we had made the ascent. The lower 
part of the climb up from the cave was not difficult, 
and we were able to carry our rifles in one hand. 
But after the first hundred feet or so we found that 
both hands were required for climbing, and had to 
improvise rifle -slings out of the stems of forest 
creepers. Wherever the face of the limestone was 
not absolutely perpendicular wherever, that is to 
say, seed could lodge or root could cling there grew 
some plant or bush or tree. They seemed in some 
way to receive a sustenance from the bare rock, for 
there was no soil. Great snaky roots clambered for 
yards upon yards over the barren limestone, dropping 
a little bunch of rootlets into any crevice that offered 
a hope of moisture or of support. Often the trees 
grew out of the rock horizontally, and the trunks did 
not turn skywards until a few feet from their base. 
But, so far from affording the assistance in climbing 
that one would have expected, both tree trunks and 
roots always seemed to block the way. The surface 
of the limestone had, through long subjection to 
alternate heat and rain, become rotten, and the roots 
insinuating themselves into every crack and interstice 



174 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

had loosened great masses of rock. Not only were 
there places where a rock that jutted forth to offer 
a tempting foothold was really ready to drop the 
moment that the least weight was laid upon it, but 
often we found ourselves underneath a boulder that 
had been broken off^ and that hung, supported by a 
cat's-cradle of creepers, ready to fall at the slightest 
oscillation. 

We reached the rim of the basin, with nothing worse 
than cut hands. The amount of vegetation on the 
top of the hill was surprising, and leaf-mould, which 
was practically the only soil, had accumulated to 
a considerable depth where the rock was level enough 
to prevent it being washed away. Some of the trees 
were of considerable girth, and rattans, with their 
thorny covering, writhed over the rocks and blocked 
the path in every direction. Between every tree 
hung festoons of creepers. There was a profusion of 
begonias, with coarse, quaintly shaped leaves and little 
bunches of white flowers ; and hanging ferns of every 
variety grew wherever there was moisture, and dwarf 
spiky palms wherever there was shade. 

The luxuriance of the undergrowth completely up- 
set our calculations, for, as I have said, we expected 
to have a moderately open view among the larger 
trees of the hilltop. We found, on the other hand, a 
vegetation no less dense than that of the plain below 
growing out of gigantic masses of rugged rock. 
At places the ridge narrowed to a ledge not more 
than a few feet wide, and then a little distance 
farther on it widened to an irregular broken surface 
of rock that was perhaps a hundred yards across. 



THE WILD GOAT. 175 

Sometimes we had a sheer fall of some hundreds of 
feet below us, on one side or the other, towards the 
open forest plains or towards the central basin ; and 
sometimes we could see the way of a more or less 
practicable descent through tumbled masses of 
boulders and forest growth. 

At one spot I had a narrow escape. We had left 
the top of the ridge, and were making our way along 
the side, when we came to a sheer precipice. It rose 
above us in an almost straight unbroken line, and its 
base was hidden from view underneath us. Where 
we were it was not, however, more than a few 
feet wide, and irregularities afforded hand and foot 
hold. 

W., clinging like a star-fish, worked his way across 
it in safety, and I followed. I had to reach out with 
one leg, as far as I could, to the foothold of a crevice, 
and, thus supported, to lean out until I could seize 
hold of a bush that grew out of the sheer face of the 
precipice. Holding on to this, I had to stretch for- 
ward again to get foothold on a little knob of rock 
that jutted out a few inches, and thence reach a sapling 
which grew out of more practicable ground. Holding 
on to the bush, with two or three hundred feet of 
sheer fall below me, I was putting my foot on the 
projecting rock when it gently gave way under my 
weight. The little knob and part of the rock behind 
detached itself from the cliff and dropped in silence 
out of sight, and it was some seconds before we 
heard the crash in the depths below. All my weight 
was thrown on the bush, which stood the strain for a 
moment; but as I turned to make my way back to 



176 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

my starting-point, my support began to give way. 
The roots came slowly out of the bare rock, first 
brown, then browny-white, then white. I was only 
a few feet from W. on the one side and from Hussein 
on the other, but it was almost impossible to move 
towards either of them. Luckily W., holding a tree- 
root with one hand, was able to reach over to seize 
my outstretched hand and pull me into safety. It 
was only just in time ; and we left the poor little 
bush, with all but its last white roots torn out, hang- 
ing head downwards over the precipice. Hussein had 
to go back and make a de'tour to reach us. 

We were making our way over and round, up and 
down, gigantic masses of boulders covered with vege- 
tation, when we heard a tremendous crashing through 
the trees not many yards in front of us, and then the 
sound of an animal going sheer down the rock to our 
left. Thud thud thud. It sounded like the fall 
of a leaping rock, and we could hardly believe that a 
living animal could be charging down such a break- 
neck spot at so headlong a pace. In a few seconds 
we heard it wildly galloping through the undergrowth 
of the central basin below us. Then the sounds died 
away, and that was all. We saw nothing, of course. 

We found the place where the goat had been sleep- 
ing, and picked up some long coarse hairs. We kept 
on our way, and soon the rock began to rise towards 
the western peak. The central basin, which we had 
had on our left-hand side, now came to an end, and 
we turned our backs upon it to climb the peak. It 
was a great dome -shaped mass of rock covering a 
great many acres, and, like the rest of the hill, was 



THE WILD GOAT. 177 

broken, rugged, and densely covered with forest 
growth. We found several marks of goats on it, and 
on our way down put up, and did not see, another 
goat, which, like the first one, dashed away in the 
direction of the central basin. 

Our only other adventure was W.'s narrow escape 
from falling down a natural pit. All the limestone 
hills are riddled with caves and pits, which are the 
immemorial home of colonies of bats, and of curious 
white sightless snakes that feed upon the bats. A 
crack or crevice in the rock, covered with a fibrous 
matting of root, leaves, and moss, often connects with 
great caverns that extend into the centre of the hill ; 
and one has therefore to be careful where one treads, 
for a man who disappears down one of these pits has 
little hope of being rescued. W. stepped straight 
into one trap, and plunged in until his outstretched 
elbows saved him. We quickly extricated him, but 
he was lucky to get off with nothing worse than a 
shaking. 

By the time that we had made our way back to the 
point where we had first ascended the hill, we saw 
that the combination of dense vegetation and broken 
precipitous rock prevented any chance of our coming 
upon the goats by surprise. We decided, therefore, 
to try to drive them, and returned to Hussein's house 
to make the necessary arrangements for the following 
week. 

In the course of the conversation Hussein gave us 
an interesting piece of information regarding the cave 
in the secret hollow of the hill. I had noticed that 
he seemed rather afraid of the cave: it was, he said, 

M 



178 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

because he was afraid that he did not tell us at the 
time that the cave was supposed to be the home of 
Orang Bunyi, or Voice Folk. These are invisible 
supernatural people who inhabit the forest, and who 
may sometimes be heard but never seen. Stories are 
told of Malays who have wandered in the forest 
depths until they reached the outskirts of villages 
inhabited by the Voice Folk, and heard the cooing of 
the tame pigeons round their dwellings. The Malays 
say they occasionally hear the Voice Folk calling to 
each other in the forest, and that their voice is exactly 
like that of human people. He who hears them 
generally finds that the voice is calling him by name. 
" Awang ! Oh, Awang ! " it will cry, if Awang be his 
name; "come here, some one is calling you. Come 
quickly." When one hears the voice, the only thing 
to do is to seek safety in flight ; but sometimes a man, 
either mistaking the tones for those of some fellow- 
mortal, or fascinated into wilfully seeking his doom, 
answers the call. If he does so, his fate is sealed. 
He cannot turn back ; an irresistible force compels 
him to follow the voice farther and farther into the 
forest depths, where finally the Voice Folk make 
themselves visible to him. He then becomes one of 
them, and, like them, invisible to mankind. Once, 
the Malays relate, a man returned to his village after 
having married a Voice Woman. But he, they say, 
is the only man who has ever returned, and he died 
nearly twenty years ago. 

Upon the day appointed for the drive, W., my 
brother Eric, and I met Hussein and some dozen 
Malays at the foot of Gunong Kroh. Our plan was 



THE WILD GOAT. 179 

that these men should take up stations at regular 
intervals round the western end of the hill, and 
that each man should then climb to make his way 
as best he could towards the highest western peak. 
We thought that any goats that there might be on 
the western end of the hill would naturally, upon 
the first alarm, make their way to the eastern end, 
and that to do this they would either pass through 
the central basin or along the rim on either side 
of it. We told the men not to shout or yell ; they 
were merely to rap the trees and to make such 
reasonable amount of noise as a wood-cutter or rattan- 
collector would make in pursuing his vocation. As 
soon as the Malays had moved off to take up their 
stations round the hill we drew lots for places. The 
central basin fell to my brother, the northern rim to 
W., and the southern rim to myself ; and we betook 
ourselves to our positions. 

I made my way along my side of the hill until I 
reached the place where, at the end of the central 
basin, the southern rim began to rise up into the 
western peak, which was the point for which the 
beaters were to make. I found a goat track, and 
selected a hiding-place from which I could watch 
it. In front of me the limestone rose abruptly in 
great jagged crags and broken boulders, through and 
among which tree-stems fought their way and tree- 
roots crept. To my right a steep descent led down 
through tumbled masses of stone and tangled vege- 
tation towards the central basin, and on my left was 
some broken rock ending in sheer precipice. Near 
the base of the precipice was Hussein's house. The 



180 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 

sensation of having another scene at one's feet was 
extraordinary. It was quite different from the feel- 
ing one has when from a mountain top one sees a 
valley spread out beneath one; for there, though 
one says that it is as though the plain were at one's 
feet, yet the sense of atmosphere and of perspective 
dispel the illusion even as one gives utterance to 
it. But in this case the expression was literally 
true: underneath me I could see Hussein's wife 
winnowing rice at her door-step amid a number of 
hens that clucked and cackled at her feet. In the 
little stream beside the house her children were 
shouting and splashing. All were very small and 
far away, though in a horizontal distance they were 
not very much farther away than one can throw a 
ball ; and, looking down upon them from the height 
of the precipitous limestone hill, I felt as though I 
looked down upon them from such land as grew on 
Jack's Beanstalk. 

I had a long time to wait before the drive would 
begin, and screening myself behind a tree I made 
myself as comfortable as possible. By good fortune 
a pair of tiny long-billed birds were making a nest 
in a branch within a few yards of my head, and 
they would have kept me interested for many hours 
longer than I had to wait. The joy of these beauti- 
ful little creatures ^in their building was so intense 
that no one could fail to be affected by it. Their 
nest was a hanging one of delicate woven fibre, and 
it looked as if they had robbed the spiders' webs 
to make it. As each of the pair flew up with its 
tiny contribution, it called to its mate to see what 



THE WILD GOAT. 181 

a beautiful thing it was bringing; and as each flew 
away it called again as if to say that it would find 
something yet better next time. 

When I had been in my place a little over an 
hour, a magnificent python, some twenty feet long, 
moved past me within its own length's distance of 
me. It had probably been disturbed by a beater 
when basking on the rocks; but it was in no way 
alarmed, for it moved slowly and deliberately. A 
truly splendid creature : it had recently shed its 
skin, and its new coat shone and glowed in the 
bright sunshine, and all the shades of purple and 
yellow in the mottled reticulated pattern of its 
colouring alternately reflected and retained the light. 
Its broad massive head and round bright eyes, its 
royal length and girth, all told of a dignity and 
majesty even among the beasts that creep upon 
their belly. 

A few minutes later, and then came a tremendous 
crash among the trees on the heights in front of 
and above me. Instinctively my hands gripped the 
rifle tight, and for a second or two there was a 
wild pit-pat at my heart. Most people's hearts go 
wrong for a second or two in a drive, I think, when 
they first hear the game afoot. It is perhaps the 
sudden change from passive inaction to active ex- 
pectation ; and that is the reason, perhaps, why one 
does not have the same sensation in tracking big 
game, for there the exercise keeps one's pulse steady, 
and it is generally only a matter of the change of 
the degree of expectation. 

Crash ! again, and then a heavy thud on a rock ; 



182 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

silence for a moment, and then another thud, followed 
by a crash. The noise was coming straight towards 
me, and I shook my elbows free of the coat-sleeves. 
Then came a crash within twenty yards of me, and 
then oh, horror and disgust! a big, black, long- 
tailed monkey hurled itself into sight. It landed 
with a tremendous thud on a bare rock within 
a few yards of me, and then nearly collapsed with 
fright on finding my solemn eyes returning its stare. 
It flung itself on to the nearest rock, and thence, 
with a wild leap through space, swung into a tree. 
The moment that it caught its breath it uttered a 
series of piercing, hysterical whoops, and, screaming 
and crashing through the trees, it passed out of 
earshot. 

There was some time to wait after this, and then 
on the heights in front of me I heard a sound as 
if some one had dropped a pebble. Tpp ! that was all. 
A few seconds later there was the same sound again 
tpp ! After a few moments again the same sound 
nothing more ; each time the sound seemed to come 
closer. I could not imagine what the cause might be, 
but had a vague idea that it might be a small monkey. 
Then I saw something on the higher elevation to my 
front left drop a distance of some six or eight feet and 
land lightly on a rock. Tpp ! It was too far for me 
to see what it was, and the bushes and tree-trunks 
hid it almost entirely. Again it leapt down a sheer 
fall of rock and landed among some boulders about 
thirty yards away from me. And then I saw that 
it was a goat. It was only a young one not more 
than a third grown, I imagine. From the glimpse 



THE WILD GOAT. 183 

I had of it, it seemed to be covered almost to its 
heels with tremendously shaggy brown hair. That 
and its immature appearance was all that I had 
time to take in. It saw me as soon as I saw it, 
and though I instinctively raised my rifle before I 
realised that it was too small for me to shoot, it gave 
a wild bound and disappeared behind a rock before 
my rifle had reached my shoulder. A second later 
I heard it dashing headlong down the precipitous 
descent to the central basin, where my brother was 
stationed. 

It was worth all the toil and trouble that we had 
gone through to catch merely the one glimpse that I 
had had of the animal. It would have been worth 
many day's journeys to have been able to see, and not 
merely imagine from the hearing, the dainty way in 
which the animal leapt down the sheer limestone 
from crag to crag, and to have seen and not merely 
heard the mad flight through the blind undergrowth 
and murderous limestone pitfalls. That was the only 
glimpse that I have ever had of a Kambing grun, but 
I would not have missed it for a good deal. I am 
glad it was a young animal, for had it been some 
patriarch of the herd my recollection of the encounter 
might have been embittered by my inability to get a 
shot, whereas now I can hug to myself the thought 
that even if I could I would not have fired. 

Not long after some of the beaters came up, and the 
drive, so far as my side of the hill was concerned, was 
over. I sent the men down the hill to the central 
basin, in which my brother was stationed, for as this 
was the direction the kid had taken I thought that 



184 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

other goats had probably collected there, and I made 
my own way to the point where we had ascended the 
hill. After a considerable interval my brother and 
W. came up, and the beaters straggled in close behind 
them. Neither of the other guns had seen or heard a 
goat, and both heartily condemned the proceedings as 
a failure. One of the beaters, a brother of Hussein, 
had, however, come upon a goat which had refused to 
give way to him. His story, which is quite worthy of 
belief, was that he was making his way up the steep 
side of the hill when this goat stood in his path and 
refused to let him come any farther. It stood still in 
one place facing him, shaking its head at him as if 
about to charge, and stamping the ground with its 
hoofs. Discretion was the Malay's only policy, and 
he wisely retreated and sought another path. 

The beaters all spoke to fresh goat tracks on all 
sides, and their explanation of the ill-success of the 
drive was that paths made by the goats led in every 
direction. The goats on the western extremity, where 
our drive had been, could make their way to the 
eastern peak without passing near any of the three 
stations we had taken up ; they could skirt along the 
hill above or below the precipices on the outer side of 
it, or they could contour the inner side of the central 
basin. There was no means of driving them in any 
particular direction, and that a goat should pass any 
given point was purely a matter of chance. 

After a thorough discussion, during which various 
plans and theories were suggested, we finished our 
cigarettes and made our way back down the hill to 
Hussein's house. 



THE WILD GOAT. 185 

On several subsequent occasions we tried our luck 
on Gunong Kroh, but never did any of us see another 
goat. 

It is now some years since I was stationed in Kinta, 
and I am prepared to tell the world the locality of 
Gunong Kroh. On those limestone heights, isolated 
in a little world of their own, far apart from the 
animals and life of the wild plain below, the goats are 
still to be found. The little goat I saw is now, if it is 
still alive, a patriarch of the herd, but in my thoughts 
it always remains the kid that once I saw. Mine are 
the only eyes that have ever seen it for no one, 
except an occasional wood -cutter, has climbed the 
hill since our last drive, and, for all that the rest of 
the world knows, it and its brethren may be some 
of Monsieur Hue's unicorns. 

To seek it, go out from Ipoh seven miles on the 
Sungei Kaia Road, and you will see the sheer sides 
and timbered crest of Gunong Kroh standing up in 
the forest on your right-hand side. The animals are 
there, and when you have once scaled the hill you are 
within a mile of them : all that remains to be done is 
to decrease that distance. And when you go there, 
may the best of luck attend you ! 



186 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 

AHMAN, my head boatman, came into the verandah 
by the front stairs, and I knew that he had important 
news. The old man had his own way of doing every- 
thing, and whenever he came to see me about the 
Government boats, or any other matter of pure 
business, he came in through the servants' entrance. 
If he came on an errand connected with shooting or 
fishing, he felt that the relationship between us 
justified him in using a side entrance to the bungalow. 
But when he came with Ichalar of big game, he always 
presented himself at the front door. When I looked 
up from my official correspondence I saw him in the 
doorway. A smile beamed upon his face, and with an 
air of appreciation he scratched his left shin-bone 
with the gaunt big-toe of his right foot. He stood in 
silence, waiting till my expectancy should reach that 
happy moment when it is fully ripe, and is as yet 
untouched by the canker of irritation. His smile 
grew and broadened until he showed every ragged 
tooth or empty socket in his old head. 

"The Blat Elephant is feeding near Kuala Sol/' 
He paused to let me take in the news to its full 
extent, and then continued : " The tide will be 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 187 

running up this afternoon. If we start at five o'clock 
in the big house-boat we shall reach Kuala Sol by 
eight o'clock, and can start tracking the first thing to- 
morrow morning. May I give orders accordingly?" 
A few questions and a little consideration showed that 
Ahman had thought the whole matter out, and that 
nothing was left for me to do but to acquiesce. 

He went away to make the necessary arrangements, 
and a few minutes later Sleman, another of my boat- 
men, came up to put my 10-bore rifle in its case. He 
was the youngest of my crew, and always accompanied 
Ahman and myself upon our shooting expeditions, his 
special duty being to carry the sandwich- case and 
water-bottle. An exceedingly nice youngster of about 
nineteen, he came from one of the northern unpro- 
tected states of the Malay Peninsula, and being new 
to the ways of the white men was, when he first joined 
my service, somewhat shy and awkward. He was 
very keen, however, to learn all that he could about 
every form of sport, and under Ahman's tuition was 
going through a regular course to "obtain courage." 
Abstinence from certain kinds of food, ghee in par- 
ticular, seemed to be the most important condition, 
but there were many charms and invocations tojins 
and legendary heroes to be learnt, and there were 
some rather extraordinary observances to be kept. 
Both men looked upon the course as a very serious 
matter. 

Punctually at five o'clock everything was ready; 
the house-boat pushed off from the landing-stage at 
the bottom of my garden, and the incoming tide 
bore us smoothly up the Kuantan river. Ahman 



188 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

kept the boat in mid-stream, and the four boatmen, 
who sat in the bows, gently and rhythmically rap- 
ping the boat's side with their paddles at each 
stroke, had little more to do than to maintain suf- 
ficient steering way. 

Both banks of the broad river were covered with a 
dense forest of mangroves, and trees with dark, glossy, 
fleshy leaves and quaint-shaped fruit pushed one an- 
other actually into the river. A couple of miles above 
my house we entered a tributary of the Kuantan, the 
Blat, which gave its name to the elephant we were 
seeking. 

At the next bend of the river Ahman pointed to the 
bank, and asked me if I remembered it. I remembered 
it well. Some months before, when the Blat Elephant 
had last made one of its periodical visits, Ahman and 
I had tracked it into this mangrove forest. It was 
not easy to forget the horrible, slimy, stinking mud, 
punched by the elephant's feet into great oozy holes, 
between which we had to pick our way ; the dense 
entanglement of branches and leaves all thickly be- 
smeared with heavy slavers of the same mud wiped off 
the elephant's body; and the almost unimaginable 
myriads of the mosquitoes. Every separate nipah- 
palm leaf, every single mangrove branch, was the 
resting-place, not of dozens, but literally, I believe, of 
hundreds of the most venomous little brutes. From 
each leaf, each branch, there darted forth at our touch 
a crowd of mosquitoes that can only be compared to a 
swarm of bees at an overturned hive. Our faces, 
necks, and hands were black with mosquitoes. They 
bit with extraordinary viciousness, and the agony, as 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 189 

of an incessant beating with stinging nettles, was 
almost intolerable. The myriads that hung in clouds 
round our heads made it difficult to see, and almost 
impossible to hear. And it was in great part due to 
the mosquitoes that when we got up to the elephant, 
which had by wallowing protected itself with a thick 
coating of mud, we were unable to get close enough 
for a shot. I managed to see some branches moving, 
but that was all. At last, when the elephant either 
scented or heard us and made off, we were so tortured 
as to be glad of any excuse to return to our boat. 

The banks that hid this most unpleasant spot were 
sliding quickly by us, and soon after sunset the house- 
boat entered the Sol, a tributary of the Blat. A short 
way up this river the mangroves were replaced by 
ordinary forest, and before long a bend in the river 
disclosed the cheerful light of a small house in an 
isolated clearing on the bank. We tied up at the 
landing-stage, and in answer to our hail the owner 
of the house, a man named Brahim, came down to 
the boat. 

He was able to give us all the information that we 
required. The great solitary elephant, which for years 
out of memory had appeared at intervals in the valley 
of the Blat, played no small part in his life and in that 
of the agricultural population of the district. On 
every visit it did an enormous amount of damage in 
the plantations and gardens, destroying cocoa-nut and 
plantain trees and knocking down houses, and Brahim 
and the Malays of the district looked upon it as one of 
the ills to which their life was subject. They regarded 
it as they would regard a flood, a harvest failure, or an 



190 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

outbreak of smallpox. All of these things were alike 
in this respect, that of none of them could the occur- 
rence be prevented by any human power, and that fore- 
thought was therefore merely an unnecessary and un- 
intelligent anticipation of a possible future evil. A 
calm acceptance of the fate that placed him within the 
area influenced by the elephant thus gave a curiously 
impersonal tone to the manner in which Brahim 
thought and spoke of it. He told us that the elephant 
had fed the night before in an abandoned clearing 
about a mile farther up the river, and that he expected 
it to invade his plantation this night or the next, but 
talked in a voice so unconcerned that one could hardly 
realise that he was speaking of the imminent depreda- 
tion of what was practically the only property that he 
had in the world. I was struck, too, by the way in 
which he appeared to regard the elephant as a tool 
in the hand of some maleficent demon rather than as 
a voluntary harm-doer, or as a manifestation of evil 
rather than as the evil itself. Against the elephant 
itself, therefore, he appeared to have no ill-feeling. 
He seemed not to have the inclination, which would 
have been natural to many people, to curse it. He 
did not even call it a beast, or a brute. He only 
spoke of "it." This did not, of course, in any way 
prevent him from having a hearty desire to see it 
killed. 

He told us that he had vowed to slay a goat when 
the elephant was killed, and mentioned the names of 
some of the richer Malays in the Blat district, each of 
whom had vowed to slaughter a buffalo upon the same 
auspicious occasion. Almost every man in the water- 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 191 

shed of the Blat and Sol appeared to have made some 
vow to be fulfilled upon " its " death. 

While we were thus talking, voices hailed us out of 
the darkness that lay upon the river. A couple of 
Malays passing down stream in a dug-out, recognising 
my house-boat and guessing our errand, called out to 
let us know that they had just heard the elephant 
feeding on the opposite bank of the river, about half a 
mile up-stream. Brahim told us that the ford by 
which the elephant generally crossed the river was at 
this place, and we decided that, if we waited there in 
a boat, we might possibly surprise the animal at the 
shallows. Ahman, Sleman, and I therefore took a 
dug-out and started without further delay. 

Before we had gone far, we heard the elephant 
feeding, about a quarter of a mile inland from the 
river bank. It is not easy to say how impressive 
the sound was in the stillness of the night as it came 
from the darkness of the forest, which stood up wall- 
like above the river bank. There was the peaceful 
sound of the elephant's slow, contented feeding, mixed 
with occasional sounds of the flapping of an ear, 
rumbling and squelching noises in its stomach, and 
an intermittent thwacking of its tail upon its sides. 
Now we could hear a bough being snapped off, and 
now a bunch of grass being torn up by the roots. 
It seemed a shame to think of killing an animal 
so huge and so unseemingly inoffensive ; and it 
was necessary to harden my heart with the memory 
of the mischief that it wrought. The wind was blow- 
ing from it to us, and we waited in silence beside 
the ford. It fed slowly towards us until only a 



192 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

couple of hundred yards separated us, and then 
stopped a long time under a tree to pull down a 
hanging creeper. The whole operation was marvel- 
lously distinct. We could hear the branches shake, 
and bend, and creak, as the animal tugged at the 
creeper's stem, and then the creeper's hold would 
give a little, its tendrils would release some part of 
their clutch of the leaves and twigs of the tree, 
and the tearing and rending of the severance was 
followed by the elephant's slow munching of the 
lower part of the creeper until it had eaten up as 
far as it could reach and began again to pull down 
more. While this was going on, a couple of bears 
passed by, " woofing " to one another as they shambled 
hurriedly through the forest in search of food. Soon 
afterwards the elephant stopped feeding, and moved 
away. I do not know whether a treacherous slant 
of air gave it our wind, whether the smell of the 
bears offended it, or whether it wished to seek a 
fresh pasture. At all events, we heard it no more, 
and after a while returned through the darkness to 
the house-boat. 

Before sunrise the next morning we were back at 
the ford, and picked up the elephant's tracks at the 
place where we had heard it feeding the night before. 
There was nothing to show that it had been alarmed 
in any way: it had walked slowly away, feeding as 
it went. I had often seen the Blat Elephant's tracks 
before, but the fresh deep prints with the clean cut 
impress of the toes always struck me with an ever 
new feeling of the hugeness of the animal. We fol- 
lowed the tracks through fairly open forest, passing 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 193 

a place where it had slept, and then heard it feeding 
some two hundred yards away. The wind was in 
our favour, and I moved towards it as noiselessly as 
I could. I got within fifty yards, and could hear 
with the most tantalising plainness the flapping of 
its great ears against its neck, and the swishing of a 
branch that it held in its trunk to fan its sides. I 
could also hear the gurgling noises attendant on 
digestion. But I could see nothing. I crept stealthily 
closer, and saw a branch move. It swung gently to 
and fro as the elephant slowly rubbed itself against 
a tree. Then there was a sudden silence. This con- 
tinued for a few seconds, and then I heard the ele- 
phant move rapidly away. To have hastened after 
it in the hope of catching it up would have been 
worse than useless. The only thing to do was to 
keep quiet for a few minutes until the elephant had 
left the scene of its alarm. We were surprised to find 
it so wide-awake and suspicious, and Ahman expressed 
the feelings of us all by saying that even a deer would 
not have shown such a lamentable excess of caution. 

We followed up the tracks for many miles after 
this without seeing or hearing anything more of the 
elephant. When the afternoon was wearing on, we 
decided to give up for the day, and cut a line through 
the forest to return to the house-boat. It was nearly 
dark when we got back. As we were of opinion that 
the elephant was making for a point some few miles 
higher up the Blat river, I had the house -boat 
poled up there in the hope of finding fresh tracks 
the next day. 

After-dinner, while I lay upon my mattress in the 
N 



194 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

house -boat, I heard old Ahman telling Sleman and 
the other boatmen stories that deserve to be recorded. 
This is one way to kill a rhinoceros. 

Take a piece of hard wood (lengapus for choice), 
eight inches long and two inches thick, and sharpen 
the two ends to as fine a point as possible. Armed 
with this, follow the rhinoceros. When you come 
upon it, shout and boldly advance. The rhinoceros 
will thereupon rush at you. As is the custom of the 
animal, it will charge at you with its eyes shut and 
its mouth open. When it approaches, step aside, and 
taking the stick between your thumb and first 
finger so hold it out perpendicularly, and put it 
in the animal's open mouth. The rhinoceros will 
snap upon it, and the pointed ends entering the 
upper and lower jaws will close the mouth for 
ever. As it cannot eat it will starve, and all 
that you have to do is to follow it until it drops 
down dead. 

The system employed by a friend of Ahman's for 
killing elephants also has much to recommend it. 
Elephants, it is well known, move on from one feed- 
ing-ground to another in a regular rotation and at 
fixed times. Ahman's friend could go to any place 
where elephants had been feeding and tell from the 
appearance of the trampled ground and the con- 
dition of the new grass and leafage how long it 
would be before the herd would return. When the 
elephants were due at any place he would arm him- 
self with a long iron spike and a mallet, and climb 
up into a convenient tree. When the elephants came, 
of course they came, he waited until a tusker 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 195 

passed under the tree, and then let himself drop upon 
its back. He then scrambled his way to its neck, 
seated himself firmly there, and proceeded to hammer 
the spike as quickly as he could into the animal's 
brain. The elephant, of course, would not stand still 
while this was being done: it would crash away 
through the forest, but no branches could sweep 
Ahman's friend from its back. Where it could go, 
he could pass, and the elephant seldom went far be- 
fore the spike pierced its brain, when, of course, it 
fell down dead. 

Ahman was beginning another story descriptive of 
a method of killing elephants by a dynamite fuse 
on the end of a bamboo pole, when one of the boat- 
men, a mannerless cub from Kemaman, interrupted 
the tale by bluntly calling him a liar. Ahman was 
so hurt that he refused to speak another word. The 
light was soon put out, and the men pulling their 
cotton cloths around them disposed themselves for 
the night. I lay awake some time after they were 
all asleep. It was an intensely dark, still night ; there 
was the whisper of the river at the bows where 
the boat broke its flow, and its caress at the side 
where it ran softly by. Everything was black, 
but not undistinguishable : I could see the black- 
green line of the great forest standing on the river 
bank; the river was one flat dead gleam of bottle- 
black, and over all was the hollow black sky. At 
intervals some night bird would utter a single 
mournful note. 

We were all awake at early dawn, and when the 
sun was showing over the distant mountains Ahman, 



196 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

SlemaD, and I set out to look for fresh tracks. We 
took a straight line through the forest for some 
miles in the direction which we imagined the ele- 
phant to have taken, and then made a wide sweep 
round towards the place we had been in the day 
before. We found nothing, however, and late in the 
afternoon returned to the house -boat disappointed 
and weary. 

As we appeared upon the bank, we were greeted by 
a shout from the other boatmen, almost in chorus. 

" ' It ' fed in Brahim's garden last night." 

Poor Brahim ! There was something very pathetic 
in his fate. While we had been running through 
the forest, like questing hounds, in search of the 
elephant, he had sat quietly in his house to await 
its coming. 

We unmoored the house-boat, and paddled down- 
stream to Brahim's house. He was perfectly calm 
and impersonal, the fact that the damage was in 
the past instead of being in the future making no 
difference to him. He took us round his garden 
as the sun was setting, and, amidst the wreckage 
of the leaves and branches and the great pit-holes 
where the enormous feet had sunk into the soil, 
showed us where some twenty fruit-trees had been 
destroyed. 

While we were discussing the probability of the 
elephant's return to the plantation during the night, 
a couple of rattan-cutters passed by on their way 
home from their day's work, and informed us that 
it had in the last hour or two crossed to the other 
side of the river some three miles lower down. 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 197 

There was little chance of another visit from it, 
therefore, and we turned in to sleep at an early 
hour. 

At daybreak next morning Ahman, Sleman, and I 
set off down-stream in a small dug-out. We found the 
place where the elephant had crossed the river, and 
landed. The tracks showed that it had fed close to 
the river bank most of the night: then they led 
inland, and we followed them for some hours. We 
were now some miles down-stream of the country 
in which we had been tracking for the last two 
days, and were not far from the mangrove belt and 
the tidal area. The forest was no less heavily tim- 
bered than that farther up-stream, and the under- 
growth was even more dense and more thickly en- 
cumbered with rattans and thorny creepers. The 
greater part of our way lay through swamp and 
morass, in which patches of higher ground were 
interspersed. 

At about ten o'clock Ahman kicked a piece of the 
elephant's dung in half, and felt in its centre with 
his bare toes to discover some remnant of heat. It 
was quite cold. "We must hurry," he said; "the 
elephant is a long way in front of us." 

The tracks followed a well-defined animal path 
through the forest, and it was only necessary to keep 
to this path and have a watchful eye for any place 
at which the elephant might have left it. We 
hurried along, Ahman close behind me and Sleman 
at his heels. And a few hundred paces farther on, 
at a place where the path made a sudden bend 
round the trunk of an old dead tree, I saw lying 



198 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

down on the path, only a few yards away, the Blat 
Elephant. 

It was sound asleep. Flat on its side, it had its 
head on the ground, and all four feet stretched out. 
It lay across the path with its back to me, and rattans 
and forest - creepers so hemmed it in that its head 
was hidden on one side and its hind -quarters on the 
other by undergrowth and tangled foliage of every 
description. The two men stood still behind me, 
while I crept forward a few paces and knelt down 
under the dead tree to take a steady aim. The 
animal was not more than fifteen yards away, but 
the gaunt ridge of its backbone and the nape of its 
neck were all that I could see. To right and left 
were great tangled masses of rattans, whose stems 
were sheathed in great thorny coverings and whose 
every delicate tendril carried stems of clinging hooks ; 
and I dared not attempt to make a de'tour to get a 
shot at the elephant's forehead. I knew by experi- 
ence how alert it was, and that I should not be 
able to move more than a few yards before it would 
hear me. I took a steady aim, therefore, at the last 
vertebra at the nape of its neck, expecting the bullet 
to smash its backbone and perhaps to rake into its 
brain. I fired, and all was still. 

Peering under the smoke of my 10-bore, I saw the 
animal lying motionless. I waited a few seconds, and 
then looked round towards the two Malays. The 
week before, shooting in the Kuantan valley, I had 
killed a fine tusker elephant with a single bullet in 
the brain. This made two consecutive elephants with 
two consecutive bullets ; and the second of them was 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 199 

the famous Blat Elephant. Trying to conceal my 
emotion, I beckoned to the men to come up, saying 
that the animal was dead. But " dead " had barely 
crossed my lips when there was a rending of the 
rattans, and before I could move the elephant was 
charging straight at me. 

A second before, it had been lying on the ground 
with all four feet stretched out, and with, I believed, 
a bullet in its brain. An elephant cannot spring to 
his feet, and a tame animal generally takes some time 
to rise. The suddenness of this charge may therefore 
appear exaggerated : I can only say that I was stand- 
ing within a few yards of the animal, and was not 
aware of any interval of time between its lying silent 
on the ground and its charging me. I saw the green 
rattans tearing asunder to right and to left, away from 
an enormous brown head a trunk tightly coiled up 
and a pair of huge gleaming tusks. It was all high 
up in the air, and right above me imminent as a 
wave that curls before it breaks. With my second 
barrel I fired into the centre of the enormous brown 
chest, the head being so high and so close that it was 
covered by the tightly coiled trunk, and then with an 
empty rifle I turned and ran down the track up which 
we had come. The elephant was only a few yards 
behind me, and I ran for life. 

Before I had gone more than fifteen or twenty 
yards I tripped and fell heavily to the ground, my 
rifle being flung from my hand. Death seemed 
certain, and I could only hope that it would be pain- 
less. But, to my intense surprise, the elephant had 
not followed me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw 



200 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

it standing under the great dead tree, from under- 
neath which I had fired both shots. I picked myself 
up and, not daring to wait to get my rifle which had 
been thrown into a thicket by my fall, raced down the 
path again and hid behind the first convenient tree. 
From this point of comparative safety I saw the 
elephant still standing under the dead tree. It was 
fumbling dizzily with its trunk in the heavy smoke 
of the black powder fumbling to find me. The 
blood was pouring from the wound in its chest in 
great throbbing jets, and the bright green undergrowth 
was drenched with heavy red. 

After a few seconds the great brute began to 
scream with rage and pain. How it screamed! As 
the numbness caused by the shock of the first bullet 
wore off, the pain of the wound and of the second 
bullet in its chest drove it to frenzied madness. It 
trampled over the ground which was already be- 
smeared with its blood, and, with trunk outstretched 
and ears thrust forward, turned in every direction to 
seek its assailant. My empty rifle lay between us, 
and I could not think of attempting to move towards 
it. Neither dared I move farther away, for any 
motion on my part might attract its attention. 
Ahman and Sleman were both unarmed, for in those 
days I did not own a second rifle, and we all cowered 
behind our respective trees. Any one of us, of course, 
could have killed it had he been armed. And each 
one of us knew that at any minute he might be 
detected, and then inevitably be killed. 

After a time, it may have been only a few minutes, 
but it seemed like hours, weakened by the loss of 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 201 

blood and convinced perhaps of the futility of its 
search, it moved slowly away. We came out from 
our hiding-places, and all were very shaky. I picked 
up my rifle and reloaded it, and then, after a few 
minutes' rest to settle our nerves, we set off again 
after the elephant. When we had gone about a 
quarter of a mile, Ahman, who followed in my tracks, 
step for step, tapped my shoulder. 

" He is going to plug up his wound," he whispered, 
pointing to a dwarf palm from which some leaves had 
been torn. I stared at him without at first taking in 
his meaning, and then, thinking of his quaint stories, 
continued my silent tracking without making a reply. 
A few yards farther on Ahman pointed to a place 
where the elephant had picked up in its trunk a small 
quantity of soft oozy mud. " Aih ! Is he not clever ? 
There is the poultice." This time I stopped, and 
asked him what he meant. He replied that the 
elephant would insert a plug of the palm -leaves 
into the opening of the wound in its chest, and 
then cover the whole wound over with mud. It 
seemed almost incredible, but the time was not one 
for arguing about animal intelligence, and I followed 
the tracks again. And, sure enough, before we had 
gone much farther the blood that had so plenteously 
besmeared our path suddenly dwindled to a scanty 
sprinkle, and shortly afterwards to a few thin drops 
at intervals. 

After another hour or so the tracks grew firmer, 
showing that the animal was staggering less and was 
recovering its strength. Later we came to a fallen 
tree some five feet in diameter that lay across a bit 



202 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

of swamp, and saw that the elephant, instead of 
wading through the swamp, had used the tree as a 
bridge to walk upon. This was most disheartening, 
and Ahman, cursing the elephant heartily for a tight- 
rope dancer, urged me to hasten, saying that the 
animal was now in all probability going faster than 
we were. We therefore pushed on as fast as possible, 
trusting that any sound we might make would be 
unheard by the elephant in the noise of its own 
movements. 

But we had soon to redouble our caution, for in 
one place the elephant had taken a sudden loop and 
turned round to watch its own tracks. This is not 
unusual with wounded animals whose strength and 
size makes them dangerous, such as rhinoceroses, 
sladang, and elephants ; and when any animal adopts 
these tactics, its pursuers are running a very great 
risk. They see the tracks lying before them, and 
naturally only look for danger in front. But what 
has happened is that the animal has all but com- 
pleted a great letter P. It just stops short of com- 
pleting the lower part of the loop of the capital 
letter, and, standing back a few yards from the main 
line of the letter, watches its pursuers advance. It 
allows them to pass, and then without warning it 
charges them from behind. 

On this occasion, however, luckily for us, the 
elephant had for some reason moved on again before 
we reached the spot which it had been watching. 

At about two o'clock in the afternoon the tracks 
turned toward the river. Our luck here deserted us. 
The elephant decided to recross, and made for the 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 203 

point at which it had crossed the river the night 
before. This was the spot at which we had joined 
the tracks in the morning, and where we had left 
our hoat. 

As the elephant stepped down into the river, in a 
fury at the sight of any implement of man, it seized 
our craft and swung it out of the way, snapping the 
iron chain by which we had tied it to a tree, and 
sending it adrift down the stream. 

When we arrived on the scene we only found a 
few links of a chain on the near bank, and in the 
distance saw the huge footprints which showed where 
the elephant had clambered up the farther side. The 
river was not particularly broad, but it was tidal 
mangrove water, and infested with crocodiles. To 
cross it without a boat was out of the question. We 
had the alternative of taking a path back through the 
forest, making for Brahim's house, which was some 
three miles away, or of waiting on the chance that 
some boat might pass. To return was to give up all 
hope for the day. We therefore decided to wait ; but 
luck was against us. For nearly three long hours did 
we wait upon a slimy bank, grilled in the sun and 
devoured by mosquitoes, mocked by the glitter of 
undrinkable water and insulted by the footprints fast 
drying upon the opposite bank. At last, at about five 
o'clock, a boat came round the bend of the river and 
took us off. It was too late to follow the tracks 
farther, and I sadly gave the order to return to the 
house-boat. 

It was not until after dinner that I heard of the 
accident to which I owe my life. Both Ahman and 



204 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

Sleman swore positively that when I fired my second 
barrel at the charging elephant an enormous rotten 
branch, loosened by the concussion of the shots of 
my heavy rifle, fell from the tree under which I was 
standing. As the elephant charged down the path, 
the great branch fell fair upon its back. It was this 
that had stopped the elephant's charge, and not, as 
I had imagined, my second barrel. If their story is 
true, and I see no reason to doubt it, it was a marv- 
ellous chance that the branch, which would have 
killed me had I remained where I was for a moment 
longer, should have saved my life by falling upon the 
elephant. 

I ordered the house-boat to be taken down to the 
point where the elephant had crossed and recrossed ; 
and we were drifting lazily with the stream, and 
consoling ourselves for the day's want of success by 
an assurance of the certainty of meeting the elephant 
again on the morrow, when suddenly we were hailed 
out of the darkness by a police-boat 

"Amok! amok!" 

When the boats approached one another a corporal 
came on board and reported that a Malay had run 
amok, killing his wife and two men. The scene of 
the murders was on the sea-coast, not far from the 
border between my district and an independent 
native state; and the murderer, who had escaped 
into the forest, would undoubtedly make for the 
border. The sergeant and a posse had already left 
in pursuit. 

There was no police inspector in the district, and 
therefore no option was left me. I took the police 



THE BLAT ELEPHANT. 205 

crew on my boat, and with a double set of men we 
paddled hard for the river mouth. By midnight we 
had transhipped into the Government yawl, and a 
few hours later were out at sea, skirting the coast- 
line to make for the Kemaman border. 

We eventually caught our man ; but it was some 
time before I could find time to return to the Blat 
river. It was then, of course, out of the question to 
follow the tracks that we had left, and all that I 
could do was to organise parties to search in all 
directions for any signs that there might be of the 
elephant's dead body. But all in vain. 

The next month I left Kuantan on transfer to 
another district, and shortly afterwards proceeded on 
a long leave to England. Soon after my arrival at 
home I got a letter from Ahman to say that a 
Malay rattan-cutter had come upon the dead body 
of the elephant, and had stolen the tusks and sold 
them to a Chinaman over the Kemaman border. I 
wrote to my successor about the matter, but the 
lapse of time made it impossible for him to do 
anything; and that, I am afraid, is the end of the 
Blat Elephant. 

It is satisfactory so far as Brahim and the cul- 
tivators of the Blat and Sol rivers are concerned, 
for they have, I hope, killed the goats and buffaloes 
that they vowed to slay ; and unless a new elephant 
has appeared to take the place of the old one, their 
crops are safe. 

But where are the tusks that I should have to 
grace my story ? I sigh to think of them lying in 
a shop- window, cut up into hair-brushes or frittered 



206 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

away to be the fittings of a dressing-case. For in 
my dreams I see them as I shall never see them 
again, gleaming in great curves, with an overpower- 
ing bulk of head and body behind them, and framed 
by a veil of green rattans torn asunder to right and 
to left. 



207 



A TIGER-DRIVE. 

IT is grey dawn on the banks of the Perak river. 
The little Malay owl has uttered its last ku-hup; 
in every tree small birds are twittering and fluffing 
their feathers to warm themselves, and on all sides 
the jungle-cocks are shrilling a cheery defiance to 
one another. Sunken under an accumulation of 
ghost -like mists, the wide expanse of river lies 
pallid, drear, and chill. A faint saffron light in 
the east enables one dimly to discern upon the 
river bank a number of scattered dwellings, such 
as constitute a Malay village, and at the water 's- 
edge a long line of tethered house -boats, prahus, 
and dug-outs. One by one Malays rouse them- 
selves from sleep, and, with eyes and brains still 
heavy with slumber, pull a scanty cotton cloth 
over shivering, rounded backs, and make their 
way to the river, where they perform their morn- 
ing ablutions and repeat the morning prayer of 
the Muhammadan. 

A few minutes later a glory of gold touches the 
saffron sky, tinges it, suffuses it, absorbs it and 
there is day. The sun springs above the horizon, 
shows his clear disc above the distant forest-covered 



208 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

mountains, and throws long horizontal shafts of light 
and warmth that dance upon the sparkling river, and 
set coursing anew the blood of man and beast. 

The morning breeze blows down the river, and 
gently wafts to one side the vapours that all night 
long had lain upon the surface of the water. A 
great bank of mist a most beautiful thing maligned 
by the hateful names of miasma and malaria now 
stands upon the river bank. A cloudy mass, its base 
rests upon the plain, and its summit makes a straight 
line against the background of a mountain-range. As 
the rays of the morning sun permeate it, it gently 
rises, still one mass, from the plain, and not many 
minutes later lies half up the mountain side, hori- 
zontal, like a great grey sash that cuts the mountain 
in two. There it remains a few minutes, rapidly 
dissolving into thin streaks like wind-blown smoke, 
and almost before one realises that it is disappearing 
it is gone. 

On one of the house-boats, whose Union Jack at 
the stern shows that she carries the District Officer, 
the servants are laying breakfast, and preparations 
of a similar nature are going on in the next house- 
boat, whose flag of royal yellow betokens the presence 
of a member of the Sultan's family. 

It was known that there was a tiger in the linker, 
or secondary forest, behind the village. For the past 
week it had been heard roaring day and night, and 
the sound had always come not only from one direc- 
tion, but from one place. The Malays said that it 
was a tigress which had taken up its abode in one 
particular part of the forest, under some shady 



A TIGER-DRIVE. 209 

thicket or by some overhanging rock, whence it 
was calling to a royal wooer. The patch of forest 
in which it lay was so situated that it could be 
beaten without much difficulty ; and it was in answer 
to an urgent message from the local chief, who was 
confident that he could show certainly one and prob- 
ably two tigers, that the Sultan's son and the District 
Officer had got up a party of guns, and had made 
the other necessary arrangements for a drive. 

A youth seated himself at a great brass gong hung 
in the raja's boat, and began to beat the assembly 
call. Before long a distant boat was seen to shoot 
out into mid-stream, and to move in the direction 
of the sound. Then on all sides the bright surface 
of the water became dotted with black specks of 
various size that all converged on the one point. 
The Malays whose houses were near at hand col- 
lected in small groups upon the bank, and round 
the landing-place prahus and dug-outs clustered 
thick. Some held only a poler and a steersman, 
while others were laden to the water's -edge with 
a crowd of Malays perched in ungainly bird - like 
attitudes, but in apparent comfort, upon the bare 
inch or two of the free - board. By the time that 
the party, of whom the writer was one, was ready 
to step on shore, some two hundred Malays had 
mustered on the bank. In this throng of men 
there was not one who was not armed. Nearly 
every man held a spear, many carried a dagger, 
or Jcris, as well, and not a few showed a waist- 
belt loaded with an assortment of weapons that 
would not have disgraced the most piratical of 

o 



210 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

marauders. The spears showed that a tiger - drive 
was contemplated, for across each, some eighteen 
inches below the point, a little piece of wood was 
lashed on at right angles to the shaft. This cross- 
bar is intended to prevent a wounded tiger from 
clawing its way up the spear -head that transfixes 
it, to the man that holds the spear. Such men as 
owned, or had been able to borrow, a small dagger 
of a peculiar shape known as a golok rembau, ex- 
hibited their weapons with complacency and pride; 
for these daggers are supposed by the Malays to 
possess such extraordinary, even magical, properties 
that a tiger is powerless against them. 

When the local chief announced that everything 
was ready, an old pawang stepped forward with a 
bunch of twigs of a tree for which a tiger is thought 
to have a peculiar dread. Holding this small bundle 
in both hands, he repeated over it the charm known 
as "that which closes the tiger's mouth," and then, 
after another incantation which was intended to 
prevent the tiger from winding us, proceeded to 
break the twigs into short fragments, which he 
distributed first among the shooters, and then 
among the beaters. The ceremony did not take 
long, but by the time it was over, and the final 
words of advice, exhortation, and command had 
been said on every side, the sun was strong 
enough to make the shade welcome; and without 
further delay the old chief led his picturesque 
throng of beaters down one path, while we set 
off along a track that took us into another part of 
the forest. 



A TIGER-DRIVE. 211 

The direction that the drive was to take had been 
decided upon some days before, and a line along 
which the guns were to be stationed had already 
been cut through the forest. The line was broad 
enough to afford a fair shot, and had been more 
or less cleared of undergrowth and obstacles. For 
the benefit of those who do not know, I may say 
that such a line is not, or should not be, a straight 
one ; for if the guns are all in the same straight 
line, each man stands an excellent chance of being 
shot by his neighbours in the excitement of the 
moment. 

The line should be a succession of V's touching 
one another: a man standing in the angle of the V 
can then shoot down both sides with perfect safety. 
If there is time, and the ground is not unnecessarily 
disturbed thereby, a double line of V's may be cut 
back to back so as to form X's; and each gun then 
commands four lines, and when an animal has crossed 
the first line often gets an opportunity of another 
shot at it on the second line. To what extent the 
knowledge that he and his neighbours can fire in 
perfect safety improves a man's shooting, only those 
know who have endured the mental agony of stand- 
ing in a row of guns where it is not inconceivable 
that a single bullet may pick off three men. In 
the zigzag line there is the further great advantage, 
which makes for good shooting, that an animal is 
rarely visible to two guns at the same time, and 
that, therefore, there can be no doubt as to who 
should fire. 

The party consisted of nine guns six Europeans 



212 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

and three Malay rajas, and for each there had been 
erected in a tree a small platform made of lopped 
branches bound together with green rattans and 
screened with leafy boughs. The object of the 
platform is partly to keep the shooter safe above 
any danger from the tiger, but partly also to enable 
him to obtain the best possible view of the ground 
and to prevent the tiger from scenting him. 

As soon as we had scrambled into our individual 
platforms, the Malays who had been our guides 
swarmed up adjacent trees, and, having first made 
sure that they had not intruded upon a nest of the 
great vicious red ants, selected comfortable perches 
from which to await the result of the drive. The 
beaters formed into line at a place some two or 
three miles away from the posts taken up by the 
guns. The forest that they had to beat out was 
a strip comparatively narrow in proportion to its 
length, lying between a Government bridle-path on 
the one side and a deep swamp on the other. It 
was most unlikely that the tiger would attempt to 
break out at the sides of the ground, and therefore 
no stops were posted. 

We had not been long in our places when the pre- 
concerted signal of a shot announced that the drive 
had begun. It would, however, be another two hours 
at least before the men would arrive at the line of 
guns, for beating in dense forest, if thoroughly 
carried out, is very slow work. Deep silence reigned 
throughout the part of the forest in which we were, 
a silence enhanced by the faint distant sounds of 
the occasional war-cry of the advancing Malays. A 



A TIGER-DEIVE. 213 

peacock -pheasant, whose persistent scolding clatter, 
not unlike the note of a cackling barn - door hen, 
had warned every animal within hearing of our 
arrival, had ceased its clamour at last and recom- 
menced its scratching among the fallen leaves. Two 
little birds the male a brilliant black with a golden 
crown, and his mate a sober russet-brown resumed 
the labour of feeding their speckled nestlings. A 
resplendent ground - thrush, gorgeous as a salmon- 
fly, which on our approach had hidden under some 
fallen leaves, had now regained its confidence and 
came hopping out to continue its search for food. 
The life of every animal seemed to be a silent 
one. In the distance, it is true, a great rhinoceros- 
hornbill called from a tree -top to a mate afar off; 
and high overhead, hidden in the blinding blue, a 
kite uttered at intervals its shrill, querulous whistle. 
But these were the exceptions: at all hours and at 
all seasons the silence of the animals is one with 
the silence of the forest. 

During the whole of the drive no animal larger 
than a mouse - deer appeared within sight of my 
platform, and when finally the line of beaters reached 
the guns we found that the drive was a blank. A 
sambar and a barking deer or two had been seen 
by the other guns, but, since a tiger was our object, 
no one had fired at them. 

The Malays were not only disappointed but much 
surprised at the failure of the drive. Day after day 
and night after night the tiger had been heard 
roaring in the area through which they had just 
beaten, and they could not understand why not a 



214 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

sign of it had been seen. They were positive that, 
since it was not in the ground which they had 
just covered, it must be lying up in a smaller strip 
of forest between the bridle - path and the Perak 
river. 

After some short deliberation and argument they 
went off without further delay to drive, and we 
stationed ourselves at intervals through the forest. 
There was no time to clear any lines nor to erect 
platforms in the trees. We took up positions on 
foot, arranging ourselves in such order as we could, 
and each man knew, though he could not see, the 
situation of his neighbours on either side. At the 
place where the beaters formed into line the bridle- 
path was about a mile from the river ; while at the 
point where guns were stationed, about a mile 
farther up-stream, river and path were within three 
hundred yards of one another. The ground to be 
beaten was thus a triangle: the beaters were at its 
base and the guns at the apex. Behind the line of 
guns river and path diverged again, and between 
them lay a vast expanse of dense, heavily timbered 
forest for which it was thought that the tiger would 
make. We had not been long in our places before 
the beaters began to advance towards us. I studied 
the lie of the forest in my vicinity and the approaches 
by which an animal would be likely to come in my 
direction, and then fell to watching an interminable 
string of little black ants at my feet. They were 
migrating, but I could not see whence they came or 
whither they were going. The line that they fol- 
lowed was extraordinarily devious: up one side and 



A TIGER-DRIVE. 215 

down the other of a tree-stump, round three sides of 
a great boulder, over and along surface-roots, under 
a fallen log the black line twisted and turned. There 
seemed to be no attempt to shorten or to improve 
upon the winding path selected by the leaders of 
the column. The little creatures moved in a line 
some six or seven deep ; and for some reason which 
it was difficult to discern, a constant succession of 
ants kept hurrying back through the ranks to com- 
municate with the rear. 

Suddenly there was a cry afar off: "Look out! 
The tiger is here!" How every feeling intensified 
at the sound ! Not a soul was within sight ; but 
one knew that the men who were hidden to right 
and to left had heard the words, and had thrilled 
to them no less than oneself. The beaters were 
yet more than half a mile away, but it was not 
difficult to imagine the excitement that possessed 
them. Somewhere in the area encompassed by 
them and by the guns there was moving silently 
through the dense forest undergrowth the lithe 
powerful form of a tiger. We all knew it: it even 
seemed strange that the long string of ants should 
fail to know it and should continue their unheed- 
ing ceaseless hurrying. Somewhere near us the 
tiger was or should be. 

At the shout the men steadied themselves, moving 
to one side or the other in order to make the line 
of advance as perfect as possible. There was silence 
for a moment, and then a great voice shouted, 
" Selawat ! " (prayer). " Selawat ! " shouted every one ; 
and thereupon, somewhere in the long line, one of 



216 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

the men chanted aloud some verses of the Koran, 
concluding by shouting at the top of his voice the 
words of the creed of Islam : " La' ila'hu ilia' llahu ; 
wa Muhammadu'r rasulu' llahi" (There is no God 
but Allah, and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah). 
And from every voice in the long array that was 
hidden up and down the forest came the roar of 
the response of the final Allah. Apart from its 
religious aspect, the use of the "selawat" is to 
enable the men to know whereabouts in the dense- 
ness and tangle of the forest undergrowth the 
animal is hidden. If a tiger is suddenly disturbed 
when lying up beside an animal that it has killed, 
or has cubs, or is wounded, or is for any other reason 
savage, it often gives utterance to an answering 
challenge which it not infrequently follows up by 
charging forthwith upon the men. I have more 
than once heard a sudden vibrating roar in reply 
to a cry of "selawat" that has made the blood of 
the listeners run warm; and more than one Malay 
has been struck down with the expression of his 
faith upon his lips. 

On this occasion there was no reply to the long- 
drawn Allah, and after a pause, during which each 
man assured himself of his position with regard to his 
neighbours, the array of beaters slowly and carefully 
moved forward. At intervals the piercing war-cry of 
the Malays rose and rang up and down the line. 
Occasionally an order was shouted to close in on the 
right or to move up faster on the left, but other- 
wise the advance was made in greater silence than 
might have been expected. The men worked out the 



A TIGER-DRIVE. 217 

thickets with their spear - heads, and rapped their 
spear-butts upon the tree-trunks with a steadiness 
and thoroughness that would have been creditable in 
any pheasant covert in England. They were, I may 
say, an exceptionally fine set of men. The Malays of 
Saiong are famous throughout Perak for their skill 
and daring in a tiger -drive; and on this occasion 
they were under the eye both of their Sultan's son 
and of the District Officer. 

Before long the cry arose again, " Here he is ! Here 
he is ! " Upon this the old chief in charge of the 
drive shouted an order, " Tahan, tahan ! " (Steady, hold 
steady !) Down on a knee dropped every man of the 
two hundred that composed the line. Close to his side 
each man gripped his spear, with its point thrust up- 
wards into the dark forest undergrowth in front of 
him. It was impossible to see the plainest object at 
a distance of more than twenty yards, and a tiger 
might crouch unseen within three yards of the most 
vigilant. Little doubt that each man eyed the cross- 
bar on his spear, and thought how very small and 
very near him it looked ; amid the safety of the crowd 
in the village he had tied it on with a pleasurable 
titillation of excitement. But now its significance 
was very real and very grim. 

The chief shouted his order to the men to stand 
steady, because he thought that, as the tiger had not 
by this time passed the guns, it must be aware of 
their position, and intend to seek safety by breaking 
back through the line of beaters. Every one knew 
what the chief thought, and waited, peering into the 
dark forest in front of him, in readiness for the next 



218 IN MALAY FOEESTS. 

word of command. Then the chief shouted again. 
All leapt to their feet, ran forward a few yards five 
or six, perhaps, or it may be even less and then as 
suddenly stopped and knelt again. " Steady ! Hold 
steady ! " they shouted up and down the line, while 
all strained their eyes to catch a hidden gleam of 
yellow in the heavy shadows of the black and green 
of the forest. Thus they advanced in short quick 
rushes with sudden pauses, until they were within 
two hundred yards of us. The excitement by this 
time was almost overpowering in its intensity. I 
could not, of course, see the men, but knew by the 
sound that only this distance separated us, and that 
on the other side of the thickets and tree-trunks in 
front of me fierce Malay eyes glared and peered for 
the hidden tiger. Then suddenly, in a tree half-way 
between the beaters and the guns, a squirrel raised 
its chattering note of alarm. Another squirrel im- 
mediately took up the cry, and the pair of them kept 
up such an incessant excited clamour that it was 
plain that they were scolding an intruder; it was 
obvious, too, that the intruder was within a few yards 
of them. The tree from which they uttered their 
defiance was situated in a ravine-like depression in 
the forest, exactly the sort of place in which a tiger, 
or any animal, would seek a refuge from the invasion 
of the beaters. The chief shouted to the men to move 
in upon the place, and the long line swept inwards 
and enclosed it in a semicircle. By this time the 
length of the line had so contracted that the men 
were nearly shoulder to shoulder. Only a hundred 
yards or so separated them from the guns, and it was 



A TIGER-DRIVE. 219 

therefore practically impossible for any animal be- 
tween them and us to escape. The Malays now 
advanced foot by foot, and in an almost breathless 
silence. Then I saw something move stealthily under 
a fallen tree, whose dead leaves prevented me from 
getting more than a glimpse of it, and that, too, a 
glimpse not so much of it as of the place from which 
it had stirred. It saw me as soon as I saw it, and, 
knowing itself to have been discovered, a great, gaunt, 
wild sow rushed out and dashed past me. The nearer 
of the beaters heard it and dropped on their knees, 
with their spears thrust forward to receive it. " Here 
he is ! Here he is ! Steady ! Hold steady ! " 

For a space not a man moved : probably not a man 
breathed. Then I shouted that the animal that had 
come out was only a pig, and that the tiger had not 
yet shown itself. "Pig," they roared up and down 
the line, "only a pig"; and again the line moved 
forward to beat out the few remaining yards that 
separated them from the guns. But when they 
reached us not a sign was there anywhere of the 
tiger. 

Excited questions were yelled on every side. No 
one knew what had happened. What every one failed 
to understand was why no one had fired. The men 
thronged round the place where the old sow had 
passed by me, and leant upon their spears examining 
the tracks and mournfully shaking their heads. Their 
heaving chests, twitching muscles, and unnaturally 
contracted eyelids told of the intense nervous strain 
which they had undergone. 

Had any one seen or heard the tiger, and who had 



220 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

first raised the alarm ? In reply to this, several men 
spoke to having heard the tiger, but no one had 
actually seen it. Every man of them indignantly 
repudiated the suggestion that he could have mistaken 
a pig's grunt for a tiger's growl. Malays know the 
two sounds so well that such a mistake would be 
most unlikely. Some pigs had been seen, but no one 
had taken any notice of them. When we asked the 
men who declared that they had heard the tiger how 
they accounted for its having escaped unseen, they 
pointed out that when the squirrels had given their 
alarm we had all taken it for granted that they 
had seen the tiger, whereas it was probably only 
the sow, and that when the beaters closed in upon 
the ravine they had left the forest on either side 
unguarded. This, of course, was perfectly true, and 
their explanation of our failure was probably the 
correct one. 

Some of the more enthusiastic of the Malays pro- 
posed that the ground should at once be beaten over 
again ; but midday was past, and it did not need a 
second glance at the majority of the men to see that 
the excitement, rather than their exertions, had so 
exhausted them that they were not fit to undertake 
another drive. Moreover, even if the tiger had really 
been in the ground covered by the first drive, it by 
no means followed that it would be there by the time 
that the beaters were ready to line up again. We 
decided, therefore, that we must give it up. We 
covered our disappointment as best we could; but 
our . long high-strung excitement had had such a 
miserable ending that one might have noticed an 



A TIGER-DRIVE. 221 

almost hysterical catch to the laugh of more than 
one man. 

This was the most sporting tiger-drive that I have 
ever seen. The fact that no tiger was seen, and that 
possibly no tiger was near us, does not in any way 
detract from the sport. We all believed that the 
tiger was there : the guns thought that a tiger which 
was aware of their presence was being forced to come 
towards them ; and the beaters felt that they were 
impelling forward an animal whose desire was to 
charge back through their ranks. If the drive had 
ended by a tiger being shot, it would not in the 
slightest degree have added to the excitement that 
marked the duration of the drive. I have shot a 
tiger in a drive that had not a tenth of the interest 
of this day. Accompanied only by Malays, I have 
occasionally had to follow wounded tigers on foot 
through nasty country. As I have said above, I have 
heard the "selawat" answered in royal style; but 
nowhere else have I seen such an intensity of feeling 
and excitement. With this the number of men em- 
ployed had a great deal to do. ' It is seldom that one 
requisitions more than thirty or forty beaters, whereas 
in this case fully two hundred men were engaged. 
The amount of magnetic feeling, where the excite- 
ment was communicated from unseen unit to unseen 
unit throughout the forest, was enormous, and the air 
vibrated to the unuttered excitement of the men. 

It is in a drive where a line of men armed only 
with spears advances thus determinedly upon a tiger, 
that you realise how powerful a brute it is that 
they are assailing. From the height of a seat in a 



222 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

tree or an elephant's back you may shoot tigers with 
safety ; but when you come down to the ground, and 
either advance on foot to meet the tiger or wait on 
foot for it to be driven up, the feeling comes home to 
you of the marvellous strength and activity that are 
combined in that beautiful frame. It may be within 
a few yards of you, perhaps, seeing all that you do, 
and itself unseen. It can steal noiselessly through 
the forest where you can only move with crackling of 
leaves and breaking of twigs. You know that, when 
the occasion comes, that wonderful lithe body can 
come with lightning speed through the thick-tangled 
growth that hampers and impedes your every move- 
ment. Finally, you know that at close quarters a 
man is as helpless as a child against the overpower- 
ing weight and strength of an animal that kills an 
ox at a blow. 

When you are on the ground following up or 
waiting for a tiger, you realise all this with some 
vividness. And in this connection I would advance 
the theory that the curious horror which some people 
have of cats is not, as is sometimes said, a sixth sense, 
but merely an instinctive terror, inherited from simian 
ancestors, of the feline tribe. The instinct has, I 
suggest, died out in the majority of cases, but exists 
in occasional individuals in the same manner that 
simian tricks of raising the ears or eyebrows are 
sometimes to be seen. 

But whatever the average person's feelings may be 
regarding the race of cats, there is little doubt that 
almost every one has a peculiar sensation of the 
almost god-like beauty, power, activity, and strength 



A TIGER-DRIVE. 223 

of a tiger. A tiger will overawe and make conscious 
of his inferiority a man who would be unaffected by 
the bulk of an elephant. The feeling is, however, 
elusive of description, and I can perhaps best explain 
it in the words of a most charming French gentleman 
(now dead, alas!) who was once manager of a great 
tin-mining company in Perak. I well remember his 
coming into the Tapah messroom where the Europeans 
of the district used in those days to take their meals. 
We had just finished lunch when he entered in a state 
of tremendous excitement. Walking alone and un- 
armed along an unfrequented bridle-path through the 
forest, he had walked almost on to a tiger. He gave 
us a most vivid narrative of the encounter : how the 
tiger had been lying down concealed in some long 
lalang grass beside the path ; how he was within ten 
yards of it before he saw it; how then it rose and 
looked at him ; how it yawned at him ; how it then 
walked slowly across the path in front of him, and 
then stopped and looked at him, again yawning ; and 
how it then deliberately walked away into the forest, 
whose depths finally hid it from view. I cannot 
attempt to imitate the beautiful and forcible diction 
that Monsieur C. had at his command, for the plain 
facts that I have thrown into a single sentence 
received from the narrator a majesty of style and 
a wealth of colouring and detail that cannot be re- 
produced on paper. 

Some one asked him whether it was a big tiger. It 
is his answer that illustrates my meaning. 

" Well, Messieurs, I cannot say if he is a big tiger. 
My eyes see that he is big ; but I cannot say how big 



224 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

I see him to be ; and if I say how big, it is perhaps 
that I tell you a lie. But I can tell you, Messieurs, 
how big I feel him to be, and I can tell you the 
truth. When he is standing there in front of me, 
I tell you that I feel he is not less than thir-r-ty 
feet high." 



225 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 

ONE of the charms of shooting is that one's wander- 
ings with a gun, be it rifle or smooth-bore, generally 
take one into the remoter parts of a district where the 
Malays are still almost unaffected by the progress of 
civilisation, and where they live very much as their 
fathers lived before the days of roads and railways. 
When one rests for a few minutes, or hours, or for a 
night, in a village, not only does one see the simple 
and natural side of Malay life, but has a glimpse of 
the more intimate side ; and one becomes acquainted, 
in a casual way, with much that one would never 
learn in an official visit. There is something in a 
gun that is like the incognito of royalty, it shows 
that the bearer is not on duty ; and when a man is 
in a stained and disreputable old shooting-suit, it is 
easy for him to forget, and to persuade others to for- 
get, that he is the Judge or the District Officer. 

When you listen to Malays talking naturally among 
themselves, the thing that will most puzzle you will 
often be the apparent inconsequence of the remarks, 
the looseness of the argument, and its curious inherent 
tendency to drift into yet further vagueness. It will 
not be until you are thoroughly acquainted with the 

p 



226 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

language and with Malay habits of thought, that it 
will dawn upon you that the thing which is bewilder- 
ing you is an airy allusiveness, and that you have not 
got the key to the allusions. You will probably have 
been some years in the country before you realise that 
a Malay considers it crude to say outright what he 
has in his mind, and that he will prefer to let his 
meaning be known by a reference to a proverb, a 
quotation of a line of rhymed pantun, or a hint at 
the moral of a folk-tale. 

This allusive style of conversation (regarding which 
I would like to digress for a moment, for I think 
that it will afford a clue to a riddle that puzzles many 
people) reaches its most exaggerated and fantastic 
form in the quotations from the pantuns, which are 
rhymed quatrains whose third and fourth lines alone 
carry the sense, while the first and second lines supply 
the rhymes. 

Here is an example in which the translation is in 
the metre of the original : 

" The fish fry play in the shallows, 

While the big fish swim without. 
Tell me, beloved, the truth at once, 
For my heart is tortured with doubt." 

It is part of an amatory song, but in a serious dis- 
cussion among the village elders you may hear a man 
say slowly and thoughtfully 

" The fish fry play in the shallows ; " 

and though, of course, the words convey no meaning 
to you, unless you are acquainted with the pantun, 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 227 

you will see that the meaning that the speaker has 
intended to convey by the unquoted third and 
fourth lines has been perfectly appreciated by his 
audience. 

There may be silence for a short space, and then 
perhaps another man will open his mouth to speak. 
You will notice that he has carefully considered his 
words, but 

" White, pure white, are the river sands," 

is all that he will say. However, every one at once 
understands that his meaning is 

" You may say too little or say too much, 
You can remedy one, but never the other." 

Overtures, insults, challenges, may in like manner be 
conveyed in such lines as 

"The reed stems sway in the rippling stream." 
" The green pigeons feed on the fig-tree's fruit." 
" The cataract leaps through clouds of spray." 

An argument by quotations from pantuns partakes, 
however, more of the nature of a contest of wit than 
of a genuine discussion. Similes and metaphors 
borrowed from the proverbs, of which the language 
has a rich and varied store, are more common and 
more easily understood. But the fact that arguments 
can be carried on in such a manner shows how apt 
the Malay is to speak allusively, and how quick to 
recognise the allusion. When, therefore, this is the 
point to which my digression led, a Malay is discuss- 



228 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

ing with an European a matter of considerable im- 
portance to one or both of them, the European will 
often wonder when on earth his man is going to 
come to the point, while the Malay is only think- 
ing whether he can say any more without being so 
brutally direct as to give offence. 

The folk-tales, rather than the pantun or the pro- 
verbs, are the medium by which a Malay loves to 
make his meaning known. 

In the village council, when weighty matters are 
under discussion, many an argument is clinched or 
moral pointed by an allusion to a story that in our 
prosaic land would come under the half-contemptuous 
heading of " children's stories," but which in the East 
are treated as parables. 

The little wayside tale, to which these remarks 
must serve as an introduction, may perhaps gain some 
dignity if I mention that many years ago it was told 
at length in the Perak State Council, and that a very 
important decision was based upon it. 

The Malays have a wealth that has been almost 
unexploited of folk - tales. There is a number of 
stories of which Pa' Musang (Father Civet Cat) is the 
central figure; another series is grouped round Pa' 
Bilalang (Father Grasshopper) ; and there is yet 
another set of stories about Pa' Pandir (Father 
Pandir), the typical buffoon or fool, who invariably 
does the wrong thing, manages to twist the most 
ridiculous meaning out of the plainest instructions, 
and always finds some means to make the most 
absurd mistakes. 

But of all stories, the most numerous, the best 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 229 

known, and the most popular, are those that have for 
their hero the little mouse-deer, whose Malay name is 
pelandok. 1 It is the smallest of all the deer tribe, 
the daintiest and most exquisitely formed little 
creature that can be imagined. A full-grown animal 
is barely eight inches high ; and so small is the scale 
upon which it is built that its feet, with their deli- 
cately cloven little hooves, have not the thickness of 
the slimmest of penholders. 

No one, so far as I am aware, has attempted any 
analysis or classification of the mouse-deer stories. 
They seem to contain three separate conceptions of 
the character of the mo use- deer, and though no hard 
and fast line of division can be drawn, most of the 
stories fall into one of the three classes. 

First of all, we have " the wily mouse - deer " 
pelandok jenaka the trickster, the practical joker, 
often the petty cheat. He is the counterpart of 
Eeynard the Fox in the stories of Central Europe, of 
the Jackal in India and in East Africa, and of " B'rer 
Kabbit " in negro tales. He escapes from an enemy 
by his cunning, but he is generally powerless to 
destroy his enemy ; he contents himself with mocking 
at his discomfiture, generally quite needlessly, rather 
in gamin fashion, and thus only succeeds in whetting 
a natural desire for revenge. 

Of this class are the following stories : 

A mouse-deer one day fell into a trap, and being 
unable to get out again waited there until an elephant 
happened to pass by. Then the mouse-deer called out 
"Why, brother elephant, what are you doing?" 

1 The final k is silent : pronounce p&ando. 



230 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

The elephant stopped and inquired what the matter 
was, and what the mouse-deer was doing at the bottom 
of the pit. The mouse-deer exclaimed 

"What, you foolish elephant, have you not heard 
that the sky is going to fall? I am staying down 
here to be out of harm's way." 

The elephant replied that he had not heard any- 
thing about it, but at the mouse-deer's suggestion he 
looked up above his head, and there, between the 
tree-tops and the sky, he saw the clouds scudding by. 

"See how the clouds are flying," cried the mouse- 
deer. "It won't be long now before the sky falls." 

The elephant looked again, and then, without 
further parley, plunged into the pit for safety. 

The mouse -deer then managed to get on to the 
elephant's back, and thence to leap up to the mouth 
of the pit and to make good his escape. 

He was then mean enough to go and tell the man 
who had made the pit: which is somehow rather 
disappointing. 

Another time the mouse -deer wished to cross a 
river, but dared not swim it for fear of the crocodiles 
that infested it. He had therefore to rely upon his 
cleverness, and accordingly got into conversation with 
the Crocodile Eaja, who lay basking upon the bank, 
and started a discussion as to whether there were 
more crocodiles or mouse-deer in the world. In the 
course of the argument the Crocodile Kaja said that 
there were more than a thousand crocodiles in his 
river alone, and the mouse-deer expressed his surprise 
that there should be so many crocodiles in the whole 
world, and suggested that the Crocodile Kaja should 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 231 

call up all the crocodiles of the river, so that the 
mouse-deer might count them. 

This was agreed to, and soon all the crocodiles in 
the river floated to the surface. At the mouse-deer's 
suggestion they put themselves in a row, so that they 
might be more easily counted, and the row extended 
from one bank to the other. Then the mouse-deer 
began to count. " One," he called out as he jumped 
on to the back of the first crocodile; "two," and he 
jumped on to the back of the next one ; " three," and 
so on until he reached the other side of the river. 

When he was safely upon the bank he turned and 
jeered at the deluded raja in front of all his sub- 
jects, and then gleefully continued his way skipping 
through the forest. 

Another time a crocodile caught the mouse-deer by 
the hind-leg, which is such a marvel of fine-drawn 
skin and shapely bone. The mouse-deer saw that any 
struggle to escape would be fatal, and while with his 
other three legs he endeavoured to maintain his hold 
upon the bank, he called to the crocodile 

" Ha ! you missed me that time." 

" I think not," snuffled the crocodile, with his jaws 
clenched upon the poor little leg; "I've got you by 
the leg." 

" Leg ! " laughed the mouse-deer, suppressing the 
agony he felt; "that is no leg you are biting. You 
are holding on to an old dry twig." 

The little leg that the crocodile held was as fleshless 
as any twig ; and the crocodile believed that he had 
made a mistake, and opened his mouth, thus allowing 
the mouse-deer to escape. 



232 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

On another occasion the mouse-deer challenged the 
crocodile to a tug-of-war, the crocodile to pull from 
the water and the mouse-deer from the land. The 
mouse-deer tied his end of the rope to the top of a 
cocoanut-tree, and then gave the word to pull. The 
crocodile tugged with all his might, and the palm- 
tree swayed to and fro. When the crocodile, swirling 
in a turmoil of water, pulled his hardest, the palm 
yielded and bowed towards him ; but when he relaxed 
his efforts for a second, the palm resumed its natural 
position, and the crocodile lost the few feet that he 
had gained. So it went on, and after a while the 
mouse-deer called from the bank, suggesting that they 
should wait for a breathing-space. 

The exhausted crocodile agreed, and the mouse-deer 
came lightly leaping down the bank. 

" That was a splendid pull," he said cheerily to the 
crocodile. " You are better than I had thought, but 
I'll get you over easily next time." 

The crocodile could hardly speak for lack of breath, 
and when he saw that the mouse-deer showed no 
signs of fatigue, he declined to continue the contest, 
and admitted his inferiority. 

But it is not only the crocodile that the mouse-deer 
scores off in this fashion. He is always getting the 
better of the tiger, the elephant, and all the other 
animals, in the same sort of way. The stories are 
generally very slight, and, as I have said, they do not 
always show the wily mouse-deer in a very favourable 
light; but somehow the little creature has a charm 
that is peculiarly his own. If he is undoubtedly a 
trickster, he is without doubt a very fascinating little 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 233 

trickster ; but the whimsicality that underlies this 
charm is so evanescent that it will not live in pen 
and ink. The stories can only be told. When one 
has committed them to writing, even in their native 
language, one cannot but look at them with the same 
rueful feeling that a man has when he has picked a 
wood-anemone and sees it fade and wilt at his touch ; 
but when one has to translate the story into another 
language, in which the words have another value 
and therefore fail to give the true equivalent of the 
original, the result is no more like the real folk-tale 
than a flower, dried and pressed between two sheets 
of paper and labelled wood-anemone, resembles the 
white star that raises its delicate head above the 
fallen beech-leaves. 

In the second of three divisions into which the 
pelandok stories may be said to fall, the little mouse- 
deer appears in the character of an arbitrator or 
umpire, chosen on account of his acumen to settle 
disputes and quarrels. In this role he is generally 
styled Che Salam di Eimba (Sir Peace of the Forest), 
and is addressed by all with respect. 

Of this class of story the following will serve as 
an example. 

Two men (men, be it noticed) quarrelled about a 
loan which one had made to the other. The debtor 
had promised to repay the loan in two months. (In 
Malay, moon and month are the same word.) When, 
upon the expiry of the stipulated time, the creditor 
demanded repayment, the debtor replied laconically, 
pointing to the sky, "There is only one moon." 

"It is two months since I lent you the money," 



234 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

replied the creditor, " and you promised to pay in 
two months." 

But " there is only one moon " was all that he could 
get out of the debtor. 

So the creditor went home and waited another 
month. Then he went again to demand his money, 
but " there is only one moon " was all that the debtor 
said. 

" You said that last time," cried the creditor, " and 
that was a month ago." 

" Only one moon," replied the debtor ; " when there 
are two moons I will pay you." So they quarrelled. 
Then to settle the dispute they went to Sir Peace 
of the Forest. 

Sir Peace heard both men state their cases, and then, 
when the sun had set, took them both down to the 
river-bank. It was a cloudless night, and upon the 
bosom of the river the full moon shone reflected. 

"What is that?" said Sir Peace of the Forest to 
the debtor, pointing to the golden circle that lay 
upon the water. 

" The moon," replied the debtor. 

" And what is that ? " said Sir Peace, pointing to 
the sky. 

" The moon also," replied the debtor. 

" That makes two," cried Sir Peace. " Two moons ; 
and the time has come for you to pay your debt." 

The debtor was silent. He had relied upon a trick, 
and the same trick had been used against him. He 
could find nothing to say, and was compelled to repay 
the loan. 

The stories in this second class are not as numer- 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 235 

ous as the "wily mouse-deer" stories, and the only 
example will suffice. As a rule, the stories rather 
remind one of the Arabian tales of the wise Viziers 
and Kathis. 

In the third class of story the mouse-deer has 
attained to royal rank and power. By his skill and 
address he has subjected the other animals of the 
forest, and all of them elephant and tiger, sladang 
and rhinoceros acknowledge him as their king. His 
title is Shah Alam di Rwiba (the King of the Forest 
Universe), and he is addressed in the honorific forms 
appropriate to a reigning sultan. He has his throne 
upon a white marble rock under the canopy of a 
flowering bungor-toeQ, whose flowers nearest approach 
the colours of royalty; and when he travels, rides 
either upon a white sladang or a white rhinoceros. 
He is the champion of all the animals against their 
external foes. 

I should like to tell the story of how he made 
the peace between the Tigers and the Goats, and con- 
stituted himself as their king - paramount ; and the 
story of how he slew the Giant of Lake Tenom, after 
the giant had defeated the bear and the rhinoceros. 
But the tales are too long to tell here, and I must 
reserve for myself the pleasure of telling them at 
some other time. 

In this third class of story the mouse-deer has a 
heroic side to his character that is denied to Eeynard, 
" B'rer Babbit," or the Jackal. The little champion 
somehow invites comparison with the hero of the 
Odyssey. The comparison may appear ridiculous, 
but in justification I would point out the epithets 



236 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

"of many devices" and "rich in counsel," which 
throughout the Odyssey are applied to its hero, 
exactly fit, not the mouse-deer in his role of 
champion, but the mouse-deer of the first and second 
divisions that I have attempted to make. 

I must repeat that the division between the three 
classes of story is not clearly defined. Some stories 
fall half-way between one and the other ; and the 
difficulty of attempting to classify them is added to 
in no inconsiderable measure by the fact that the 
Malays love the title of " Sir Peace of the Forest," 
which is appropriate only to the "counsellor" class 
of story, but at the same time prefer the simpler 
stories of the " wily mouse-deer " type, and the result 
is that, whether the story be of the trickster, the 
counsellor, or the champion, the little mouse-deer 
generally bears his whimsical title of Sir Peace of 
the Forest. 

When you have a few minutes or half an hour to 
spare ; on a river-bank, while you wait for a dug-out 
to convey you across to a teal pond or to a place 
where the green pigeons are flighting; under the 
shade of fruit-trees, beside the snipe-fields, while a 
boy climbs to get you green cocoanuts ; in some way- 
side shelter from the heat of the sun, while some 
one runs to call the dog-cart that is waiting farther 
down the road, it is easy, if you go the right way 
about it, to bring into the conversation some allusion 
to Sir Peace of the Forest, and then, when you have 
either made some one tell the story or have told 
it yourself, nothing is easier than to get another man 
to cap it. 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 237 

The story which I set out to tell is properly 
speaking an animal story, pure and simple, and 
does not belong to the mouse-deer cycle. My pre- 
face is intended to explain, firstly, how much a part 
of a Malay's daily conversation and life these folk- 
tales are; and secondly, why in this story the little 
mouse-deer bears, for no apparent reason, his fan- 
tastic title. 

This is the story. I heard it one day when we 
were resting in the forest near Teluk Kepaiang after 
a deer -drive. We had entered the forest early in 
the morning, and having found fresh deer - tracks, 
had disposed ourselves along some wood - cutters' 
paths at points where the deer was likely to 
break out. When we put the dogs in, a deer 
had dashed out, affording me a shot which I 
had missed. The deer was now some miles away, 
and while a couple of men were following the 
tracks to recall the dogs, we were lying in the 
shade of the great dark forest - trees waiting for 
them. 

There were six of us :, my brother Eric ; Che Ngah 
Durani, the headman ; Ali and Sahak, two peasants ; 
my tracker, Malias ; and myself. The Malays were 
all smoking their native cigarettes or meditatively 
chewing betel-leaf. 

At intervals one of them would call to the absent 
dogs at the top of his voice 

" Doh ! Doh ! Doh ! " 

" Oh ! Si Nibong ! " 

"Oh! SiKumbang! Doh!" 

While we were talking, Sahak took up a couple 



238 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

of fallen twigs, and in an absent-minded way beat 
on a dead crisp leaf with them, tapping as one plays 
a kettle-drum. 

" Ah ! " chuckled little Che Ngah Durani, " that is 
the war-drum of Sir Peace of the Forest." 

We all laughed. The mouse -deer call to one 
another in the mating season by rapping their hind- 
feet on the ground, and the Malays decoy them by 
imitating the sound with two sticks in the manner 
that Sahak was doing. 

"Ha! ha!" Che Ngah Durani laughed on, "and 
that is the way that Sir Peace of the Forest beat his 
war-drum when he killed the Otter's babies. Tell 
us the story, Ali." 

And Ali thereupon, without hesitation or demur, 
told us the following tale: 

" One morning, Memerang the Otter was going down 
to the river to catch fish. She left her family of 
baby otters on the bank, and, before she went, begged 
Sir Peace of the Forest to look after them for her. 
This, of course, was in the days when all the 
animals spoke a common language. Nabi Sleman 
[King Solomon] had, by appointment from Allah, 
authority and power over all created animals, and 
Nabi Noh [Noah] had charge of all the trees and 
plants." 

"Yes; but," interrupted Che Ngah Durani, "there 
were some plants that Nabi Noh forgot. Nabi 
Tuakal [the Chance Prophet] discovered that Nabi 
Noh had overlooked certain roots, and decided to 
plant them himself. The whole of the earth hap 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 239 

been taken up by Nabi Noh, so Nabi Tuakal had 
no alternative but to plant these roots upon growing 
trees. He did so, and the orchids are the result, 
and they are in the charge of Nabi Tuakal, not of 
Nabi Noh." 

After the interruption AH continued 

" The Otter plunged into the river, and Sir Peace 
of the Forest remained on the bank, playing and 
nibbling the young grass, and keeping an eye on 
the Otter's babies. 

"Suddenly he heard 'tap- a- tap tap -a- tap 
tap tap tap.' He listened, and then heard it again, 
and recognised the notes of the drum of the Wood- 
pecker, and the call was that of the war-alarm. 

"You know Blato' the Woodpecker," All said, 
turning to me, "the bird that lights on the tree- 
trunks, and drums with his beak upon the bark? 

" Well, of the birds of the forest the Woodpecker 
is the one that may beat the war -drum. And 
when Sir Peace of the Forest heard the alarm, he 
knew that somewhere killing was afoot, and he is 
as skilled at drumming on the ground as the wood- 
pecker is at drumming on a tree, and among the 
four-footed animals of the forest he is the chief 
dancer and drum-beater. 

" So he proceeded to spread the alarm, and with 
his little heels he tap - a - tap tap - a - tapped on 
the ground, in exactly the way that Sahak played 
with those two twigs just now. But in his excite- 
ment he did not see what he was doing, and, before 
he realised it, all the Otter's babies lay dead, trodden 
flat under his prancing hooves. 



240 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

" Soon the Otter returned, and there was a terrible 
scene. Sir Peace of the Forest admitted all that 
he had done, but the Otter would hear nothing in 
extenuation, and went away to Nabi Sleman to 
obtain redress. When she reached the presence of 
the King she made the obeisance [which is made by 
Malays by raising the two hands, pressed palm to 
palm, to the level of the eyes] and said 

" ' Pardon, King ! Sir Peace of the Forest has 
killed thy slave's children, and thy slave would hear 
the order of the King.' 

" Nabi Sleman replied : * Never yet without a father 
and a mother was child begotten ; and without an 
audience of both the accuser and the accused, never 
yet was justice done. Go, call Sir Peace of the 
Forest.' 

" Then Nabi Sleman turned to his Bentaras [court 
officials] and said : ' We will hear this case at the 
palace by the mouth of the river. Let all the animals 
attend.' 

" Later, in full state, Nabi Sleman repaired to the 
palace. All the animals were present. On one side 
of the palace was the sea, thronged with all the 
sea-fishes; on the other side was the river, full of 
the river-fishes; on the land side were the forest 
animals; and the trees were full of birds and 
butterflies. 

" Then Nabi Sleman, ruler under Allah of all the 
animals, turned to the Otter and said, 'Tell thy 
story.' 

"And the Otter made the obeisance and said: 'Par- 
don, King ! This morning thy slave, before going 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 241 

down to the river to catch fish, left her children 
in the charge of Sir Peace of the Forest. On her 
return she found them dead, trodden to death; and 
Sir Peace of the Forest admitted having done the 
deed. Thy slave would hear the order/ 

" Nabi Sleman turned to the accused and said, ' Tell 
thy story.' 

" Sir Peace of the Forest made the obeisance and 
said, 'Pardon, King! What the Otter has said 
is true. But soon after thy slave had been left in 
charge of the children, Blato' the Woodpecker sounded 
the war alarm. And thy slave, as in duty bound, 
also sounded the alarm, and, in doing so, unwittingly 
trod on and killed the Otter's children. Thy slave 
only did his duty. The fault is with the Woodpecker 
for sounding the alarm.' 

" ' Let no one be judged in his absence,' said Nabi 
Sleman. ' Send for the Woodpecker.' 

" The Woodpecker came flying through the air [All 
imitated with his hand the undulatory flight of the 
woodpecker tribe], rising and falling in lines, like the 
curves of a kris or a wave of the sea, and entered 
the presence and made the obeisance. 

"Nabi Sleman said, 'Sir Peace of the Forest has 
killed the Otter's children, and ascribes the fault to 
thee, saying that the war alarm was sounded by thee. 
What is the reply to this charge ? ' 

'"Pardon, King,' said the Woodpecker. 'It is 
true that thy slave sounded the war alarm. But thy 
slave saw Penyu, the Eiver-turtle, leave the river. He 
was followed by all the river-turtles, and they all 
wore their coats of armour. As they ascended the 

Q 



242 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

banks in their numbers, they presented the appear- 
ance of an invasion of the country, and thy slave 
accordingly sounded the war alarm. The fault is with 
the Penyu, the Eiver-turtle.' 

" ' Because the branch brake when the Hornbill flew 
by/ said Nabi Sleman, ' who shall say that the Horn- 
bill broke the branch ? We would hear the Eiver- 
turtle.' 

"The Eiver-turtle was in the stream amidst the 
throng of the water-dwellers. He scrambled up the 
bank, the sand flying to right and . to left under his 
broad flat flippers, and made his way into the 
presence. 

" He made the obeisance, and Nabi Sleman said to 
him, 'Blato' the Woodpecker has sounded the war 
alarm, and has given as his excuse the appearance of 
an invasion of the country by thy kin. What hast 
thou to say?' 

"The Eiver-turtle again made the obeisance and 
said, ' Pardon, King ! Thy slave saw that the 
river was full of turmoil and alarm. Udang, the 
Prawns, were ascending the river in companies and 
battalions, and all of them carried their long spears 
between their eyes. Sebarau, the Perches, were 
swimming up-stream in broad lines of array, and 
every one carried his bright war-sash across his body. 
And Jenjulong, the Garfishes, dashing hither and 
thither, followed close behind, and each of them 
carried his terrible pike. When thy slave saw in 
the river such signs of war and cruel death, thy slave 
and thy slave's kin left the river for the safety of 
the banks.' 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 243 

"'By the grace of Allah,' said Nabi Sleman, 'a 
stream is not without its bends and turnings. Send 
for the Prawns, the Perches, and the Garfishes.' 

" The creatures named were all in the river in attend- 
ance on the court of the king, and when their names 
were called they approached the bank and made their 
obeisance. In answer to the questions put by Nabi 
Sleman they all replied with one accord, 'Pardon, 
King ! the Eiver - turtle has spoken the truth. 
But no invasion was it no array of warriors. It 
was that thy slaves were fleeing for their lives from 
the onslaughts of Memerang the Otter, who ever kills 
and harries thy slaves.' 

" Nabi Sleman then turned to the accuser, now the 
accused, and said, 'Hah, Memerang the Otter, what 
sayest thou to this?' 

'"Pardon, King!' replied the Otter. 'It is 
true that thy slave harried the Prawns, the Perches, 
and the Garfishes. It is the nature of thy slave to 
feed upon them, and to feed thy slave's children upon 
them. And, moreover, it was to seek and to slay 
them that thy slave left -her children with Sir Peace 
of the Forest.' 

" Then said Nabi Sleman, ' The case is clear. Hear 
now our judgment. Learn, Memerang the Otter, 
that it is not the arrow, but he that draws the bow, 
that slays. The fault is with thee. Hadst thou not 
harried the Prawns, the Perches, and the Garfishes, 
the Eiver-turtle had not left the stream, and the 
Woodpecker had not sounded the war-drum, and Sir 
Peace of the Forest had not, in spreading the alarm, 
killed thy babies. None but thyself is to blame, and 



244 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

upon none other can punishment rightly fall. Let 
the death of thy babies be sufficient punishment for 
thee. Go in peace.' 

"Nabi Sleman then turned to the Bentaras and 
said, 'Our judgment is delivered. See that all the 
animals here present return in peace.' " 

As Ali was describing the dispersal of the animals, 
Nibong, whose name meant "the brindle," burst in 
upon us. 

It acknowledged our greetings with a short wag 
of a tail, and threw itself down in the dampest and 
coolest spot to be found, where, with heaving flanks, 
it gave itself up to the luxury of complete exhaustion. 

A moment later we were joined by Kumbang, an 
old black pariah, whose Malay name meant "the 
beetle," but a most staunch and excellent hound 
withal. 

When the two dogs had been stroked and patted 
for a minute or two, to show that we knew what 
they knew namely, that the day's failure had been 
our fault and not theirs, we made a move, and 
prepared to go homewards. 

As a chance would have it, we had not gone far 
before Kumbang gave a sudden yelp, and dashed into 
one side of the path. A moment later I heard a 
rustle among some dead leaves in the thick growth in 
front of me, and there under a fallen branch I saw 
the small form of a pelandok. The descendant of 
animals that " once upon a time " had held the forest 
in sway now cowered in apprehension. Its ears were 
turned back to catch the sound of Kumbang on its 



A TALE BY THE WAYSIDE. 245 

track, and its great eyes viewed with terror the open 
line made by the path on which we stood. At my 
sign Malias held Nibong, and as the pelandok bounded 
across the path I had time to rush forward and seize 
Kumbang. 

The Malays all thought that I objected to dogs 
trained to deer acknowledging the scent of so small 
an animal as a mouse -deer, and little Che Ngah 
Durani only half-guessed that he had hit upon the 
truth when he laughed and said, " It was only right 
that Sir Peace of the Forest should go free to-day." 



246 



TUBA FISHING. 

WHEN I was stationed, some years ago, at Kuala 
Kuantan, I represented throughout a district of many 
hundreds of square miles, principally forest, all that 
the Malays understood of British Protection. My 
nearest European neighbours to the west could only 
be reached by two days' poling up river ; southward, 
by a two days' journey on foot along the sea-shore. 
Eastward lay the China Sea, thundering upon a 
sandy beach within a mile of my door. Northward, 
over many hundreds of miles, through unprotected 
native states, there were no Europeans until Siamese 
territory was reached. 

I was therefore fortunate in finding myself among 
an exceptionally fine set of Malays. One and all they 
welcomed any sporting expedition, and a whole village 
would turn out at the shortest notice to join in a 
deer-drive. So much did they enter into the sport 
and identify themselves with it, that the idea of being 
paid for their work never occurred to them. Between 
associates there is no question of remuneration, and if 
I had offered them money they would at once have felt 
that I looked upon them as servants rather than as 
my fellows. All that they asked was, that if it were 



TUBA FISHING. 247 

necessary for them to sleep away from their homes 
I should provide them with food. Never, if I had 
given due notice to the village headman, had I any 
lack of men for a deer-drive ; the difficulty was gen- 
erally to turn back the lads whose strength was 
less than their keenness. But those Malays would 
work as well as play. One day, on the way to 
a deer-drive, for which the men of two villages had 
turned out in force, we had to pass through a deep 
swamp, some three-quarters of a mile long, between 
the two villages. We had a good day's sport, getting 
two splendid deer, and when it was over I told the 
two village headmen that they ought to build a light 
trestle -bridge across the swamp. They both agreed 
that it should be done, but all said that it would 
cost too much. I thereupon proposed that the men 
of Gebing should make half the bridge and the men 
of Pengorak the other half, every man in each village 
making his share, and promised for my part to provide 
the workers with food. My offer was accepted on the 
spot. A few months later the bridge was built, and 
well built, at a cost to the Government of some four 
or five bags of rice. And though it is some years now 
since I left the district, I am told that the bridge is 
still known by my name. This spirit of willing work 
is not, however, I am sorry to say, typical of the 
Malays as a race. 

I had been an honoured guest at a great seine 
fishing held out at sea to inaugurate the first wetting 
of a set of nets, and Ahman, my head boatman, hinted 
to me that, by way of returning the hospitality, I 
should hold, for the benefit of the whole district, a 



248 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

tuba fishing of one of the rivers. Tuba is a small 
wild plant, whose roots contain a vegetable poison 
that has an extraordinary effect upon fish ; and tuba 
fishing is one of the recognised national pastimes of 
the Malay Peninsula and of Sarawak. Many a great 
river is tuba-ed annually on so extensive a scale that 
at the end of the day one might well believe that it 
had been depleted of fish. Yet the succeeding year 
shows no diminution either in the size of the fish or 
in their numbers. 

At Ahman's suggestion I sent for Pawang Duhamat, 
a recognised expert in all matters relating to tuba and 
tuba fishing. When he came he gave his opinion in 
favour of the Blat river as being the most suitable, in 
its present condition of water, for our object, and said 
that he had in his house, stored and ready for use, the 
quantity of tuba root that we should require, about 
ten hundredweight. 

I bought the root from him, and, when he had 
selected an auspicious day for the fishing, issued invi- 
tations to the chiefs, and proclaimed to the district at 
large that on that date I should tuba the Blat river. 

A few days before the appointed day Pawang 
Duhamat and Ahman collected four or five Malays, 
unpaid volunteers, and paddled away up river to make 
the preliminary arrangements. They took with them 
a few measures of rice from my store-room, but for the 
rest depended upon such fish as they could catch, and 
upon an old gun which I had lent Ahman, nominally 
as a protection against tigers, but really to enable him 
to get some jungle-fowl and imperial pigeon. Their 
object was to erect a barricade across the river at the 



TUBA FISHING. 249 

point that Pawang Duhamat might select as the place 
for the tuba fishing to end. The building of this 
barricade was no light task, and upon its stability 
would depend much of the success of the day. 

They were to encamp upon the river-bank while 
engaged upon this work, and to remain there when 
it was completed, to see that no harm befell it 
before we arrived. 

Upon the day appointed a great throng of boats 
of all sizes collected round my landing-stage, and, 
with great booming of gongs, we started up-stream. 
We found that Ahman had completed the barricade 
across the river, having left only a small passage 
for our craft to pass through. When the last boat 
had squeezed past, the barricade was completely and 
finally closed, and, until it was opened or broken, 
no fish or boat could pass it to go either up-stream 
or down -stream. We were now in clear, shallow 
water, and urged by the boat-poles the boats made 
rapid way up the river. On either bank was great 
primeval forest. Late in the afternoon we reached 
the sandy spit which Pawang Duhamat had selected 
as a favourable spot for the tuba fishing to begin. 
By sunset we had made all our preparations for the 
night. The little boat in which I came, my house- 
boat being too unwieldy, was broad enough to hold 
a jungle mattress, but the majority of the men had 
come in light dug-outs, in which it was impossible 
to sleep, and they had to encamp upon the bank. 
Their preparations were simple : a kajang (palm- 
leaves sewn together with rattan), four posts stuck 
in the ground, and a couple of boat -poles across 



250 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

them, made in a few minutes an excellent protec- 
tion against the dew ; and a few handfuls of tepus- 
leaves afforded a comfortable and fragrant matting. 
Three pointed sticks hammered into the ground made 
a tripod for the rice -pot, and what more does any 
man want? 

At first the moon was overcast with heavy clouds 
that threatened rain, but the surrounding darkness 
only set off the cheerful brightness of the camping- 
ground. The lights of the different fireplaces fell 
brightly on the forms of the men, their rude lean-to's, 
the throng of boats, and flickered gaily on the trunks 
of the great solemn forest trees above and around 
us. Later the clouds passed away, and the glorious 
full moon shone upon us. 

By seven o'clock all had finished their evening 
meal, and small woven cases of native cigarettes, 
and little covered bowls of silver or copper, con- 
taining betel -leaf and its accessories, were brought 
out and passed round. After a while old Pawang 
Duhamat was seen handling a short thick bludgeon. 
Similar bludgeons immediately made their appearance 
on every side, and then we all went down to the 
water's - edge. Ten dug-outs lay a little apart from 
the others: cleaned and washed, stripped of every- 
thing, they were mere empty vessels. The tuba root 
lay in great bales on the bank. Each man picked 
up as much as he required, and took it to one of 
the empty boats. After splashing a few gallons of 
water into the boat, he soaked a piece of the root 
in the water for a moment, and then began to pound 
it with his bludgeon. As the root abraded, a little 



TUBA FISHING. 251 

milky juice ran out, and trickled down the side of 
the boat into the water at its bottom. While he 
pounded the root, he sprinkled it from time to time 
with an occasional splash of water from the river. 
Eound each of the ten boats as many Malays as 
could find a place collected, each bang-bang-banging 
away at a piece of root : those that could find a foot- 
hold on the narrow lines of the gunwales perched 
there happily, whilst the others stood contentedly 
in the river, despite its coldness. Above the din 
of the pounding bludgeons rose the babble of voices 
and laughter. 

A wag of a boatman of mine began telling stories 
some of them about Sir Peace of the Forest, the little 
mouse-deer that by his cleverness became ruler over 
all the other animals, and some of them about the 
choleric captain of a local coasting-steamer; and all 
told with a wealth of happy imagination and happier 
mimicry that convulsed his audience into apoplectic 
choking. 

When proceedings were in full swing, Ahman sud- 
denly pounced on a luckless youngster. 

"Here is a useful man. Before his root is half 
pounded he throws it away. How many boat-loads 
of root shall we require to satisfy this spendthrift 
of other people's property?" 

The poor youth was covered with confusion ; but 
soon attention was turned from him by Ahman catch- 
ing a man throwing a worn-out piece of root into the 
river, instead of carefully depositing it out of harm's 
way upon the bank. 

" Allah ! the pride of some men. Itam will not 



252 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

wait for us. He is going to tuba the river to-night 
on his own account, and what chance will there be 
for the rest of us to-morrow ? " 

And Itam was very properly humble. 

After a while one of the men burst into a song, of 
which the refrain sounds somewhat as follows : 

" Deng a deng : Deng deng deng : Deng a deng ! 
Deng a deng deng : Deng deng dang 
Deng a deng deng : Deng dang dong." 

The Malays call it the "dendang" song, and to a 
wild catchy refrain, of which my written characters 
can only give a bare idea, they sing impromptu verses. 
When the first singer had finished a stanza, another 
man answered it, and then the two sang against one 
another, time and time about, each happy turn of a 
phrase or trick of a rhyme winning instant apprecia- 
tion and applause from a highly critical audience, 
until one man, failing of a reply, admitted the other's 
victory and, with a laugh at his defeat, handed on the 
right of contest to a third party. 

By the time that midnight was reached and the 
moon was poised overhead, the dug-outs were half 
filled with the milky juice of the abraded root ; and 
as there was no sign of the abatement of the energy 
of the pounders or the spirit of the singers, I stole 
away to the bed on my boat. 

At the little distance the " dendang " had a lullaby 
sound, and the soft moonlit streaks of the smoothly 
flowing water were a restful sight on which to close 
sleepy eyes. All round us was the great primeval 
forest, old beyond all knowing, and from age to age 
but rarely invaded by man; and from the heart of 



TUBA FISHING. 253 

the forest came wafts of night odours, fragrant of 
rich soil, of leaf-mould, and of strong strenuous tree 
life wafts only sensible to man in the hours of 
darkness. 

When we woke the next morning the ten dug-outs 
lay nearly brimful of the thick milky juice of the 
tuba poison. A hasty meal, and then on every side 
fish spears were brought out. The unambitious pro- 
duced a serampang, a three- or four-pronged spear 
which is useful for any fish up to five pounds ; those 
more hopeful of adventure had a tempuling, a spear 
with a barbed detachable head to which a rope is 
tied. It will hold anything, and with the bigger 
fish it is a necessity ; but, on the other hand, it 
misses many of the average-sized fish. 

The camp was struck in a few minutes, the palm- 
leaf coverings rolled up, the boat-poles collected, and 
the place that had resounded to the song and laughter 
of the night was abandoned. 

"When we were all in our sampans and prahus, 
Pawang Duhamat stepped on the bow of one of 
the tuba-laden dug-outs, and stood up amidst the 
silence of the throng. A fine-looking old Malay was 
he, erect and tall above the average height, with the 
high-raised cheek-bones of his race, dark expressive 
eyes, and sad lines round his mouth. A thin grey 
beard on the point of his chin added to his vener- 
able appearance. He leant on his fish spear, and 
then uttered the following charm over the tuba 
water : 

" Hong ! Hak ! Tina buih ipong 
Batang ku tarik balan charan 
Naik segala yang bisa tuba jinul." 



254 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

When, many weeks later in the privacy of my house, 
he confided the words of this charm to me (for no 
one could catch the rapid mutter in which they were 
uttered), all that he could tell me of the first two 
lines was that they were in the language of the Jins. 
With the exception of jimd t which is the Jin's word 
for tuba, the third line is Malay, and means, " Let all 
that is poisonous in this tuba arise." 

He also told me that this charm so increased the 
efficacy of the poison that one boat-load of the root 
was, if thus charmed, the equivalent of two boat-loads 
of uncharmed root. After a few minutes' silence, 
during which we waited for the poison of the root 
to assert itself, Pawang Duhamat splashed some of 
the liquid into the river, and then gave the word 
for the contents of eight dug-outs to be thrown over- 
board. The tuba juice in the remaining two boats 
was reserved for later use. 

With one accord the multitude raised the ringing 
Malay war-cry, and amid shouting and excitement 
the liquid was flung into the river. The milky juice 
soon lost itself, and for a space we all kept our 
positions, while the vessels that had held the poison 
were washed and cleansed. Then Pawang Duhamat 
led the way down the stream. For a few hundred 
yards there was not a sign of a fish ; everything had 
sped away from the first taste of the poisoned water. 
Then in a little eddy by the side of the river we saw 
a dazed fish swimming slowly in circles on the water's 
surface. It had had one taste of the poisoned water, 
and instead of fleeing down-stream on and on as the 
other fish had done, it had turned into some hiding- 



TUBA FISHING. 255 

place to wait under some stump, perhaps, or by the 
roots of an old tree that had often afforded a refuge 
from bigger fish or a place of safety in times of floods, 
but which gave no protection against the insidious 
tuba. A second taste of the poison and it had floated 
helpless to the surface. 

Pawang Duhamat bade the man who paddled his 
dug-out to turn towards the fish, and then he slowly 
and deliberately speared it. He cut it in two, and 
repeated over it this charm : 

" Pekih ! Pekah ! 

Ayunberdum is my bodyguard ! 

Jibrail is my weapon ! 

Gathering of Angels at the Gate of Earth, 

Rise ye up to the Gate of Earth ! 

Children of the Gathering of Angels at the Gate of Sky, 

Come ye down to the Gate of Sky ! 

Let us all be joined in a Bond of Union, 

Let us all join in one Game ; 

It is not that I wish to thrust aside all the doings of the Jins, 

It is not that I wish to thrust aside all the doings of the 

Children of the Gathering of Men : 
It is that I am under the Caiiopy of Allah ! " 

If there is not in this invocation, uttered in the 
midst of the throng that floated on the breast of 
the stream deep in the recesses of the boundless 
uninhabited forest, something that touches the imag- 
ination, let the fault be ascribed to the translator. 

Pawang Duhamat threw one half of the fish on to 
the right bank as a propitiatory offering to the Jins, 
and the other half on to the left bank for the 
Sheitans. 

When this was done, all were free to find and spear 



256 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

their fish as best they could ; and, with yells from 
their occupants, the boats darted forward. But the 
race was not to the swift, for the pace was set by the 
stream which carries the poison ; and when the first 
excitement had subsided, the boats glided gently and 
silently forward. 

The next few bends of the river presented the sad 
sight of the day, for here were numbers of fry lying 
dead on the surface of the water. At the place where 
the tuba water is poured into the stream, not only is 
there, of course, enough poison to affect the whole 
river, but the liquid mixes equally with the surface 
and the bottom of the river. Later the specific gravity 
of the tuba water, which is considerably heavier than 
that of river water, asserts itself, and the poison is 
carried along the bottom of the river. The small 
fry that flee for safety to the shallows then escape 
unharmed ; but, at first, a number of them are killed. 
It is the sight of these poor little dead fishes that 
is responsible for the general, and totally incorrect, 
opinion that tuba fishing kills all the fry in the 
river. 

The poison affects different species of fish in differ- 
ent ways. Perches, probably through seeking the 
shallows with the fry, escape altogether ; the mud fish 
find safety in burying themselves; while the little 
buntal, a small fish with a peculiar power of inflating 
itself, floats dead to the surface at the first taste of 
the poison. But the great majority of the fish seek 
safety in flight. 

Keen eyes in one boat mark, under an overhanging 
branch, the lips of a fish which cannot breathe the 



TUBA FISHING. 257 

tainted water breaking the surface of the stream to 
inhale the freshness of the air. But the fish, though 
distressed, has not lost its senses, and before the spear 
can be thrust it has disappeared. 

A broad brown back is seen as a temoli swims 
slowly down the river, and two boats dart towards it. 
Neck and neck they race until they are within a few 
yards of the fish, when the splashing of their paddles 
alarms it, and it dives. A hundred yards farther 
down the river it rises to the surface again, and the 
race begins anew. Gradually one boat gains on the 
other, and at last is some three yards ahead. As the 
occupant of the leading boat raises his arm to stab, 
the Malay in the other hurls his spear. 

Under the steel of the descending spear the point 
of the long spear of the thrower flashes and then 
buries itself, quivering, fair between the shoulders of 
the temoli. 

It is a splendid throw, and, despite their discom- 
fiture, the occupants of the first boat join in the 
applause. 

A few minutes later a great belida, that has been 
skulking under a bank, and hoping perhaps to make 
a dash up-stream to purer water, is transfixed and 
held up by an exultant Malay for all to see. 

The tuba is doing its work well, and on every side 
we shout our compliments and congratulations to 
Pawang Duhamat. We shout because the Malay 
fully realises that a compliment, like a libel, owes 
much to its publication. 

Some fish are half dead when seen for the first time, 
and therefore afford no excitement, unless a race is 

R 



258 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

necessary; whilst other fish will keep the occupants 
of a dozen boats on tenterhooks for a quarter of an 
hour, and give all the excitement of an otter-hunt. 
Some fish are so affected by the poison, that it appears 
to be necessary for them to come to the surface to 
breathe. Though extremely alert, they cannot stay 
below the surface for more than a minute or so. 
When the boats surround a place where one of these 
fish has been marked down, the men all wait with 
uplifted arm for it to reappear. Perhaps some one sees 
its lips at the water's surface by the roots of an old 
tree: as he hurls his spear the fish dives, and the 
Malay has to disengage the barbs of the spear-head 
from the tree -roots with such patience as he can. 
Two or three minutes pass and, as the fish does not 
reappear, there are fears that it may have escaped, 
until it is seen quietly hiding under the stern of a 
dug-out. Before the occupant sees it, it is gone 
again. Eventually, after many misses, a clever 
thrust, delivered just as it rises to the surface, trans- 
fixes it, and amid tumultuous shouts it is lifted 
into a boat. 

The day wears on. Bend after bend the beauti- 
ful forest-clad banks open themselves in front of us 
and close behind us. In each dug-out rises a heap 
of fish; and an occasional splash, with a lift of the 
light split -bamboo flooring, tells of an imprisoned 
monster. 

The chief excitement of the day is occasioned by 
the shout of " Buaia." Buaia, the crocodile, as a rule, 
is found in Malay rivers only in tidal waters. But, 
be the reason what it may, not only do a certain 



TUBA FISHING. 259 

number of crocodiles find their way up to the higher 
reaches of the rivers, but they even dare to leave for 
miles the safety of the water to seek a way through 
pathless forests. It may be that the motive is one 
of direct pressure: or may it be that this chill and 
repellent saurian is animated by the instinct of the 
English younger brother, and wanders forth in quest 
of adventures ? 

The crocodile is only a small one, some four feet 
long, and manages to escape unharmed after having 
caused a ripple of excitement down the length of the 
river by the mere terror of its dreaded name. 

All day long there is nothing to break the continu- 
ity of the great virgin forest that clothes either bank. 
But not for a moment of the long day could one find 
any degree of monotony in its endless lines and masses. 
Though the general aspect of the forest is that of great 
dark-foliaged trees, every turn of the river affords a 
view that has something in it of individuality, and 
the variety in the endless succession of views is as 
delicately marked as their general similarity is broadly 
outlined. Added to the charm of the beauty of the 
forest is the charm of its mystery. For mile upon 
mile, hundreds of miles upon hundreds of miles, it 
extends north and south and west. All that it holds 
of life is hidden from our eyes under the heavy screen 
of foliage. Under any tree that lines the bank a tiger 
might be lying, or perhaps some shy naked aboriginal, 
armed with a blow-pipe and poisoned darts, might be 
peeping to see the passing throng of Malays. But 
however close we might be to tigers or to Seinangs, we 
should no more see them than we should see the fish 



260 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

in the depths of the pools over which our boats were 
passing. 

Bend after bend of the river now lay behind us. 
As best we might, when the excitement slackened 
temporarily, and the fish seemed to have all fled 
before the tuba, we snatched a hasty meal. When 
we were within a mile of Ahman's barricade, where 
the final scene would be enacted, Pawang Duhamat 
emptied into the river the two boat - loads of tuba 
water that he had saved in the morning, repeating 
the same short incantation as he did so. 

Then we pressed on to the barricade. This, as I 
have said, extended across the river. Stout posts 
had been driven, a few feet apart, deep into the 
sandy bottom of the river. Between them was sup- 
ported, from one bank to the other, a framework 
made of split bamboos so closely laced together with 
rattans that no fish could pass between the in- 
terstices. The bottom of the framework was pegged 
to the river bottom, and its top rose to a height of 
some eight feet above the surface. In addition to 
this framework the posts supported a light plat- 
form on which a man might stand. It was about 
a foot above the level of the river, and was on the 
up-stream side of the bamboo framework. Some 
three hundred yards above the barricade, on either 
bank, a great post with a streamer of red cloth had 
been erected. This marked the limit below which 
only the boats of chiefs might pass, and old Ahman 
and Pawang Duhamat stationed themselves there to 
see that none should intrude. The four principal 
chiefs of the district and I took our stand on the 



TUBA FISHING. 261 

narrow gangway of the barricade, and with uplifted 
spears waited for the coming of the fish. The tuba 
water was still some way up - stream, but it was 
driving the fish before it. 

In the press of the boats above the line marked by 
the red flags an occasional spear rose and fell and rose 
again, but in the open space immediately above the 
barricade all was still. Suddenly the surface of the 
water was broken, and a great fish launched itself at 
the barricade. The gleam of a bar of silver and the 
twinkle of falling drops, and then the fish hit the 
bamboo framework some four feet above the level of 
the river. With a mighty splattering of its tail it 
managed to maintain its position for a moment, and 
then it fell on to the platform just in time to escape 
the thrust of a chief's spear. While the old man 
was extricating his barb from the bamboo frame- 
work the fish leapt free, and, leaving only some 
glittering scales behind it, fell back into the river. 
A moment later another huge broad back showed 
above the surface, and we saw a fish carefully and 
deliberately trying to find whether, in the length 
and breadth of the barricade, there was not some 
loophole of escape. A steady hand drove the spear, 
and after a struggle a young chief laid the fish on 
the platform. 

Soon the fish came in numbers, and we were 
thrusting and stabbing on every side, now at one 
as it hit the barricade, now at another in the water ; 
now at one as it fell back on the platform; some- 
times at one as it flashed through the air. While 
we thrust at one, another would leap up beside us, 



262 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

and before we could turn it too would fall back into 
the water. Beside each of us there grew up a pile 
of splendid fish. 

One magnificent fish a great temoli, weighing 
perhaps sixty pounds twice launched itself at the 
barricade, and twice escaped in safety back into the 
water ; but each time it fell back on the up-stream 
side, and safety from the tuba only lay in flight and 
access to the down-stream side. 

Then, during a lull, while all were waiting, the 
great fish broke the surface of the water some eight 
feet away from the barricade, and, cleaving through 
the air like a broad spear-head, rose up to the top 
of the bamboo framework. It hit the barricade some 
few inches below its summit, and hung balanced for 
a moment. Two men thrust at it and missed it, 
and then the framework bent back under the great 
weight, and the noble fish fell into the water on the 
down-stream side safe. 

This was one of the last fish of the day, and be- 
fore long all was over. We made our way to a sandy 
spit where the day's catch was exhibited. Malay 
women appeared on every side, bringing great earthen 
jars in which such fish as were not to be eaten fresh 
would be made into highly-flavoured, awful-scented 
pickles for future use. But at the meal which now 
awaited us it was fresh fish that we were to feast 
upon, fish, fresh from the river, and held, before 
their scales had ceased to glisten, over the fire to 
grill: merely split down the middle, and impaled 
upon a toasting-fork of sharpened bamboo. Grilled 
fish eaten with rice and coarse rock-salt nothing 



TUBA FISHING. 263 

more; but nothing could be more delicious. There 
might perhaps be a handful of wild bird's-eye chilies, 
culled from the river-bank during the day, and now 
produced with exultation, and pounded with the rock- 
salt to form a red pungent paste ; or there might be 
a lime dragged forth from the depths of a wallet to 
be sliced and sprinkled over a fish's richly browned 
back. But for the most part we have nothing but 
rice and salt and grilled fish and we want nothing 
more. We have no curry, because it takes too long 
to prepare. Besides, who wants a curry to - day ? 
There is nothing like grilling to bring out the true 
flavour of a fish, and nothing like rice and salt to 
make one appreciate that flavour. 

We feel it our duty to eat of every kind of fish ; 
partaking, sparingly perhaps, of the inferior in order 
to know the difference between it and the moderately 
good, and taking helpings of the moderately good in 
order to realise how sweet the best kind are. " Take 
some of the belida," an old chief will tell you, " and 
then see how succulent is the kelah." 

But of all the day's strange sights the strangest 
sight is to see the fish fry playing and splashing for 
the rice grains that fall from the plates on the scene 
where all the great fish had been speared a short 
hour before. Except where it is first poured into 
the water, and where the poison permeates top and 
bottom of the river, tuba does not kill the fry. The 
fry, keeping to the surface, escapes the tuba, which 
follows the bottom. 

Some years ago I was present at a tuba fishing 
party given by His Highness the Sultan of Pahang 



264 IN MALAV FORESTS. 

to the British Eesident and the District Officers. 
When we were at lunch in the Sultan's boat, after 
a tremendous catch of fish at the barricade, His 
Highness pointed to the swarms of fry that sur- 
rounded the kitchen boats, and, inverting the Malay 
proverb, " Big fish eat little fish," said " Big fish die, 
but little fish eat." 



265 



A WERE-TIGER 

SOME years ago I was travelling on a somewhat 
delicate mission in one of the petty sultanates of the 
Malay Peninsula that lie to the north of the federated 
states administered under British protection. The 
state is a long narrow strip of land lying on the east 
coast, and is traversed by a number of rivers that 
run parallel to one another from their source in the 
main range of the peninsula to the China Sea. The 
area of the district watered by each of these rivers is 
perhaps 500 square miles, of which at least 495 are 
forest. At the mouth of every river a few hundred 
Malays collect and make a living by fishing ; while, 
scattered up and down the stream, separated from 
one another by distances varying from one to five 
miles, are small clearings containing ten, twenty, or 
even fifty families, who are dependent upon an annual 
crop of padi and the collection of various forest pro- 
ducts, such as rubber, gutta, and rattans. As against 
the rest of mankind, the Malays say that the land is 
theirs; but no one knows better than themselves 
that the real lord and master of the country is the 
forest. Each clearing has been hacked out of the 
primeval forest with infinite trouble ; the period of its 



266 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

possession is marked by one continuous fight against 
aggression by forest seeds and creepers and weeds of 
every description, and when, finally, it is abandoned, 
it is covered within a few months by a dense and 
almost impenetrable scrub that will eventually grow 
up to become forest. My only companion was 
To'Kaya, an important and influential chief of one 
of the districts of the state, and our following con- 
sisted of a few Malay boatmen. To'Kaya was a fine 
specimen of a Malay of the last generation. He was 
some fifty years old, but time had had little apparent 
effect upon his wiry agile frame. He was a short 
man, not more than five feet four inches in height, 
of neat trim build, with square shoulders and small 
hands and feet. He had little superfluous flesh, but 
the curves of his arms and chest showed a muscular 
development considerably greater than would have 
been expected. His head was small and well shaped, 
its poorest feature being a broad and somewhat flat 
nose. The whole of his scalp was clean shaven, and 
chin and cheeks were kept free of occasional hairs by 
the use of tweezers. The striking feature of his face 
was a small, fierce, closely - cropped moustache of 
rather coarse bristly hairs, whose almost snowy white- 
ness afforded a brilliant contrast to the smoothness 
of his face and head, and to the rich olive-brown of 
his complexion. His eyes were somewhat sunken, 
with an expression of suffering and patience, but the 
crow's feet at their corners often curved into un- 
expected lines of humour. In every expression the 
old man showed the quiet dignity and self-respect of 
the true Malay. 



A WERE-TIGER. 267 

Bound his waist he wore the national garment a 
sarong, which is in shape like a somewhat wide sack 
with the bottom cut off. His coat was nearly as 
primitive, for it was innocent of buttons, and could 
only be put on and taken off by being pulled over the 
head. A big coloured handkerchief was tied round 
his forehead, with a fantastic peak carefully arranged 
in front. Sarong, coat, and handkerchief were all of 
Malay weaving and coloured with native dyes, and 
nothing could be more simple or more effective and 
becoming to the wearer. 

We took boat at the mouth of one of the rivers, 
the Malays at first using their paddles in the tidal 
waters where the inflowing tide bore us swiftly past 
densely timbered banks, and afterwards exchanging 
their paddles for poles when at last a sandy bottom 
was reached. We poled slowly against a strong 
current until the river became so narrow and so 
shallow that farther progress by boat was difficult. 
Then we left the river, and struck inland at right 
angles to it. For a whole day we made our way 
along a narrow track through heavy forest, where the 
great trees afforded shade and coolness even at mid- 
day. At sunset we camped on a ridge that formed 
the watershed between the river we had left and 
the one for which we were making. An armful of 
leaves was thrown down to make a bed for each, and 
a deftly plaited screen of wild palm-leaves was placed 
over the beds to keep off the dew. 

During the night at intervals "the spirits of the 
semambu" called to one another in a little ravine 
below us. The semambu is the Malacca cane of 



268 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

commerce, and the Malays imagine that each plant 
has a spirit. At night-time, they say, spirit calls to 
spirit, making inquiry as to the length of the cane 
between the joints : panjang ? lelum ? " is it long ? 
not yet ? " cries a high resonant voice, throwing the 
accent of the question sharply on the second syllable 
of each word ; then, after a pause, another voice is 
raised in a different key, and with the accent and 
falling intonation of the sad response, panjang, belum: 
" it is long, not yet." 

The call is really that of an insect, but the sound 
is weirdly voice-like, and the vibrations of the ques- 
tion and reply awake a corresponding thrill in the 
listener. 

We also heard, two or three times during the night, 
the trumpeting of some wild elephants that had been 
alarmed by meeting our tracks. The next morning 
we continued our journey, which lay through dense 
forest the whole day, and emerged at nightfall upon 
a little village on the bank of the river we sought. 
Here we requisitioned a dug-out, and the next 
morning started down-stream. 

The pleasant easy progress of the boat, which was 
carried by the swift current and only required the 
gentlest paddling to give it steering way, was a 
welcome rest after the days of laborious poling and 
travelling. To'Kaya and I sat under a little awning 
made of palm-leaves sewn together, and talked the 
long day away, while reach after reach the bends of 
the river opened a gleaming way before us, and reach 
after reach the forest-clad banks closed in behind us. 
The small Malay clearings that appeared at intervals 



A WERE-TIGER. 269 

on the banks only accentuated the sense of the over- 
powering dominion and vastness of the all-encompass- 
ing forest. Its mastery held us, and our conversation 
for the most part turned upon its inhabitants, both 
animal and supernatural. Thus we came to the 
discussion of were -tigers, which are in the Malay 
Peninsula the counterpart of the were -wolves of 
Europe. That were-tigers exist no Malay doubts; 
and the popular belief is that the men from the dis- 
trict of Korinchi in Sumatra have the power of 
assuming the form of a tiger at will, and that in this 
guise they range the forest, hunting the wild game 
and occasionally killing mankind. 

The Korinchi men, who are mostly pedlars of 
cloths, naturally resent the imputation, and contend 
that it is only some of the men of Chenaku, a sub- 
district of Korinchi, who have this unholy power. 
But as the contention admits the existence of the 
power amongst certain of the suspected class, the 
Malays of the Peninsula are only strengthened in 
their opinion, and believe the charge to be true of 
all Korinchis. To'Kaya told me of a village where, 
for some months, the fowls had been harried by a 
tiger or panther, both of which are known to the 
Malays by the same generic term, and where one 
day a Korinchi man lying sick with fever in the 
house of the headman, who had had pity on him, had 
vomited quantities of undigested chickens' feathers. 
I, in my turn, told him a story that I had heard in 
the reaches near the source of the Slim river. There, 
in an isolated hill-padi clearing, lived a Malay, his 
wife, and their two children, young boys of the age 



270 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

when they learn to read the Koran. One night came 
a rap at the door of the house, which, like all Malay 
dwellings, was built upon posts some ten feet above 
the ground. In answer to a demand from the father 
as to who was at the door and what was wanted, a 
voice replied, " We ask for a light, our torches are 
extinguished, and we have still some distance to go to 
the house where we are expected." Now, it is well 
known that this is a common device of jins and evil 
spirits to obtain admission to a house, and one should 
always beware of opening the door to give a light to 
a stranger who pretends to be belated. Well, the two 
boys, while the father was questioning and cross- 
questioning the stranger, slipped out of the house by 
the ladder behind the kitchen. Excited by the visit 
of a stranger at such an hour, they moved silently 
along the ground under the bamboo flooring to peep 
upwards at the threshold. There, on the rung of the 
ladder next below the door, stood a man talking to 
their father ; but even while he spoke a tail striped 
in black and yellow dropped down behind his legs, 
and then up and down his lower limbs ran successive 
ripples of change and colour. The toes became talons, 
the feet turned to paws, and the knee-joints, already 
striped with the awful black and yellow, were turning 
from front to back. 

And all the time the human face of the creature 
was giving specious explanations to the questions of 
the master of the house. Half in fascination, half in 
desperation, the two boys seized the tail that dangled 
before them, and shouted to their father to kill the 
thing. But before he could reach for his spear the 



A WERE- TIGER. 271 

animal, now nearly all tiger, tore itself from the puny 
grasp of the youngsters and fled into the darkness of 
the forest. Though I did not tell the story as a true 
one, To'Kaya shook his head and said, " That was a 
narrow escape. But it is fitting that we should talk of 
were-tigers, for here in the village of Bentong which 
we are approaching, there was a were-tiger not many 
years ago." 

This is the story : not, it will be seen, as To'Kaya 
told it, but as I have reconstructed it from what he 
told me. 

A few years ago Bentong, a village of considerable 
importance in a sparsely-populated district, for it con- 
sisted of some fifty houses, had suffered much from the 
depredations of a tiger. Scarcely a month passed 
without a buffalo or two being taken, and the Malays 
were in despair. They had tied up goats with spring- 
guns set over them, and they had made elaborate 
traps, like gigantic mouse -traps, baited with dogs. 
But the tiger would have none of them, and the Malays 
were beginning to talk of abandoning the village, for 
they depended upon the buffaloes to plough the padi- 
fields, and the possible extermination of the herd 
meant nothing less than utter ruin. 

Such was the state of things in Bentong when late 
one afternoon, in drenching rain and growing dark- 
ness, an old Korinchi pedlar named Haji Brahim 
was hastening towards the village, where he intended 
to spend the night. He had a regular round through 
the district, in which he had been known for years, 
and the next day would peddle cloths and silks to the 
women-folk, collect his small debts, and then move on 



272 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

to the next village. The inclement weather and slip- 
pery path had made him much later than he had ex- 
pected, for, like every one else in the district, he had 
heard of the Bentong tiger. He was making his way 
somewhat nervously, therefore, hoping that every turn 
in the narrow forest-track would disclose the village 
clearing, when he was panic-stricken to hear the tiger 
roar within a short distance of him. Shaking with 
fear, he ran for his life towards the village. He had 
not gone far before he came on a tiger-trap built at 
the side of the track, ready set with its bait of village 
cur, and with the door wide open. Struck by the idea 
that the timbers which would keep a tiger in would 
also keep one out, he dropped on his hands and knees, 
crawled in, and let the heavy door fall behind him. 
And when the tiger roared again in still closer prox- 
imity, on one occasion within a few feet of him, and 
continued to roar in the vicinity at intervals through- 
out the night, he forgave the presence of the unclean 
dog that cowered beside him, and blessed the thought 
that had led him to seek such a refuge. 

When morning broke it found him stiff and shivering 
from the effects of the night's rain, the exposure, and 
the cramped position ; but it found him alive, and for 
that he added special thanksgiving to the morning 
prayer of every Muhammadan believer. He discovered 
that from the inside of the trap he was unable to raise 
the heavy falling door, but remained where he was, 
content with the knowledge that before long some one 
would certainly pass along the track. In this he was 
not disappointed, for soon he heard a man approaching, 
and shouted to him for assistance. The man looked 



A WERE-TIGEK. 273 

round him on all sides, but failed to discover whence 
the voice came. 

" Where are you ? " he replied. 

" Here ! Here in the tiger-trap ! " 

The Malay came up and, peering into the darkness 
of the trap, cried, " Who are you ? What is it ? " 

" It is I, Haji Brahim," was the answer. " I am in 
the tiger-trap." 

The man peered yet closer, his somewhat dull wits 
puzzled by the strangeness of the situation, and then 
suddenly recognised the features of the captive. As 
suddenly a light struck him. "It is Haji Brahim, 
the Korinchi" he yelled in an access of terror. He 
forgot the helpless position of the inmate of the trap : 
he could only realise one fact, that the tiger, which for 
so long had been the pest of Bentong, was a were- 
tiger ; and without another word he turned and ran 
down the track as though he ran for his life. 

The boom of the mosque -drum soon reverberated 
through the village, and in answer to its summons 
every able-bodied Malay thronged to the house of the 
chief, Kaja Alang. The man who had given the 
alarm told his story, and then, after due deliberation 
and consultation, the men proceeded to the tiger-trap. 
The raja led the way, and behind him crowded the 
Malays, each armed with a spear, and with a belt full 
of krises and daggers. As they left the cultivated 
area and entered the forest they strung out into single 
line upon the narrow track, again massing in thick 
array behind the raja when they reached the trap. 
Kaja Alang stepped up to the door and demanded of 
the prisoner 



274 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

"What is the name of this work?" 

The old man's heart sank at the tone of the stern 
inquiry. During the long weary vigil of the night it 
had not occurred to him to connect his nationality 
with the fact of his entering the trap : the villager's 
alarm had been a shock to him, but he had persuaded 
himself that it was the mere temporary panic of an 
ignorant clown. But he now saw that he was on 
his trial. 

"Let me out," he pleaded. "Let me out, and I 
will explain everything." 

"That cannot be," replied the raja. "First you 
must explain how you came to be in this trap." 

"Yes," agreed the voices in the background, "for 
who would release a tiger when once it is 
caught ? " 

" How came you here ? Was it not you whom we 
heard roaring last night ? " demanded the raja. 

" No, raja, no," answered the old pedlar ; " the tiger, 
which is always here, roared close to me last night, 
and it was to save my life that I ran into this 
trap." 

"How can any one believe such a story?" mur- 
mured the crowd. 

" The sole of your foot on the crown of my head, 
raja ; have not you and all these men known me for 
many years ? Am I not an old man and feeble, and 
could I do such a thing as this that you think 
of me?" 

" But who ever heard of an honest man in a tiger- 
trap?" reiterated with dull persistency the voices 
behind the raja, 



A WERE-TTGER. 275 

The tracks will prove the truth of what I say," 
cried the pedlar. 

The justice of the contention appealed to all, and 
the ground was carefully examined. But the crowd 
had obliterated the footprints round the trap, and all 
that could be seen were the tiger's tracks following a 
wild-game path to its junction with the main forest 
path, and then losing themselves in the trampled 
ground around the trap. 

The inspection was carried out thoroughly and im- 
partially, and its result, which of course tended to 
confirm the suspicions of the Malays, was communi- 
cated to the trembling captive. 

"But I can prove that I left the village of Siputeh 
yesterday afternoon to come to Bentong. Every one 
saw me there," wept the old man. 

" That may be true," retorted some one in the crowd 
with relentless logic, " but it is of last night that we 
talk. The tiger was here last night, and you are in 
the tiger-trap this morning." 

The pedlar, who throughout had been on his hands 
and knees, the only position of which the cramped 
space of the trap would permit, seeing the futility of 
argument, turned his face up to the judges who stood 
massed in front of the trap and tried through his 
tears to recognise them. 

He called to the village imaum, and offered to swear 
on the Koran of the mosque in any form of oath that 
might be imposed that his story was true. But 
though the Malays are, as a rule, in favour of the 
ordeal by oath, they felt at once that there was an 
obvious objection to its use in this case. The question 



276 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 

which they had to decide was whether their captive 
was an ordinary Malay like themselves, or that awful 
horror, a were-tiger. It was plain that a creature so 
unnatural as that they imagined their prisoner to be 
would not hesitate to forswear itself in order to 
attain its liberty : not only then would the oath fail 
in its effect, but their mosque and Koran would have 
been polluted by the presence and touch of the un- 
clean thing. When this last resource failed him the 
poor old man cried to those who had known him 
longest and best, and begged for his life for pity's 
sake. He promised to do anything that was asked of 
him, and, if necessary, to leave the country for ever. 
But the Malays did not dare to let themselves be 
influenced by any thoughts of pity or compassion. 
They had to decide a question upon which their herds, 
their crops, and their very lives depended, and that 
question was put to them with Malay terseness and 
directness by the raja. 

" If we open the trap-door," he said, turning to the 
men who leant upon their spears behind him, "and 
let this that we have here now go loose, what is our 
position ? " 

What was their position ? One must realise how 
the little village was isolated in the midst of a vast 
forest, how exposed the inhabitants were to any 
attack from it, how powerless to retaliate upon any 
man-eating or cattle - eating tiger, which had such 
easy access and such safe retreat, and how sick with 
helpless misery they must have felt at the mere idea 
that they were at the mercy of something that was 
partly tiger, partly demon. It is easy to imagine 



A WERE-TIGER, 277 

their fierce exultation at the thought of having 
trapped so awful a creature. 

The raja repeated his question. 

In answer a Malay, whose chief wealth lay in his 
diminishing herd of buffaloes, stood forth. 

"Who of us has not lost one or more of his 
buffaloes ? "Who does not know that these Korinchis 
can turn themselves into tigers ? Did we not all 
hear the tiger roar last night? Have we not got 
his tracks here ? And here, where the tracks lead 
up to the trap, have we not, by the grace of Allah, 
got the Korinchi trapped? What more?" 

" What more ? " said old To'Kaya, turning to me. 
At a sign from the raja one of the men stepped up 
to the trap, and, thrusting through the open bars 
of the woodwork, drove his spear through the old 
man's side. 

For a moment I was silent with horror, and 
then said, "Pity on an old man to die in such a 
manner ! " 

" What pity does a tiger show ? " retorted To'Kaya ; 
"and what pity can it expect? Was it not clearly 
proved that this man was a were-tiger ? It was not 
that he was unjustly or unfairly tried. The men of 
Bentong had known Haji Brahim for many years, 
and against him, as a man, they had no ill-feeling. 
The raja Kaja Alang, whom we shall see in the 
village if we stop the boat and call in is both 
mild and just. Could he have decided otherwise? 

" If a woman is accused of sin, or a man of murder, 
and evidence not half so strong as that in this case 



278 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

is advanced against them in the justice halls of the 
states under British rule, nay, even in the Great 
Court -House of Singapore, does not the judge 
convict them?" 

I made an expostulation, and was painfully aware 
that I was begging the question. To'Kaya politely, 
but firmly, pointed this out, and I then attacked the 
evidence, saying that it was merely circumstantial. 

To'Kaya bowed and said, " That may be ; but have 
not men been hanged on slighter evidence ? " 

I could not think of a suitable reply : and it must 
be remembered that I was on a somewhat delicate 
mission in a state of which To'Kaya was one of the 
principal chiefs. There was, therefore, silence for 
a space as our little boat broke the sparkle of the 
river. We were now passing the village: the banks 
were covered with green turf cropped close by 
buffaloes, a few of whom animals that perhaps had 
often seen the tiger which poor Haji Brahim had met 
raised their heads to stare at us. Farther back 
from the river was a grove of cocoanut-palms, whose 
slender heads and graceful curves were outlined 
against the blue sky; and at their feet, dotted at 
intervals, were the Malay houses, which are built 
of bamboo and plaited bertam palm - fronds, and 
whose colour is that of ripe dead leaves. A woman 
was pounding rice with a pestle worked by her foot, 
and in the river a number of children were play- 
ing and splashing ; but the men were for the most 
part in their houses seeking a refuge from the heat 
of the day. Then suddenly a little dug-out shot 
forth from the bank to cross the river. One man 



A WERE-TIGER. 279 

poled, another steered with a paddle, and in the 
centre sat a fine- looking old Malay. 

"It is Eaja Alang," said To'Kaya. 

We stopped for a while to exchange the greetings 
and the courtesies due to, and expected from, our 
various ranks. Then we parted, and at the next 
bend of the river the great forest swept down again 
to the bank on either side, shutting us off from 
the view of aught else, and telling us that the 
little village of Bentong now lay behind us. 



280 



CEOCODILE SHOOTING. 

THE vast dense forest that covers the length and 
breadth of the Malay Peninsula generally changes 
its character before it reaches the coast -line. In 
places, it is true, one may find a rocky headland 
covered with heavy timber running out to sea until 
the waves break at its feet; but for the most part, 
on the east coast the forest is cut off from the sea 
by an open foreshore of rank wind-swept grass, be- 
tween which and a shallow sandy beach grows a 
narrow fringe of casuarina trees, through which the 
sea - wind whispers, sighs, and murmurs day and 
night ; while on the west coast, where the land falls to 
the sea level, a mangrove forest growing on alluvial 
mud takes the place of the trees of the interior. 

On part of the Perak coast the mangrove forest 
is intersected by channels formed by joint actions 
of the rise and fall of the tide and of the currents 
of the inland streams. The effect of these channels 
is to cut the forest up into numerous islands of 
varying size, and a launch can make its journey 
by these back ways from end to end of the forest 
without being seen from the sea. In the old days 
before British protection, many were the excitiog 



CROCODILE SHOOTING. 281 

games of hide-and-seek played up and down these 
byways between the Chinese boats that carried the 
tin of the alluvial fields of Larut and the pirate 
prahus of the Malays. 

The channels vary in width from a hundred to 
three hundred yards: at high tide one sees nothing 
on either bank but the mangrove-trees growing out 
of the water and occasional patches of nipah palms. 
At low tide the mangroves are left high and dry 
above the expanse of a slimy foreshore of evil- 
smelliDg mud. One notices that a line, that might 
have been drawn with a ruler, runs along the foot 
of the row of mangroves, and marks the high-water 
limit below which the leaves of the trees cannot live. 

Above this line all is green, below it there is 
nothing but bare trunk. On the mud the croco- 
diles that infest the channels come out to bask 
when the tide is low. 

Some months ago my tracker Manap and I were 
in the mangrove swamps of Larut trying to shoot 
a tiger that had been taking off the Chinese wood- 
cutters on the coast. As we were returning to 
my launch at sunrise, after one of many fruitless 
night - long vigils in a mosquito - infested forest, it 
occurred to me to take advantage of the low tide 
and to paddle along the banks of the backwaters 
and inlets of the mangrove forest in order to pick 
up a crocodile or two. We left the launch to follow 
us at a discreet distance, and set off in a little 
dug-out canoe. The tide was running out fast, and 
long stretches of bare mud were exposed. 

In the distance these flat expanses glistened in the 



282 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

morning sun like molten gold; but when seen close 
at hand, on either side, they resolved into a horrible 
blue-brown slimy mass. 

Crabs of weird shapes and colours thronged the 
flats. Great ugly green crabs crept sluggishly over 
the mangrove roots, or climbed, with the appearance 
of painful movement, up the slime-covered snags and 
dead branches that jutted up abruptly above the 
level of the mud. With jerky efforts hermit-crabs 
dragged along their whelk - shell homes, and upon 
any alarm withdrew into the farthest recesses of 
their shells, which fell over backwards with horrible 
deathlike suddenness, and which then lay until the 
danger was past, as apparently tenantless as any of the 
empty shells that were scattered over the surface of 
the mud. Brown crabs scuttled towards their holes, 
and then, having made safe their line of retreat, stared 
with beady, expressionless eyes at the passing boat. 

In strong contrast with these ungainly varieties, 
and with the surrounding of the mangrove swamps, 
were the little crabs : some of the brightest vermilion, 
others of the most perfect turquoise. 

One tiny creature a miniature in purest enamel 
which had found a delicacy, plied two claws, enor- 
mous in proportion to its body, to convey infinitesimal 
morsels to an invisible mouth ; and the claws worked 
alternately with the speed and clicking regularity of 
knitting-needles. Never was greed more prettily 
served. Pugnacious little creatures were they too ; 
and each stood by its hole and waved a claw in the 
air on the alert for love or war. 

We slowly paddled along with the ebbing tide, 



CROCODILE SHOOTING. 283 

and soon disturbed a small crocodile a youngster 
some four feet long. It had been hidden from sight 
by a dip in the bank, and we were upon it before 
it knew its danger. Its efforts to reach the water 
and safety were frantic. All its four legs clawed 
madly and splutteringly at the yielding mud, and 
its tail swung wildly from side to side as if to 
help it on its way. But, for all its ungainly ap- 
pearance, it covered the ground at an extraordinary 
pace. The first bullet struck the bank just below 
it, and plastered it with driven splashes of mud ; 
the second hit it fairly behind the shoulder just 
as it reached the water, and turned it over on its 
back. The head and body disappeared under water, 
and only the tail remained on the bank: a hind-leg 
waved convulsively in the air. " Mampus ! " cried 
Manap a contemptuous expression, of which "dead 
as mutton" is a fair rendering; and he paddled on 
slowly and with the deliberation that befitted a man 
who was going to pick up something barely worth 
the shooting. But " mampus " the crocodile was not, 
for, as we came up, the leg that had appealed to 
high heaven assumed a more natural position, and 
with a desperate effort the animal righted itself, 
and managed to slide down into the muddy stream. 
Manap dug his paddle deep into the water, and put all 
the strength of his broad back into his stroke. There 
is no harm in thinking little of your game when 
you have brought it to bag, but if a man can spare 
any effort to make the game his when success is 
as yet uncertain, then either the game or the man 
is worth very little. As the dug-out shot up to 



284 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

the spot where the stirred - up mud marked the 
course taken by the wounded animal, Manap groped 
in the shallow water to find it with his paddle. He 
touched it once, but another dying effort enabled it 
to wriggle into deeper water where the paddle could 
not touch bottom. We had therefore to leave it, 
and after marking the spot with a pole paddled on 
again. 

There were birds on every side: kingfishers of 
several species, some as big as jackdaws (one of them 
cursed with a maniac laugh), the smallest a purple 
gem, even smaller and more resplendent than the 
brilliantly - coloured bird of the English rivers. On 
the mud were padi-birds a species of crane, the 
perfect and absolute whiteness of whose plumage 
was in as strong contrast with the sombre back- 
ground as the blue of the tiny crabs. With bowed 
neck and abstracted mien, a marabout stork took 
long slow strides in search of incautious fish. Brown 
Brahminy kites wheeled in circles overhead. Then, 
in our silent approach, we disturbed a sea -eagle: 
sitting in a mangrove - tree on the water's - edge, it 
allowed us to approach within a few yards before 
it deigned to fly. As it launched itself forth from 
the tree it dropped down a foot or two before its 
powerful pinions had sufficient spread to bear the 
weight of the heavy body. Then it flapped slowly 
in front of us over the surface of the mud -banks. 
Suddenly, as if to show that it was not afraid of 
us, it let drop two enormous taloned legs and seized 
a luckless fish ; crooked claws and curved beak met, 
and without a break in the flight the captive was 



CROCODILE SHOOTING. 285 

swallowed. In a dead tree, standing white and gaunt 
against the blue sky, two other sea-eagles wrangled 
and screamed in discordant tones. At the water's- 
edge sandpipers tripped with dainty feet along the 
mud, and rose to take short flights as we approached 
too close. Their call " ke-di-di ke-di-di " (whence 
they get their Malay name) was the same as that of 
the English sandpiper, and the clear fresh notes were 
reminiscent of a cooler clime and a softer scene. 
Green pigeons some of the most lovely birds that 
fly fluttered from tree to tree in search of fruit; 
and, unseen in a mangrove-tree, an imperial wood- 
pigeon called to its mate. No thin "coo" like that 
of the English bird was his note, but a deep " boom " 
that resounded far through the forest. 

Before long we saw a crocodile floating in the 
stream. It was close to the edge of the mud, prob- 
ably making up its mind to crawl up the bank, and 
taking a look round before it did so. Only the tip 
of its snout and its eyes appeared above the surface, 
but the distance between these three points showed 
it to be a big one. 

The slanting rays of the sun shone on it, and we 
could see the outline of its body in the water. It 
was probably some sixteen or seventeen feet long; 
but it had not grown to that length without learning 
wisdom, and, as it saw us, it gently sank out of sight. 
There was no hurry, no alarm or excitement. It 
merely subsided, and let the water rise over it and 
hide it. In such fashion might the submarine boat 
of an inventor's dreams sink below the surface of the 
water. And when the crocodile had gone there was 



286 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

not a ripple anywhere to show the place where it 
had been. 

A couple of hundred yards farther on we marked 
a crocodile stretched in sleep on the mud. At this 
distance it was peculiarly inconspicuous, despite the 
serrated outline of its back and tail. Branches of 
trees, nipah palm-leaves, with wreckage and detritus 
of all sorts, are always scattered about the mud-flats, 
and it is difficult to say whether they or the crocodile 
succeed the better in their mimicry of one another. 
Time after time the broad back and jagged fronds of 
a nipah leaf will make one tighten the grasp on the 
rifle, and I well remember that the first time an 
excited Malay pointed out a crocodile to me I could 
see nothing but an old log. We drifted slowly 
towards the sleeping crocodile, and though it is not, 
I admit, a high form of sport, still it was exciting, 
for one could not tell when the animal would wake. 
It might only be half asleep, or not even asleep 
at all, and might at any moment make a dash for 
the water. When a crocodile does awake to realise 
its danger, there is such a rush and such a swirl, and 
the flying mud is so much the colour of the animal, 
that to put a bullet through its heart or head cannot 
but be more a matter of luck than skill. Every yard 
that brings the boat closer to the animal of course 
increases the danger of its waking ; and added to the 
thrill of the lessening distance is the difficulty of 
deciding whether to take one's shot while yet one 
may or whether to try and get a little closer, and 
thus, if the animal does not first take alarm, make 
certain of it. Slowly and silently we drifted on until 



CROCODILE SHOOTING. 287 

we were within twenty yards of the crocodile. Its 
whole side was then exposed, and I got an easy shot 
at its heart. I fired, and the animal did not move. 
At the moment that the bullet struck it, the jaws 
opened to their full extent, showing every pointed 
tooth in the serried rank that filled the hideous 
mouth, remained at their widest gape for a fraction 
of a second, and then closed with a snap like that 
of a springing rat-trap. There was not another 
movement of the body, but the brute lay stone-dead. 
Had any particle of life remained in it, it would have 
struggled to the water ; but this snapping of the 
jaws, which is an involuntary muscular effort, is an 
infallible sign that the animal has been killed on 
the spot. Manap paddled to the water's - edge, 
struggled nearly waist-deep through the semi-liquid 
mud towards the brute, and, slipping a rattan round 
its body, tied it to a pole, which he stuck in the 
mud. It was a brute some ten feet long, but heavy 
for its length, and capable of taking off a man with 
ease. We signalled to the launch, which followed 
about a quarter of a mile behind us, to pick up the 
carcass as soon as we had passed on, and continued 
to paddle slowly down the tide. The next crocodile 
that we saw had apparently not yet disposed itself 
for its siesta, for before we approached within range 
it started up, whirled round, and dashed into the 
water. Farther on we saw another crocodile floating 
high in the water, with its head and body above the 
surface. We approached to within thirty yards before 
it moved. It then began slowly to subside in the 
same manner as the one that we had seen before. 



288 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

I fired at the diminishing target, and in a second 
transformed the phlegmatic saurian into a raging 
monster. In fury, surprise, and pain it lashed the 
water with its powerful tail, turning and twisting 
its body until the churned up water hid it from view. 
I fired my second barrel into the turmoil of spray 
and water, and the brute plunged below the surface. 
As soon as it had disappeared from sight, Manap's 
quick eyes discerned on the mud-flats the track by 
which the crocodile had just come down to the water. 

" See," he cried, " it has not been basking ; there 
is its wallow. 

" Have you not seen a crocodile's wallow ? " he 
asked me as he paddled on with long easy strokes, 
letting the tide do its full share of the work. " This 
is how he makes it. When the tide is at its full 
he comes up over the water-covered bank, and lies 
down on the mud close by the mangrove - trees. 
He twists and turns himself in the ooze until he 
has hollowed out a shallow pit, in which he lies. 
Then the tide turns to run out, and the mud and 
silt carried down by the stream settle in the wallow 
and on the crocodile's back and round his sides, until, 
by the time that the retreating tide has left the 
mud -flats bare, a thick layer of mud covers the 
crocodile, and nothing is seen to break the level 
expanse of ooze. The crocodile's nostrils and his 
eyes are, however, just above the level of the mud, 
though the keenest eye could not detect them. Thus 
he lies concealed until a family of monkeys comes 
chattering, playing, and scrambling over the mud to 
look for crabs or shellfish. 



CKOCODILE SHOOTING. 289 

"If one of them happens to come too close to the 
hidden watcher there is an upheaval of the mud, 
and, bap ! the monkey is in the crocodile's jaws ; and 
for all its screams and all its companions' cries it 
is carried off towards the water, to be devoured at 
leisure. Sometimes it is not a monkey but a man 
that is taken." 

This is unfortunately only too true, and I well 
remember hearing at an official inquiry a Malay's 
horribly vivid description of his companion's death 
in this manner. They had been cutting nipah palm- 
leaves together, and were loading their canoe with 
the fronds that they had collected, when a crocodile 
made a dash out of a wallow at one of the men and 
seized him above the knee. Neither man had a knife 
in his hand, and all that Awang, the wretched man 
who had been seized, could do was to throw both his 
arms round a tree and attempt to hold on. The other 
man, Saleh, ran to fetch his knife, which he had left 
in his boat, but even as he turned to run Awang 
had been torn from the tree and carried towards the 
water. Twice again did Awang momentarily check 
the brute's course by seizing and holding on to a 
tree or branch, but each time the weight and strength 
of the crocodile wrenched him from his support, and 
before Saleh returned with his knife Awang had been 
torn from the last tree on the river-bank, and was 
carried screaming to his death. 

"But it is not every one," said Manap continuing 
his story, " who is aware that both crocodiles and 
tigers are forbidden to kill mankind, and that every 
time one of them kills a man it breaks one of the 

T 



290 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

great laws imposed by Nabi Sleman [King Solomon] 
upon the animals. Every animal knows what it may 
do and what it may not do. The deer may live on 
the forest foliage and grass; the tigers may kill the 
deer ; the various kinds of fish have their peculiar 
food; the crocodiles may feed on the fish and on 
such four-footed animals as chance may bring in their 
way: but no animal may wantonly attack mankind. 
That is the first law of Nabi Sleman; and if any 
animal kills a man Nabi Sleman forthwith drives it 
out of his fold. Thenceforth it lives apart from its 
fellows, an outcast and an accursed thing. 

" When, therefore, a crocodile has killed a man, it 
tries to evade the punishment of its offence. It 
buries the body in the mud, and then after three 
days floats to the surface with it, pretending that it 
has just found it. It calls out over the water 

" ' It was not I, Sun ! 
Not I, O Moon ! 
Not I, Stars ! 

Bear witness all that it was not I, 
Not I, that killed this man : 
The Water killed him.' 

And this is partly true, for the crocodile kills a man 
by drowning him. Then as the sun and moon and 
stars hold their peace, the crocodile thinks that it 
has freed itself of guilt, and sinks again to the river- 
bottom to devour the body at its leisure." 

" The water killed him," Manap murmured two or 
three times to himself; and any one who has ex- 
perience of the hair - splitting quibbles in which 
Muhammadan jurisconsults delight, will understand 



CROCODILE SHOOTING. 291 

his appreciation, even relish, of the ingenuity of 
the imaginary appeal. 

It was nearly the ebb-tide, and the channel grew 
narrow. Small fry leapt out of the water in terror 
at our approach, and now and again some large fish 
surged past between our canoe and the bank, its 
broad back driving a curling wave before it. To see 
the size and swiftness and silent strength of these 
great fishes made it a joy to think of the feel of a 
salmon-rod bending to the weight of one of them. 

Playing and feeding near the surface of the water 
was a shoal of extraordinary small fish with long 
pointed snouts like those of the English garfish. 
But the fishes were not confined to the water, they 
were crawling all over the mud-banks in every direc- 
tion. Look at this fish, the ikan Uachak, whose 
pectoral fins appear to have developed into jointed 
legs: it walks sturdily and determinedly over the 
mud, with its dorsal fin erect from the back of its 
neck to the base of its tail; and very imposing it 
looks to any fish that has not attained the dignity 
of its six inches. This panoply is intended to strike 
terror into beholders ; but the ikan UachaJc knows 
its limitations, and the kites that wheel overhead 
will not be intimidated by any dorsal fin however 
stiff: so when the little fish stops, it sinks its fin and 
lies as close and as flat as it can to the mud its colour 
resembles. But should any other blachak come stray- 
ing too close, at once it leaps up and with open mouth 
stands ready to fight if the intruder will not retreat. 
When thus excited it erects not only the dorsal fin, 
but the smaller fins that run down the back to the tip 



292 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

of the tail. Another extraordinary occupant of the 
flats is the ikan tembakul : it lies on the mud like a 
narrow wedge of wood, with a length of about ten 
inches and a base of about two inches. The base of 
the wedge is the tembakul's head, and on the top of 
this square cut head is a pair of gigantic goggle 
eyes which stare at the world in blank surprise. It 
has short, powerful, bandy-legged fins with which it 
" hunches " itself forward over the mud. If, however, 
it is frightened or excited, a sideways stroke of its 
powerful tail sends it in flying leaps on its way. It 
swims in the water, too, in a weird manner, with its 
misshapen head and monstrous eyes high above the 
surface. It moves slowly and deliberately, but if 
startled rushes forward with more than half of its 
body out of water, and then suddenly bobs its head 
under the surface and disappears from view. 

" Quick, quick, fire." 

A crocodile we had not seen was rushing down the 
bank some twenty-five yards ahead of us. I fired, and 
the first bullet broke its spine and knocked it on to 
its side, but only stopped it for a second. It quickly 
righted itself, and with its two fore-feet continued to 
claw its way towards the water. The second bullet 
hit it in the shoulder, but did not stop it. By the 
time that I had reloaded the canoe had dashed up 
alongside the crocodile, whose dying struggles had 
brought it to within a few feet of the water. With 
marvellous quickness and dexterity Manap dropped 
his paddle, picked up a rope noose and slipped it over 
the crocodile's head. The brute was now half in the 



CROCODILE SHOOTING. 293 

stream, and though it was to all intents dead it 
continued blindly to struggle towards the water. It 
made no effort to bite or to use its powerful tail, its 
one idea being to reach its natural element. " Take 
the paddle and strike it on the body. Don't fire." I 
dropped the rifle and hit the brute over the body and 
head until the struggles ceased, and, save for muscular 
contractions that rippled over its skin, it lay still. 

It was a small brute, between six and seven feet 
long, and leaving it for the launch to pick up we 
paddled on. The next crocodile we saw was a little 
creature, not more than two feet long, that was learn- 
ing to bask like its elders. Both my bullets flew over 
its back, and it escaped in safety. 

" Do you see the patch of lalang grass by the point 
in front of us ? Last year I found a crocodile's nest 
there : three-and-sixty eggs there were in it, and the 
clerk at the police station gave me ten cents apiece 
for them. Six dollars and thirty cents I got, but one 
does not find a nest every day. You do not know 
how a crocodile makes its nest ? The mother selects 
a spot, open to the sun, on some dry sandy soil; 
often, as in the case of yonder nest, it is in a patch 
of lalang grass, often in the piai fern. She collects 
grass and dry fern in her mouth, and heaps them 
up until she has formed a pile as broad as three 
men can stretch from finger-tip to finger-tip, and in 
height midway between a man's knee and his hip. 
In this nest she lays fifty or sixty eggs, and covers 
them over with dry grass. She then makes two 
wallows by the nest, one on the side by the rising 
sun, the other towards the setting sun, and prepares 



294 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

to guard the nest against all possible enemies. Of 
these the worst is he who ought to give her most 
assistance : the male crocodile not only does not 
help her in collecting the grass and making the two 
wallows, but if not repelled by her will destroy the 
nest and eat the eggs. A tiger, too, loves crocodiles' 
eggs as he does turtles' eggs, and against him also 
the mother crocodile has continually to be on her 
guard. She sometimes will even face a man, barking 
and showing her teeth at him like a savage dog. 1 
She allows the sun to hatch out the eggs, as the 
Chinese do with ducks' eggs. Ah, she is very 
clever ! as the Malays say, she has ' a long mind ' ; 
for should the day be cloudy and the sun's power 
be weak, she removes the covering of grass from the 
eggs, and at night-time, or when the rain falls, she 
replaces it. And if it is a hot day, not only are 
the eggs covered, but with her tail she sprinkles 
water from the wallows over the eggs. Yes, truly, 
she has a very 'long mind.' And the reason that 
she makes her wallows to eastward and to westward 
of the nest is in order that she may be able to inter- 
pose her body, if the day should be too hot, between 
the nest and the rays of the morning sun and of the 
afternoon sun. No, I myself have not seen all this, 
but I have seen many nests with their wallows, and 
what I have said as to the rest is what men who 
know about these things have told to me. And they 

1 Is it not possible that the Dragon killed by St George was a 
crocodile; that was thus defending her nest ? Marco Polo gives an 
excellent and accurate account of the crocodiles of Southern China, 
and calls them dracones. 



CROCODILE SHOOTING. 295 

say, furthermore, that when the eggs are hatched out 
all the little animals that run towards the water 
become buaia, the crocodile, whilst those that run 
towards the land become biaua, the iguana. But I 
do not believe that : it is a story we tell our children 
just as our fathers told it to us." 

" Ha ! listen to that." 

A magnificent sea-eagle, white and grey, and re- 
splendent in the sun, sitting on the topmost branch 
of a dead tree, where all might see him, had uttered 
two clear high notes. His ordinary call is like the 
mewing of a cat, but these two notes, " Hoo " " Hoo," 
rang out like a bugle-call. 

"That means that at the river -mouth the tide 
has turned, and that now it is lunga pasang 'the 
flower of the rising tide.' The sea-eagle is the king 
of all the birds in the forest, and he tells them all 
of the turn of the tide. With the rising tide the 
fish will come in from the sea, and the crocodiles 
will soon wake up and return to the water to seek 
their food. But there on the bank is one still 
asleep." 

It was an animal some eight feet long, and it lay 
sound asleep with that ludicrously amiable smile at 
the corners of its mouth that is far more charac- 
teristic of a crocodile than are any tears. It is 
impossible to imagine tears in such an eye : a lifeless 
snaky yellow, with a narrow black slit down its 
centre, and devoid of every feeling but that of a 
bitter frozen hatred of every living creature. When 
the eyes are closed one can see in the animal's smile 



296 IN MALAY FORESTS. 

a trace of the creature that was once the happy inno- 
cent plaything of the Prophet's daughter. But when 
the eyelids open the only expression is that of eter- 
nal rancour and eternal resentment of her blighting 
curse. 1 

The sleeping crocodile allowed us to approach 
within easy distance, and I was able to kill it on 
the spot. We did not see another for some time, 
and then I only got a difficult shot, which I missed. 
The tide was now running in fast, and in more than 
one place there were some tracks to show where a 
crocodile had returned to the water. 

It was time to stop, and in answer to a signal the 
launch steamed up alongside and took us on board. 
We had done fairly well, and the three crocodiles 
represented a total length of twenty-four feet. The 
Government pays a reward of twenty -five cents a 
foot, and as this was Manap's perquisite, the 
morning's work meant six dollars to him, or about 
the cost of the living of himself and his family for 
a month. 

While lunch was being prepared I stood in the 
bows of the launch and took in all that I could of 
the scene I have attempted to describe : the colours 
of the water, of the mud, and of the mangroves ; the 
varied multitude of the birds, the fishes, and the crabs 
that crowded the foreground. In a few minutes we 
came to a bend of the stream and the sea lay in 
front of us, a broad expanse of blue, with waves all 
laughing in the sun and twinkling into golden 

1 The Malay story of the creation of the first crocodile is told on 
page 67. 



CROCODILE SHOOTING. 297 

dimples ; the breath of the south - west monsoon 
blew in fresh and salt from over Sumatra and the 
ocean beyond, and the little launch with her pro- 
peller racing at full speed left the narrow discoloured 
waters of the mangrove swamps and breasted the 
incoming tide and freshening breeze, and headed for 
the open sea. 



APPENDIX. 



THE PA WANG. 

WHEN a man, and more especially when a nation, is 
converted, it is not a question of the exchange of one 
religion for another. The new belief forms a stratum 
that covers, more or less deeply, the old one. The 
teachers of the new beliefs refer, with pity or contempt, 
to the convert's old beliefs as his superstitions some- 
thing, they say, that stands upon his religion ; and 
thereby go as far wrong as it is possible to do, inasmuch 
as the truth, which they fail to see or refuse to admit, 
is that the things which they term a superstition are 
really a substratum. 

When a nation accepts a third religion, the three 
strata of beliefs may sometimes be discerned; and of 
this formation, if I may so call it, an excellent example 
is found in the Malays of the Malay Peninsula. Until 
perhaps six or seven hundred years ago they were nature- 
and spirit - worshippers, holding beliefs very similar to 
those of the Dyaks of Borneo at the present day. Then 
a wave of Hinduism swept down from India over Sumatra 
and Java. It reached the Malay Peninsula, but with 
such greatly diminished force that its traces there are 
but faintly discernible ; whereas it has left its mark 
deeply and permanently in Java, and still survives in 



APPENDIX. 299 

the islands of Bali and Lombok on the Javanese coast. 
A few centuries later a far greater wave of religion 
caine surging down from India over the same course : 
Muhammadanism, which had invaded India from the 
North - West in the eleventh century, reached Java, 
Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula about the fifteenth 
century. 

The Malays of the Peninsula became ready converts, 
and are now without an exception followers of the Prophet 
decidedly unorthodox in many ways, it is true, but 
unshakable in their adherence to what they consider to 
be the essentials of their religion; recognising the claim 
of the " Law of the Custom," the Hukum Adat, the 
traditions of many centuries of paganism and Hinduism, 
on the one hand, and on the other hand the often 
conflicting claim of the " Law of the Prophet," the Hukum 
Shara, their more recently acquired code; and always 
ready to make a compromise between them. In certain 
parts of the Malay Peninsula the pre - Muhammadan 
customary laws of debt, land tenure, and inheritance 
have prevailed over the Muhammadan code, and have 
recently in some instances been perpetuated by judicial 
decisions and by statutes. 

It is often said that the Malay of the Peninsula is a 
bad Muhammadan, because he has retained so much of 
his pre-Muhammadan beliefs. The truth more really is 
that he is an imperfect Muhammadan : he certainly is 
not an indifferent one, for even his severest critics 
will admit that he would die rather than willingly do 
what he believes to be forbidden. If he is told that 
his habitual omission to say the five daily prayers, for 
instance, will ensure his eternal damnation, he will be 
greatly distressed to hear it; but he will probably con- 
tend that this is not the law as he knows it, and thence 
proceed to try to persuade his critic, as he has persuaded 
himself, that a man should be judged not by the law, 
but by the law as he knows it. 

Of the old pagan religion the pawang, or sorcerer, is 



300 APPENDIX. 

the priest. He still survives in nearly every village in 
the Malay Peninsula, and is the counterpart of the manang 
of Borneo and shaman of the Mongolian tribes. Although 
a sorcerer, he is, like every one else in the community, a 
Muhammadan ; and he defends himself, his practices, and 
beliefs from the attacks of the orthodox followers of the 
Prophet by claiming for his craft the sanction of the adat, 
the immemorial custom of the country. 

The following beliefs are represented by the pawangs, 
and survive to-day from the old pagan times. A belief 

(i) in certain great and powerful spirits called the Jin 

TanaJi and Jin Laut, the " Spirits of the Earth " 

and the " Spirits of the Sea " ; 
(ii) in innumerable lesser spirits of the mountains, rivers, 

and forests, and even of particular rocks, rapids, 

and trees; 
(iii) in familiar spirits created by the pawangs, and 

ordered to obey their commands; 
(iv) in the animistic properties of plants and trees (of 

this idea, the best known example is the annual 

ceremony of tending the soul of the rice crops) ; 
(v) in were-tigers ; 
(vi) in invisible folk ; 
(vii) in death-avenging influences ; 
(viii) in a spectral huntsman ; 
(ix) in innumerable spooks, goblins, bogeys, and weird 

apparitions of various kinds. 

There still survives a pagan tradition of the creation of 
the world by the first pawang and a bird. This most 
extraordinary story is not considered in any way incom- 
patible with the Muhammadan tradition of the creation, 
with which the Malays are of course perfectly familiar. 

During the period of Hinduism the pawangs borrowed 
largely from the Hindu mythology. The very word for 
the spells or charms which they repeat to propitiate the 
spirits is pure Sanskrit (mantra) ; and in the mantras there 
still survive to this day the names of Siva, Vishnu, Eama, 



APPENDIX. 301 

/ 

Ganesha, Hanuman, and Arjuna. There are memories of 
heavenly creatures like the dewa, dewata, chandra, and 
Hdadari ; of demons like the Indian bhuts, which the 
Malays call Bota ; of ogres (gergasi), and of giants 
(rakscLsci). There has been a tendency which was very 
natural perhaps to degrade the Hindu gods to the 
level of mere forest spirits. 

"When Muhammadanism swept Hinduism away before 
it, the pawang turned eagerly to the new religion to 
borrow what he could. The only spirits lower than the 
angels of which the Koran admits the existence are the 
Genii (Jin) and Fairies (Peri), some of whom are said 
to be believers and some unbelievers. They are imagined 
to be created of pure fire, to be of both sexes, to propagate 
their species, and to eat and drink. They were at once 
accepted and introduced into the mantras. So also were 
the archangels Jibrail (Gabriel), Mikail (Michael), Azrael, 
and Israfil. One is not surprised to find their names ; but 
one may own to a feeling of awe at finding in the mouth 
of a pawang in the Malay Peninsula the name of Azazel, 
the pre-Mosaic demon of the wilderness, to whom the 
scapegoats of Leviticus xvi. were sent as an offering. 1 

Actuated, perhaps, by a desire to show that their old 
beliefs were in no way incompatible with their new 
religion, the pawangs also freely introduced the Muham- 
madan Prophets into their mantras. Nabi Noh (Noah, 
who is supposed to have charge of all the plants and 
trees), Nabi Sleman (Solomon, who rules over all the 
animals), Nabi Musa (Moses), and Nabi Muhammad him- 
self, are frequently invoked ; and the mantras often begin 
with the words, " In the name of Allah, the All-Com- 
passionate and All- Merciful," and end with the words, 
" There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the 
Prophet of Allah." 

But this is not the whole of the borrowings of the 
pawangs. The Siamese, who are the neighbours of the 

1 Tt is only right to say that D'Herbelot gives another account of 
Azazel in his ' Bibliotheque Orientale.' 



302 APPENDIX. 

Malays on the north of the Peninsula, were, like the 
Malays, at first nature- and spirit - worshippers. When 
they were converted to Buddhism their old beliefs found 
in the new religion an attitude so gently tolerant, and 
even so kindly disposed, that the old beliefs continued 
to flourish to an extent impossible under Muhammad's 
stern creed of " There is no God but Allah." The Siamese 
are more skilled than the Malays in the use of charms, 
spells, and herbs ; and the Malays so readily admit the 
superiority, that in many a Malay village one may find 
an old Siamese man who has established himself there 
as the local pawang. Neither the Malays nor the Siamese, 
the Muhammadans nor the Buddhists, seem to consider 
the position in any way remarkable : more or less un- 
consciously they recognise the fact that they meet on 
common ground in the beliefs that both nations shared 
before their religions took them along different paths. As 
an example of the extent to which the Malay pawangs 
are indebted to the Siamese, I may refer to an article 
in Journal No. 45 of the .Royal Asiatic Society (Straits 
Branch), to which I have contributed an account of the 
mantras used by the Malays in catching wild elephants. 
The charms have been in use for many generations, and 
the Malays have little knowledge of their origin other 
than that there is a tradition that it is Siamese. The 
language is certainly not Malay, and is either some 
exceedingly corrupt form of Siamese, or else some tongue 
that is no longer known in the Peninsula. The influence 
of the Siamese pawangs is also seen in the frequent 
reference in the mantras to the Maha Rishi, the Great 
Sages of Buddhism. 

Such, then, are the sources from which the pawang 
has derived his present knowledge of charms, spells, and 
medicines. His services are requisitioned at every birth 
and death (not at a wedding, a social contract of com- 
paratively modern origin and distinctly religious aspect, 
where the kathis and imaums will not brook his inter- 
ference), at every sowing and reaping of the rice -crop, 



APPENDIX. 303 

( 

and at every accident or illness. The opening of a tin- 
mine, the construction of a dam, or the erection of a 
fishing-stake, always call for his attendance. 

The functions of a pawang are roughly divided into 
spirit -raising and spirit -propitiation. Spirit -raising, the 
coercion of spirits, is known by the Malays as ber-hantu. 
It is the pure undiluted shamanism, of the Mongolians ; 
and upon the exercise of the power every Malay looks 
with considerable dread, and even the least orthodox 
shakes his head when it is mentioned. It is seldom at- 
tempted, and every year is becoming more rare. I have 
only twice attended a seance, once on the occasion de- 
scribed in "The Pinjlh Rhino," and once when a chief 
was about to perform the long and dangerous pilgrimage 
to Mecca (its use on such an occasion shows how deeply 
rooted the belief is), and his relatives were anxious to know 
what the future might have in store for him. On both 
occasions I particularly noticed that the pawang and the 
audience, for no other reason than that they knew that 
they were about to do something which the law of 
Muhammad held to be wrong, made a special point of 
commencing the proceedings with a recitation from the 
Koran. Spirit-propitiation is considered a far less serious 
matter, the reason perhaps being that the offering of small 
gifts, such as eggs, limes, or a bowl of rice, and the repe- 
tition of mantras, is a simple and apparently innocuous 
thing, very different from participation in the wild scenes 
where in successive ravings, ecstasies, and collapses the 
pawangs are possessed of demons. 

The collection of mantras given in the article " A Deer- 
Drive " is a fair example of a pawang's lore. A similar 
set, with appropriate ceremonies and due offerings, would 
be used at the opening of a new clearing in the forest or 
any similar enterprise. In the case of sickness, the pawang 
adds a potion or poultice, or perhaps a pill of paper upon 
which weird figures have been traced. Often he will 
insist upon the person or persons interested keeping some 
peculiar observances which generally take the form of 



304 APPENDIX. 

something not to be done rather than something to be 
done. This is known as pantang, and corresponds to the 
well known tapu or taboo. 

The Malays believe that the power lies in the mantra 
itself, not in the man that repeats it. The Hindus have 
the same idea, but amongst them the use of the mantras 
is confined to the Brahmins : they have a proverb 

" The earth is subject to the gods : 
The gods are subject to the mantras : 
The mantras are subject to the Brahmins : 
Therefore the earth is subject to the Brahmins." 

The Malays admit of no caste restrictions ; and the pawang 
from whom I learnt the mantras set forth in the article 
" Tuba Fishing " assured me that, when I had committed 
them to memory, they would be as effectual in my mouth 
as they were in his own. 

The pawangs (like the manangs of Borneo) are not a 
hereditary class, though, as one would expect, a son often 
follows in his father's footsteps in the same way that in 
England a gamekeeper or a sexton succeeds his father. 
Any man who has shown a little aptitude may learn from 
a pawang all that he has to teach, if the application for 
tuition is made with due deference and in proper form. 
There are certain (often many) observances to be kept, and 
some services to be rendered ; and there is a recognised fee, 
so many lengths of cloth, so many measures of rice, and 
so many pieces of silver. The fact that the pawang's 
craft does not necessarily descend from father to son is 
interesting, for among most of the Mongolian tribes the 
shaman priesthood is strictly hereditary. There, in fact, 
so much is the profession confined to certain families that 
the shaman priests pretend to derive their power from 
the spirits of their deceased ancestors. Such an idea is 
unknown to the Malay. 

When a man's skill has made him famous, the word 
pawang is prefixed to his name as a title; and even in 
official documents, such as the grants issued by the Land 



APPENDIX. 305 

Offices, one may find such names as Pawang Duhamat or 
Pawang Glam. 

Only a small percentage of the pawangs attempt spirit- 
raising. The majority confine themselves to the mantras, 
offerings, and medicaments. They specialise very consider- 
ably. One man will devote himself to the lore regarding 
the spirits and influences connected with tin-mines ; another 
to those attendant on rubber-collecting or camphor-hunt- 
ing expeditions ; while a third, in whose special care the 
rice-fields or fishing-stakes may be, will probably be en- 
tirely ignorant of the charms and spells used by the other 
two men. 

The pawangs are dying out. It is not that the civilisa- 
tion of British rule exercises a direct influence upon the 
native belief in this respect, but that this civilisation is 
making the inhabitant of the Peninsula more of a Muham- 
madan and less of a Malay. The more he learns of his 
religion the more he realises how impossible is the com- 
promise that has been allowed to exist for the last four or 
five centuries between his pre-Muhammadan beliefs and 
the precepts of the Prophet. 

He has only to open his Koran, and turn to the seventy- 
second chapter, which is entitled the Genii, to find a severe 
condemnation of those who, in fear of any spirits or in 
the hope of propitiating them or of appeasing their wrath, 
make any application or petition to such spirits instead of 
making their prayer to Allah, who alone is God, and to 
whom all things in heaven and earth are subject. No 
hair-splitting, no quibble of the wiliest of pawangs, can 
evade this uncompromising denunciation ; and the alien 
Muhammadans, whom the rapid development of the Malay 
Peninsula has brought into the country within the last 
ten or fifteen years, are not slow to press home the charge 
of apostasy against the pawang. The Javanese and 
Sumatra -men, earnest, narrow-minded followers of the 
law, the Indians, who are even more strict, and the 
Arabs, who are the sternest of bigots, have no sympathy 
for the pawang ; they have nothing in their blood that 

u 



306 APPENDIX. 

cries out for the old aboriginal beliefs : and in the mosques 
and village deliberations, at all times and at all seasons, 
they denounce him and all his works. The Malays, too, 
perform the pilgrimage to Mecca in larger numbers every 
year, and each man upon his return, when he has donned 
the haji's turban and frock, feels constrained to conform 
to a stricter observance of the faith, and therefore to frown 
upon the poor pawang as savouring unduly of heathendom. 
It is the alien Muhammadan immigration, not British 
civilisation, that is the enemy of the pawang ; and as 
the pawangs of the present generation, who still hold 
their position by their personal influence, die off, there 
will, except in the more remote districts and villages, 
probably be but few men of the younger generation to 
take their place. 



THE END 



PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. 



Catalogue 
of 

Messrs Blackwood & Sons' 
Publications 



PERIODS OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE: A Complete and 

CONTINUOUS HISTORY OF THK SUBJECT. Edited by PBOI-BSBOR SAINTS- 
BURY. In 12 crown Svo vols., each 5s. net. 

I. THE DARK AGES. By Professor W. P. KBR. 
II. THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE AND THE RISE OF 
ALLEGORY. (12rn AND 13ra CENTURIES.) By GEORGE SAINTS- 
BURY, M.A., Hon. LL.D., Aberdeen, Professor of Rhetoric and 
English Literature in Edinburgh University. 

III. THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. By F. J. SNBLL. 

IV. THE TRANSITION PERIOD. By Prof. G. GREGORY SMITH. 
V. THE EARLIER RENAISSANCE. By THE EDITOR. 

VI. THE LATER RENAISSANCE. By DAVID HAHKAY. 
VII. THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

By Prof. H. J. C. GRIERSON. 

VIII. THE AUGUSTAN AGES. By OLIVER ELTON. 
IX. THE MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By J. H. MILLAR. 
XL THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH. By T. S. OMOND. 

.The other Volumes are ; 

X. THE ROMANTIC REVOLT I XII. THE LATER NINETEENTH 

Prof. 0. E. Vaughan. | CENTURY The Editor. 



PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS 

Edited by WILLIAM KNIGHT, 
in the University of St Andrews. 

DESCARTES, .... Prof. Mahaffy. 
BUTLER .... Rev. W. L. Collins. 
BERKELEY, . . Prof. Campbell Eraser. 

FICHTB, Prof. Adamson. 

KANT, Prof. Wallace. 

HAMILTON, Prof. Veitch. 

HEGEL, .... The Master of Balliol. 
LEIBNIZ, . . . John Theodore Men. 



FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy 
Re-issue in Shitting Volumes net. 

Vico, Prof. Flint. 

HOBBES, . . . Prof. Groom Robertson. 

HUME, Prof. Knight. 

SPINOZA, Principal Caird. 

BACON : Part I Prof. Nichol. 

BACON : Part II Prof. Nichol. 

LOC*E, .... Prol. Campbell Fraser. 



FOREIGN CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS. Edited by 

Mrs OLIPHANT. CHBAP RE-ISSUE. In limp cloth, tcap. Svo, price Is. 
each net. 



DANTE, by the Editor. VOLTAIRE, 
by General Sir B. B. Hamley, K.C.B. 
PASCAL, by Principal Tulloch. PE- 
TRARCH, by Henry Reeve, C.B. GOETHE, 
by A. Hayward, Q.C. MOLIERE, by the 
Editor and F. Tarver, M.A. MONTAIGNE, 
by Rev. W. L. Collins. RABELAIS, by Sir 
Walter Besant. CALDBRON, by E. J. 
FTaaell. SAINT SIMON, by C. W. Collins. 



CERVANTES, by the Editor. OORNBILLE 
AND RACINE, by Henry M. Trollope. 
MADAME DE SEVIONE, by Miss Thackeray. 

LA FONTAINE, AND OTHER FRENCH 
FABULISTS, by Rev. W. Lucas Collins, 
M.A. SCHILLER, by James Sime, M.A. 

TASSO, by E. J. Hasell. ROUSSEAU 
by Henry Grey Graham. ALFRED 
MUSSET, by C, F. Oliphant. 



ANCIENT CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS. Edited by 

the RBV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. CHBAP RB-IBSTJE. In limp cloth, 
fcap. Svo, price Is. each net. 

Contents of the Serie*. HOMER : ILIAD, 
by the Editor. HOMER : ODYSSEY, by the 
Editor. HERODOTUS, by G. C. Swayne. 
C*AR, by Anthony Trollope. VIRGIL, by 
tho Editor. HORACE, by Sir Theodore 
Martin. JBSCHYLUS, by Bishop Copleston. 
XBNOPHON, by Sir Alex. Grant. CICERO, 
by the Editor. SOPHOCLES, by C. W. Col- 
lins. PLINY, by Rev. A. Church and W. J. 
Brodribb. EURIPIDES, by W. B. Donne. 
Jj VENAL, by E. Walford. ARISTOPHANES, 
by the Editor. -HHSIOD AND THEOGNIS, by 



J. Davies. PLAUTUS AND TERENCE, by the 
Editor. TACITUS, by W. B. Donne. 
LUCIAN, by the Editor. PLATO, by C. W. 
Collins. GREEK ANTHOLOGY, by Lord 
Neaves. LIVY, by the Editor. OVID, by 
Rev. A. Church. CATULLUS. TIBULLUS, 
AND PROPERTIUS, by J. Davies. DEMOS- 
THEMES, by W. J. Brodribb. ARISTOTLE, 
by Sir Alex. Grant. THUCYDIDKS, by the 
Editor. LUCRETIUS, by W. H. Malloek,-- 
PINDAB, by ROT. F. D. MorJc? 



CATALOGUE 

OF 

HE8SB8 BLACKWOOD & SONS' 
PUBLICATIONS 



ACTA SANCTORUM H1BERNDE ; Ex Codice Salmantkensi. 

Nunc primum integre edita opera CABOLI DB SMEDT et JOSEPHI DE BACKER, e 
Soc. Jesn, Hagiographorum Bollandianorum ; Auctore et Sumptus Largiente 
JOANNE PATBICIO MAKCHIONE BOTHAK. In One handsome 4to Volume, bound IB 
half roxburghe, 2, 2s. ; In paper cover, 31s. 6d. 

ADAMSON. The Development of Modern Philosophy. With 

other Lectures and Essays. By ROBERT ADAMSON, LL.D., late Professor of 
Logic in the University of Glasgow. Edited by Professor W. R. SORLEY, Uni- 
versity of Cambridge. In 2 vols. demy 8vo, 18s. net 

AIRMAN. Manures and the Principles of Manuring. By C. M. 

AIKMAN, D.Sc., F,R.8.E M &c., formerly Professor of Chemistry, Olasgov 
Veterinary Onllege, and Examiner !n Chemistry, University of Glasgow, Ac. 
Second Impression. Groiini 8vo, 6s. 6d. 

Farmyard Manure : Its Nature, Composition, ai)d Treatment. 

Grown 8vo, Is. 6d. 

ALISON. 

History of Europe. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart.. D.C.L. 

1. From the Commencement of the French Revolution to 

the Battle of Waterloo. 

LIBRARY EDITION, 14 vols., with Portraits. Demy Ovo, 18, lOfe 
ANOTHER EDITION, in 20 vols. crown 8vo, 6. 
PEOPLE'S EDITION. 13 vols. crown 8vo, 2, 11s. 

2. Continuation to the Accession of Louis Napoleon. 

LIBRARY EDITION, 8 vols. 8vo, 6, 7s. 6d. 
PEOPLE'S EDITION, 8 vols, crown 8vo. 84s. 

Epitome of Alison's History of Europe. Thirtieth Thou- 
sand, 7s. 6d. 
Atlae to Alison's History of Europe, By A. Keith Johnston. 

LIBRARY EDITION, demy 4to, 3, 8s. 
PEOPLE'S EDITION, 81s. 6d. 

ANCIENT CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS. Edited 

by Rev. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. Price ?.s. each net. For List of Vols. tcep. 2. 

ANDERSON. Matriculation Roll of St Andrews University. 

Edited by J. MAITLANB ANDERSON In 1 vol. demy 8vo, 18s. net. 

ANNALIST. Musings without Method : A Record of 1900 and 

1901. By ANNALIST. Large crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 

ANONYMOUS. A Lodge in the Wilderness. Short demy. 
ARMYTAGE. Maids of Honour. By A. J. GREEN-ABMYTAGE. 

Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d. net. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 



ATKINSON. Local Government in Scotland. By MABEL 

ATKINSON, M.A. In 1 vol. demy 8vo, 5s. net. 

AYTOUN. 

Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, and other Poems. By W. 

EDMONDSTOUNB AYTOUN, D.G.L., Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettros in the 
University of Edinburgh. New Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. fid, 
CHEAP EDITION. Is. Cloth, Is. 3d. 

An Illustrated Edition of the Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers 

From designs by Sir NOEL PATON. Cheaper Edition. Small 4to, 10s. 6d. 



BAKER. A Palace of Dreams and other Verse. By ADA 

BARTEICK BAKER. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

BANKS. The Ethics of Work and Wealth. By D. C. BANKS. 

Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

BARBOUR. Thoughts from the Writings of R. W. BARBOUR. 

Pott 8vo, limp leather, 2s. 6d. net. 

BARCLAY. A New Theory of Organic Evolution. By JAMES 

W. BARCLAY. In 1 vol. crown 8vo, 3s. 60. net. 

BARRINGTON. 

The King's Fool. By MICHAEL BARRINGTON. Crown 8vo, Gs. 
The Reminiscences of Sir Barrington Beaumont, Bart. 

A Novel. Crown Svo, 6s. 

BARTLETT. The Siege and Capitulation of Port Arthur. 

By E. ASHMEAD BARTLETT. Demy Svo, 21s. net. 

BELL. My Strange Pets, and other Memories of Country Life. 

By RICHARD BELL of Castle O'er. Demy Svo, 6s. net. 

BELLESHEIM. History of the Catholic Church of Scotland. 

From the Introduction of Christianity to the Present Day. By ALPHONS BEL- 
LicsHBiM, D.D., Canon ol Aix-la-Chapelle. Translated, with Notes and Additions, 
by D. OSWALD HUNTBR BLAIR, O.S.B., Monk of Fort Augustus. Cheap Edition. 
Complete to 4 vols. deniy Svo, with Maps. Prir.e 21s. net. 

BLACK. The Scots Churches in England. By KENNETH 

MACLEOD BLACK. Crown Svo, 5s. net. 

BLACKBURN. 

A Burgher Quixote. By DOUGLAS BLACKBURN, Author of 

1 Prinsloo of Prinsloosdorp.' Second Impression. With Frontispiece. Crown 
8vo, 6s. 

Richard Hartley : Prospector. Crown Svo, 6s. 

BLACKWOOD. 

Annals of a Publishing Honse. William Blackwood and his 

Sons ; Their Magazine and Friends. By Mrs OLIPHANT. With Four Portraits. 
Third Edition. Demy Svo. Vols. I. and II. 2, 2s. 

Annals of a Publishing House. Vol. III. John Blackwood. 

By his Daughter Mrs BLACKWOOD PORTER. With 2 Portraits andView of Strath- 
tyrum. Demy Svo, 21s. 

Blackwood's Magazine, from Commencement in 1817 to 

June 1906. Nos. 1 to 108S, forming 179 Volumes. 

Tales from Blackwood. First Series. Price One Shilling each 

in Paper Cover. Sold separately at all Railway Bookstalls. 

They may also be had bound in 12 vols., cloth, 18s. Half calf, richly gilt, 30s. 
Or the 12 vols. in 6, roxburghe, 21s. Half red morocco, 28s. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 



BLACKWOOD. 

Tales from Blackwood. Second Series. Complete in Twenty- 

four Shilling Parts. Handsomely bound in 12 vols., cloth, 30s. in leather back, 
roxburghe style, 37s. 6d. Half calf, gilt, 52s. 6d. Half morocco, 55s. 

Tales from Blackwood. Third Series. Complete in Twelve 

Shilling Parts. Handsomely bound in 6 vols., cloth, 15s.; and in 12 vols. cloth, 
18s. The 6 vols. in roxburghe 21s. Half calf, 25s. Half morocco, 28s. 

Travel, Adventure, and Sport. From * Blackwood's Magazine. 

Uniform with 'Tales from Blackwood. 1 In Twelve Parts, each price Is. Hand- 
somely bound in 6 vols., cloth, 15a. And in half calf. 25a. 

New Educational Series. See separate Educational Catalogue. 



New Uniform Series of Novels (Copyright). 

Grown 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. each. Now ready : 



WENDERHOLMB. By P. G. Hamerton. 
THE STORY or MARGREDEL. By D. Storrar 

Meldrum. 

Miss MARJORIBANKS. By Mrs Oliphant. 
THE PERPETUAL OTTRATI, and THE RECTOR 

By the Same. 
SALEM OHAPEL, and THE DOCTOR'S FAMILY. 

By the Same. 

A SENSITIVE PLANT. By B. D. Gerard. 
LADY LEE'S WIDOWHOOD. By General Sir 

B. B. Hamley. 
KATIE STEWART, and other Stories. By Mrs 

Oliphant. 

VALENTINE AND HIS BROTHER. By the Same. 
3oN8 AND DAUGHTERS. By the Same. 



MARMORNE. By P. G. Hamerton. 

BEATA. By B. D. Gerard. 

BK.GGAR MY NEIGHBOUR. By the Same. 

THE WATERS OF HERCULES. By the Same. 

PAIR TO SEE. By L. W. M. Lockhart. 

MINE is THINE. By the Same. 

DOUBLES AND QUITS. By the Same. 

ALTIORA PETO. By Laurence Oliphant. 

PICCADILLY. By the Same. With Illustra- 
tions. 

LADY BABY. By D. Gerard. 

THE BLACKSMITH OF VOE. By Paul Gushing. 

MY TRIVIAL LIFE AND MISFORTUNE. By A 
Plain Woman. 

POOR NELLIF, By the Sama. 



Standard Novels. Uniform in size and binding. 

complete in one Volume. 

FLORIN SERIES, Illustrated Boards. Bound tn Cloth, 2s. Cd. 



Each 



TOM CRINGLE'S LOG. By Michael Scott. 
THE CRUISE OF THE MIDGE. By the Same. 
CYRIL THORNTON. By Captain Hamilton. 
ANNALS OF THE PARISH. By John Gait. 
THE PROVOST, &c By the Same. 
SIR ANDREW WYLIE. By the Same 
THE ENTAIL. By the Same. 
Miss MOLLY. By Beatrice May Butt. 
REGINALD DALTON. By J. G. Lockhart. 



PEN OWEN. By Dean Hook. 

ADAM BLAIR. By J. G. Lockhart. 

LADY LEE'S WIDOWHOOD. By General Sir K. 

B. Hamley. 

SALEM CHAPEL. By Mrs Oliphant. 
THE PERPETUAL CURATE. By the Same. 
Miss MARJORIBANXS. By the Same. 
JOHN : A Love Story, By the Same. 



SHILLING SERIES, Illustrated Cover. Bound in Cloth, Is. 8d. 



THE HECTOR, and THE DOCTOR'S FAMILY. 

By Mrs Oliphant. 
THE LIFE OF MANSI* WAUOH. By D. M. 

Moir 
PENINSULAR SCENES AND SKETCHES. By 

F. Hardman. 



SIP. FRIZZLE PUMPKIN, NIGHTS AT MESS, 

&c. 

THE SUBALTERN. 

LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. By G. F. Ruxton. 
VALERIUS: A Roman Story. By J. G. 

Lockhart. 



BON GAULTIER'S BOOK OF BALLADS. A new Edition, 

with Autobiographical Introduction by Sir THEODORE MARTIN, K.C.B. With 
Illustrations by Doyle, Leech, and Crowquill. Small quarto, 5s. net. 

BOWHILL. Questions and Answers in the Theory and Practice 

of Military Topography. By Major J. H. BOWHILL. Crown 8vo, 4a. 6d. net. 
Portfolio containing 34 working plans and diagrams, 3s. 6d. net. 

BROOKS. Daughters of Desperation. By HILDEGARD BROOKS. 

Small crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 



BRUCE. Life of John Collingwood Bruce. By Right Hon. Sir 

GAINSFOBD BRUCE. Demy Svo, 10s. 6d. net;. 

BRUCE. Our Heritage: Individual, Social, and Religious. By 

W. 8. BRUCE, D.D., Croall Lecturer lor 1903. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. net. 

BUCHAN. The First Things. Studies in the Embryology of 

Religion and Natural Theology. By Rev. JOHN BUCHAN, John Knox Church , 
Glasgow. Crown Svo, 5s. 

BUCHAN. 

The African Colony : Studies in the Reconstruction. By JOHN 

BUCHAN. 1 vol. demy Svo, 15s. net. 

The Watcher by the Threshold, and other Tales. Second Im- 
pression. Crown Svo, 6s. 

BURBIDGE. 

Domestic Floriculture, Window Gardening, and Floral Decora- 
tions. Being Practical Directions for the Propagation, Culture, and Arrangement 
of Plants and Flowers as Domestic Ornaments. By P. W. BUKBIDGK. Second 
Edition. Crown Svo, with numerous Illustrations, 7. 6d. 

BURTON. 

The History o2 Scotland : From Agricola's Invasion to the 

Extinction of the last Jacobite Insurrection. By JOHN HILL BURTON, D.C.L., 
Historiographer-Royal for Scotland Cheaper Edition, In 8 vols. Crown Svo, 
2s. 6d. net each. Being issued in Monthly volumes. 

The Book-Hunter. A New Edition, with specially designed 

Title-page and Cover by JOSEPH BROWN. Printed on antique laid paper. Post 
Svo, 3s. 6d. 

The Scot Abroad. Uniform with 'The Book-Hunter.' Post 

Svo, 3s. 6d. 

BUTE. 

The Roman Breviary : Reformed by Order of the Holy 

GEcumenical Council of Trent ; Published by Order of Pope St Pius V. ; and 
Revised by Clement VIII. and Urban VIII. ; together with the Offices since 
granted. Translated out of Latin into English by JOHN, MARQUESS OF BUTE, 
K.T. New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. In 4 vols. crown Svo, and in 1 vol. 
crown 4to. [In the pi-ess. 

The Altus of St Columba. With a Prose Paraphrase and Notes 

By JOHN, MARQUKSH OK BUTE, K.T. In paper ccmir, 2a.. 6d. 

Sermones, Fratris Adse, Ordinis Prsemonstratensis, <fec. 

Twenty-eight Discourses of Adam Scotus of Whithoru, hitherto unpublished ; 
to which is added a Collection of Notes by the same, illustrative of the rule of 
St Augustine. Edited, at the desire of the late MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T., LL.D., 
&c., by WALTER DE GRAY BIRCH, LL.D., F.S.A., of the British Museum, &c. 
Royal 8vo, 25s. net. 

Catalogue of a Collection of Original MSS. formerly belonging 

so the Holy Office of the Inquisition in the Canary Islands. Prepared under the 
direction of the late MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T., LL.D., by WALTER DE GRAY 
BIRCH, LL.D., P.8.A. 2 vols. royal Svo, 3, 3s. net. 

BUTE, MACPKAIL, AND LONSDALK, The Arms of the 

Royal and Parliamentary Burghs oi Scotland. By JOHN, MARQUESS OF BUTE, 
K.T., J. R. N. MACPHAIL, and H. W. LONSDALE. With 131 Engravings OB 
wood, and 11 other Illustrations. Crown 4to. 2, 2s. net. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 



BUTE, STEVENSON, AND LONSDALK The Arms of the 

Baronial and Police Burghs of Scotland. By JOHN, MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T., 
J. H. STHVKNSON, and H. W. LONSDALB. With numerous Illustrations. Crown 
4to, 2, 2s. net. 

BUTT. Miss Molly. By BEATRICE MAY BUTT. Cheap Edition, 2&. 
CAIRD. Sermons. By JOHN CAEBD, D.D., Principal of the 

University of Glasgow. Seventeenth Thousand. Pcap. 8vo, 5s. 

CALDWELL. Schopenhauer's System in its Philosophical Sig- 
nificance (the Shaw Fellowship Lectures, 1893). By Professor WILLIAM CALD- 
WELL, D.Sc., M'Gill University, Montreal. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net. 

CALL WELL. 

The Effect of Maritime Command on Land Campaigns since 

Waterloo. By Lt.-Col. C. E. CALLWILL, B.O.A. With Plans. Post 8vo, 6s. net. 

Tactics of To-day. Sixth Impression. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net. 

Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance : Their Re- 
lations and Interdependence. Demy 8vo, 15s. net. 

CAMPBELL. Balmerino and its Abbey. A Parish History, 

With Notices of the Adjacent District. By JAMES CAMPBELL, D.D., P.8.A. Scot., 
Minister of Balmerino ; Author of ' A History of the Celtic Church in Scotland.' 
A New Edition. With an Appendix of Illustrative Documents, a Map of the 
Parish, and upwards ol 40 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, 30s. net. 

CAREY. 

Monsieur Martin : A Romance of the Great Northern War. 

By WYMGND CAREY. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

For the White Rose. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

"No. 101." Third Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

CARLYLE. A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the 

West. By R. W. CARLYLE, C.I.E., Balliol College, Oxford ; and A. J. CARLYLE, 
M.A., Chaplain and Lecturer (late Fellow) of University College, Oxford. In 3 
vols. demy 8vo. Vol. 1. A History of Political Theory from the Roman Lawyers 
of the Second Century to the Political Writers of the Ninth. By A. J. CABLYLE. 
15s. net. 

"CHASSEUR." A Study of the Russo-Japanese War. By 

"CHASSEUR." Crown 8vo, 6s. net. 

CHESNEY. The Dilemma. By General Sir GEORGE CHESNEY, 

K.C.B. A New Edition. Crown 8-, o, 2s. 

CHURCH SERVICE SOCIETY. 

A Book of Common Order : being Forms of Worship issued 

by the Church Service Society. Seventh Edition, carefully revised. In 1 vol. 
crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. ; French morocco, 5s. Also in 3 vols. crown Svo, 
cloth, 4s. ; French morocco, 6s. 6d. 

Daily Offices for Morning and Evening Prayer throughout 

the Week, drown Svo, 3s. 6d. 

Order of Divine Service for Children. Issued by the Church 

Service Society. With Scottish Hymnal. Cloth, 8d. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 



CLIFFORD. 

Sally : A Study ; and other Tales of the Outskirts. By HUGH 

CLIFFORD, O.M.G. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Bush - Whacking, and other Sketches. Second Impression. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. 

CLODD. Thomas Henry Huxley. "Modern English Writers." 

By EDWARD CLODD. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 

CLOUSTON. 

The Lunatic at Large. By J. STOKER CLOUSTON. Fourth 

Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. CHEAP EDITION, royal 8vo, paper cover, (3d. 

Count Bunker : Being a Sequel to ' The Lunatic at Large. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. 

The Adventures of M. D'Haricot. Second Impression. Crown 

8vo, 6s. CHEAP EDITION, royal 8vo, paper cover, 6d. 

Our Lady's Inn. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
Garmiscath. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

CONNELL. The Young Days of Admiral Qulliam. By 

F. NORREYS CONNELL. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

CONRAD. 

Lord Jim. A Tale. By JOSEPH CONRAD, Author of 'The 

Nigger of the Narcissus,' 'An Outcast of the Islands,' 'Tales of Unrest,' &c. 
Second Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Youth : A Narrative ; and Two other Stories. Second Im- 
pression. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

COOPER. Liturgy of 1637, commonly called Laud's Liturgy. 

Edited by the Rev. Professor COOPER, D.D., Glasgow. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. 

CORNFORD. R. L. Stevenson. "Modern English Writers." 

By L. COPE CORNFORD. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 

COUNTY HISTORIES OF SCOTLAND. In demy 8vo vol- 
umes of about 350 pp. each. With Maps. Price 7s. 6d. net. 

Fife and Kinross. By ^NEAS J. Q. MACKAY, LL.D., Sheriff 

of these Counties. 

Dumfries and Galloway. By Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart., 

M.P. Second Edition. 

Moray and Nairn. By CHARLES RAMPINI, LL.D., Sheriff 

of Dumfries and Galloway. 

Inverness. By J. CAMERON LEES, D.D. 

Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Peebles. By Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS, 

Bart. 

Aberdeen and Banff. By WILLIAM WATT, Editor of Aberdeen 

' Daily Free Press.' 

Perth and Clackmannan. By JOHN CHISHOLM, M. A., Advocate. 

\_ln the press. 

COWELL. Day-Book from ' The Fairie Queene.' By A. COWELL. 

Is. 6d. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 



CRAIK. A Century of Scottish History. From the Days before 

the '45 to those within living Memory. By Sir HENRY CRAIK, K.C.B., M.A. 
(Oxon.), Hon. LL.D. (Glasgow). 2 vols. demy 8vo, 30s. net. 

CRAWFORD. Saracinesca. By F. MARION CRAWFORD, Author 

ot 'Mr Isaacs,' Ac., &c. Crown Svo, 3s. Gd. Also at 6d. 

CROSS. 

Impressions of Dante and of the New World. By J. W. CROSS. 

Post Svo, 6s. 

The Rake's Progress in Finance. Crown 8vo, 2s. net. 

GUMMING. 

Memories. By C. F. GORDON GUMMING. Demy Svo. Illus- 
trated, 20s net. 

At Home in Fiji. Post Svo. Illustrated. Cheap Edition, 6s. 

A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War. Post Svo. Illus- 
trated. Cheap Edition. 6s. 

Fire-Fountains. 2 vols. post Svo. Illustrated, 25s. 

Granite Crags. Post Svo. Illustrated. Cheap Edition. 6s. 

Wanderings in China. Small post Svo. Cheap Edition. 6s. 

DAVIDSON. Herbart's Psychology and Educational Theory. 

By JOHN DAVIDSON. Demy Svo, 5s. net. 

DESCARTES. The Method, Meditations, and Principles of Philo- 
sophy ot Descartes. Translated from the Original French and Latin. With s 
New Introductory Essay, Historical and Critical, on the Cartesian Philosophy. 
By Professor VKITCH, LL.D., Glasgow University. Eleventh Edition. 5s. 6d. 

DILNOT. Scoundrel Mark. By FRANK DILNOT. Crown Svo, 6s. 
DODDS AND MACPHERSON. The Licensing Acts (Scotland) 

Consolidation and Amendment Act, 1903. Annotated by Mr J. M. DODDS, of 
the Scottish Office ; Joint-Editor of the ' Parish Council Guide for Scotland,' and 
Mr EWAN MACPHERSON, Advocate, Legal Secretary to the Lord Advocate. In 
1 vol. crown Svo, 5s. net. 

DOUGLAS. 

The Ethics of John Stuart Mill. By CHARLES DOUGLAS, 

M.A., D.Sc., M.P., late Lecturer in Moral Philosophy, and Assistant to the Pro- 
fessor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Post Svo, 6s. net. 

John Stuart Mill : A Study of his Philosophy. Crown Svo, 

4s. 6d. net. 

DOWNEY. Charles Lever : His Life in his Letters. By EDMUND 

DOWNEY. With Portraits. Demy Svo, 2 vols., 21s. net. 

DUFF. An Exposition of Browning's 'Sordello.' With Histori- 
cal and other Notes. By DAVID DUFF, B.D. Demy Svo, 10s. 6d. net. 

ECCOTT. 

Fortune's Castaway. By W. J. ECCOTT. Crown Svo, 6s. 

His Indolence of Arras. Crown Svo, 6s. Cheap Edition, 

royal Svo, paper cover, 6d. 

Hearth of Hutton. Crown Svo, 6s. 



io William Blackwood & Sons. 



ELIOT. 

The New Popular Edition of George Eliot's Works, with 

Photogravure Frontispiece to each Volume, from Drawings by William 
Hatherell, R.I., Edgar Bundy, R.I., Byam Shaw, R.I., A. A. Van Anrooy, 
Maurice Greiffenhagen, Claude A. Shepperson, B.I., E. J. Sullivan, and Max 
Cowper. Bach Work complete in One Volume, 3s. 6d. net. Ten Volumes in all. 
Handsomely bound, gilt top. 



ADAM BBDE. 
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 
FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. 

MlDDLEMARCH. 



SILAS MARNER ; BROTHER JACOB ; THE 

LIFTED VEIL. 
ROMOLA. 

DANIEL DERONDA. 
THE SPANISH GYPSY ; JUBAL. 



ESSAYS; THEOPHRASTXJS SUCH. 

George Eliot's Life. With Portrait and other Iltasfcrutions. 

New Edition, in one volume. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 

Life and Works of George Eliot (Warwick Edition). 14 vol- 
umes, cloth, limp, gilt top, 2s. net per volume ; leather, limp, gilt top, 2s. 6d. net 
per volume : leather gilt top, with book-marker. 3s. net per volume. 



ADAM BEDE. 826 p; 

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 828 pp. 

FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. 718 pp. 

ROMOLA. 900 pp. 

SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 624 pp. 

SILAS MARKER; BROTHER JACOB; THE 



MIDDLBMARCH. 2 vols. 664 and 680 pp. 
DANIEL DERONDA. 2 vols. 616 and 

636 pp. 

THE SPANISH GYPSY; JUBAL 
ESSAYS; THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 
LIFE. 2 vols., 626 and 580 pp. 



LIFTED VEIL. 560 pp. 

Works of George Eliot (Standard Edition). 21 volumes, 

crown 8vo. In buckram cloth, gilt top, 2. 6d. per vol. ; or In roxburghe 
binding, 3s. 6d. per vol. 

ADAM BJEDE. 2 vols. THE MILL ON THK FLOSS. " vols. FJELIX HOLT, THE 

HADICAL. 2 vols. ROMOLA. 2 vols. SCENES OF CLERICAL Lira. 2 vols. 

MIDDLBMARCH. 3 vols. DANIBL DERONDA, 3 vols. SILAS MARKER. 1 vol. 

JUBAL. 1 vol. THE SPAHISH GYPSY. 1 vol. ESSAYS, 1 vol. THBOPHRAS- 

TITS SUCH. 1 vol. 

Life and Works of George Eliot (Cabinet Edition). 24 

volumes, crown 8vo, price 8. Also to be had handsomely bound iu half and full 
calf. The Volumes are sold separately, bound in cloth, prict? 6e. each. 

Novels by George Eliot. Popular Copyright Edition. In new 

uniform binding, price 3s. 6d. each. 



ADAM BEDE. 

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 

SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 

ROMOLA. 



SILAS MARNER ; THE LIFTED VEIL ; 
BROTHER JACOB. 

MlDDLEMARCH. 

DANIEL DKRONDA. 



KKLIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. 

Essays. New Editiou. Crown 8vo, 5k. 

Impressions of Theophrastus Such. New Edition. Crowx 

8vo, 58. 

The Spanish Gypsy. New Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

The Legend of Jubal, &nd other Poems, Old and New. 

Now Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. 
Silas Marner. New Edition, with Illustrations by Reginald 

Birch. Crown 8vo, Is. 6d. net. Cheap Edition, 2s. 6d. Cheap Edition, 
royal 8vo, paper cover, price 6d. 

Scenes of Clerical Life. Pocket Edition, 3 vole, pott 8vo, 

Is. net each ; bound in leather, Is. 6d. net each. Cheap Edition, 3s. Illus- 
trated Edition, with 20 Illustrations by H. R. Millar, crown 8vo, 2s. ; paper 
covers, Is. Cheap Edition, royal 8vo. in pr.per cover, price Od. 

Felix Holt. Cheap Edition. Royal 8vo, in paper cover, 6d. 
Adam Bede. Pocket Edition. In 1 vol. pott 8vo, Is. net ; 

bound in leather, in 3 vols., 4s. 6d. net. Cheap Edition, royal 8vo, in 
paper cover, price 6d. New Edition, crown 8vo, paper cover, Is. ; crown 8vo, 
with Illustrations, cloth, 2s 



William Blackwood & Sons. n 



ELIOT. 

The Mill on the Floss. Pocket Edition, in 1 vol. pott 8vo, 

Is. net, limp leather, 4s. 6d. net. Cheap Edition, royal 8vo. in paper cover, 
price 6d. New Edition, paper covers, Is. ; cloth, 2s. 

Eomola. Cheap Edition. Royal 8vo, in paper cover, price 6d. 
Silas Marner ; Brother Jacob ; Lifted Veil. Pocket Edition. 

Pott 8vo, cloth, Is. net ; limp leather, 2<3. 3d. net 

Wise, Witty, and Tender (Sayings, in Prose and Verse. Selected. 

from the Works of GKOROZ ELIOT. New Edition. Pcap. 8vo, SB. 6d. 

ELLIS. 

Barbara Winslow, Rebel. By BETH ELLIS. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
Madame, Will You Walk ? Crown 8vo, 6s. 

ELTON . The Augustan Ages. " Periods ot European Litera- 
ture." By OLIVEB ELTON, B.A., Lecturer in English Literature, Owen's College, 
Manchester. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

FAHIE. A History of Wireless Telegraphy. Including some 

Bare-wire Proposals for Subaqueous Telegraphs. By J. J. FAHIE, Member of the 
Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, and of the Societe Internationale 
des Electriciens, Paris; Author of 'A History of Electric Telegraphy to the 
Year 1837,' &c. With Illustrations. Third Edition, Revised. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

FAITHS OF THE WORLD, The. A Concise History of the 

Great Religious Systems of the World. By various Authors. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

FERGUSSON. Scots Poems, By ROBERT FERGUSSON With 

Photogravure Portrait. Pott 8vo, gilt top, bound in cloth, Is. net; leather, 
Is. 6d. net. 

FERRIER. Philosophical Remains. Crown 8vo, 14s. 
FISHER. One London Season. By CAROLINE FISHER. Crown 

8vo, 6s. 

FLINT. 

Philosophy as Scientia Scientiarwm. A History of Classifica- 
tions of the Sciences. By ROBERT FLINT, Corresponding Member of the Institute 
of France, Hon. Member of the Royal Society ot Palermo. Professor in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, &c, 12s. 6d. net. 

Studies on Theological, Biblical, and other Subjects. 7s. 6d. net 
Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium and 

Switzerland. 8vo, 21s. 

Agnosticism. Demy 8vo, 18s. net. 

Theism. Being the Baird Lecture for 1876. Tenth Edition, 

Revised. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 

Anti-Theistic Theories. Being the Baird Lecture for 1877. 

Fifth Edition. Crowrt 8vo, 10s. 6d. 

Sermons and Addresses. Demy 8vo, 7s. 6d 
FORBES. Helena: a Novel. By Mrs H. O. FORBES. Crown 

8vo. 6s. 

FORD. A History of Cambridge University Cricket Club. By 

W. J. FORD, Author ot 'A History of Middlesex County Cricket,' Ac. With 
Illustrations. Demy 8vo, 15s. net 

FOREIGN CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS, Edited 

by Mrs OLIPHANT. Price Is. each net. For List of Volumes, we (.age S. 



12 William Blackwood & Sons. 



FOEREST. 

History of the Indian Mutiny. By G. W. FORREST, C.I.E. 

Ex-Director of Records, Government of India. 2 vols. demy 8vo, 38s. net. 

Sepoy Generals : Wellington to Roberts. With Portraits. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. 

FORSTER. Where Angels Fear to Tread. By E. M. FORSTER. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. 

FOULIS. 

Erchie : My Droll Friend. By HUGH FOTJLIS. Paper 

covers, Is. net ; cloth, Is. 6d. net. 

The Vital Spark. Illustrated. Is. net. 
FRANKLIN. My Brilliant Career. By MILES FRANKLIN. 

Fourth Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

FRASER. 

Philosophy of Theism. Being the Gilford Lectures delivered 

before the University of Edinburgh in 1894-96. By ALEXANDER CAMPBELL 
FRASER, D.C.L. Oxford; Emeritus Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in 
the University of Edinburgh. Second Edition, Revised. Post 8vo, 6s. 6d. net. 

Biographia Philosophica. In 1 vol. demy 8vo, 6s. net. 

FRENCH COOKERY FOR ENGLISH HOMES. Third Im- 
pression. Crown 8vo, limp cloth, 2s. 6d. Also in limp leather, 3s. 

GALLOWAY. Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. By 

GEORGE GALLOWAY, B.D. Demy 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. 

GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
Scottish Hymnal, With Appendix Incorporated. Published 

for use in Churches by Authority of the General Assembly. 1. Largo type, 
cloth, red edges, 2s. 8d.; French morocco, 4s. 2, Bourgeois type, limp cloth, Is.; 
French morocco, 2s. 3. Nonpareil type, cloth, red edges, 6d.; French morocco, 
Is. 4d. 4. Paper covers, 3d. 5. Sunday-School Edition, paper covers, Id.j 
cloth, 2d. No. 1, bound with the Psalms and Paraphrases, French morocco, 6s. 
Nc. 2, bound with the Psalms and Paraphrases, cloth, 2s.; French morocco, 3s. 

Prayers for Social and Family Worship. Prepared by a 

Special Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Entirely 
New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Fcap. 8vo, red edges, Is. 6d. net. 

Prayers for Family Worship. A Selection of Four Weeks' 

Prayers. New Edition. Authorised by the General Assembly of the Church of 
Scotland. Fcap. 8vo, red edges Is. net. 

One Hundred Prayers. Prepared by the Committee on Aids 

to Devotion. 16mo, cloth limp, 6d. 

Morning and Evening Prayers for Affixing to Bibles. Prepared 

by the Committee on Aids to Devotion. Id. for 6, or Is. per 100. 

Prayers for Soldiers and Sailors. Prepared by the Committee 

on Aids to Devotion. Thirtieth Thousand 16mo, cloth limp. 2d. net. 

Prayers for Sailors and Fisher-Folk. Prepared and Published 

by Instruction of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Fcap. 8vo, Is. 
net. 

GERARD. 

Reata: What's in a Name. By E. D. GKKABD. Cheap 

Edition. Crown 8vo, 8s. 6d. 

Beggar my Neighbour. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6ti. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 13 

GERARD. 

The Waters of Hercules. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
A Sensitive Plant. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

GERARD. Honour's Glassy Bubble. By E. GERARD. Crown 

8vo, 6s. 

GERARD. 

One Year. By DOROTHEA GERARD (Madame Longard de 

Longgarde). Crown 8vo, 6s. 

The Impediment. Crown 8vo, 6s, 

A Spotless Reputation. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

The Wrong Man. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Lady Baby. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. Cheap 

Edition, roysl Svo, paper cover, 6d. 

Recha. Crown Svo, 6s. 

GIBBON. 

Souls in Bondage. By PERCEVAL GIBBON. Crown Svo, 6s. 

Cheap Edition, royal Svo, paper cover, 6d. 

The Vrouw Grobelaar's Leading Cases. Crown Svo, 6s. 
GILL. The CHC1 3 - Problem. By RICHARD GILL. 2 vols. crown 

8vo, 5s. net each. 

GILLESPIE. The Humour of Scottish Life. By Very Rev. JOHN 

GILLESPIE, LL.D. Crown 8ve, 3s. 6d. net. 

GLEIG. Personal Reminiscences of the First Duke of Wellington, 

with Sketches of some of his Guests and Contemporaries. By Rev. G. R. GLEIG, 
author of ' The Subaltern.' Demy Svo, 15s. net. 

GOODALL. Association Football. By JOHN GOODALL. Edited 

by S. ARCHIBALD DE BEAR. With Diagrams. Pcap. Svo, IB. 

GORDON. The Sikhs. By General Sir JOHN J. H. GORDON, 

K.C.B. With Illustrations. Demy Svo, 7s. 6d. net 

GOUDIE. The Celtic and Scandinavian Antiquities of Shetland. 

By GILBERT GOUDIE, F.S.A. Scot. Demy Svo, 7s. 6d> net. 

GRAHAM. 

Manual of the Elections (Scot.) (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) 

Act, 1890. With Analysis, Relative Act of Sederunt, Appendix containing the 
Corrupt Practices Acts of 1883 and 1885, and Oopicns Index. By J. EDWARD 
GRAHAM, Advocate. Svo, 4s. 6d. 

A Manual of the Acts relating to Education in Scotland. 

(Founded on that of the late Mr Craig Sellar.) Demy Svo, 18s. 

GRAHAM AND PATERSON. True Romances of Scotland. By 

B. MAXTONE GRAHAM and E. PATERSON. Illustrations. Crown Svo, 5s. net. 

GRAND. 

A Domestic Experiment. By SARAH GRAND, Author of 

' The Heavenly Twins,' ' Ideala : A Study from Life.' Crown Svo, 68. 

Singularly Deluded. Crown Svo, 68. 



14 William Blackwood & Sons. 



GRIER. 

In Furthest Ind. The Narrative of Mr EDWARD CARLYON of 

Ellswether, in the County of Northampton, and late of the Honourable East India 
Company's Service, Gentleman. Wrote by hie own hand in the year of grace 1697 . 
Edited, with a rew Explanatory Notes. By SYDNEY C. GRIER. Post 8vo 5 6. 
Cheap Edition, 2s. 

His Excellency's English Governess. Third Impression. Cr. 

8vo, 6s, Cheap Edition, 2s. 

An Uncrowned King : A Romance of High Politics. Second 

Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. Cheap Edition, 2s. 

Peace with Honour. Third Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. Cheap 

Edition, 2s. 

A Crowned Queen: The Romance of a Minister of State. 

Second Impression. Grown 8vo, 6s. Cheap Edition, 2s. 

Like Another Helen. Second Impression Cr. 8vo, 6s. Cheap 

Edition, 2s. 

The Kings of the East : A Romance of the near Future. 

Second Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. Cheap Edition, 2s. 

The Warden of the Marches. Third Impression. Crown 

Svo, 6s. Cheap Edition, 2s. Cheap Edition, paper cover, 6d. 

The Prince of the Captivity. Second Impression. Crown 

8vo, 6s. 

The Advanced-Guard. Third Impression. Crown Svo, 6s. 
The Great Proconsul : The Memoirs of Mrs Hester Ward, 

formerly in the family of the Hon. Warren Hastings, Esquire, late Governor- 
General of India. Crown Svo, 6s. 

The Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife. Demy Svo, 

15s. net. 

The Heir. Crown Svo, 6s. 
GRIERSOK The First Half of the Seventeenth Century. 

(Periods of European Literature.) By Professor H. J. C. GRIERSON. Crown 
8vo, 5s. net. 

GRIFFIN. 

Lady Sarah's Deed of Gift. By E. ACEITUNA GRIFFIN. Crown 



A Servant of the King. Crown Svo, 6s. 
GROOT. 

Jan Van Dyck. By J. MORGAN -DE- GROOT. Crown Svo, 6s. 
The Bar Sinister. Crown Svo, 6s. 

HALDANE. How we Escaped from Pretoria. By Lieut. -Colonel 

AYLMER HALDANE, D.S.O. Crown Svo, Is. 

HALIBURTON. Horace in Homespun. By HUGH HALIBURTON. 

A New Edition, containing additional Poems, With 26 Illustrations by A. d. 
Boyd. Post Svo, 6s. net. 

HAMLEY. 

The Operations of "War Explained and Illustrated. By 

General Sir EDWARD BRTTCH HAMLHY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. Second Edition of 
Fifth Edition. With Maps and Plans. 4to, 30s. Also in 2 parts: Part I., 
10s. 6d.; Part II., 21s. 

Thomas Carlyle: An Essay. Second Edition, Crown Svo, 

2. fid. 

On Outposts. Second Edition. 8vo, 2s. 



William Black-wood & Sons. 15 

HAMLEY. 

Lady Lee's Widowhood. New Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 

Our Poor Relations, A Philozoic Essay. With Illustrations, 
chiefly by Ernest Griset. Grown 8vo, cloth gilt, Ss. fid. 

HANNAY. The Later Renaissance. "Periods of European 

Literature." By DAVID HANNAY. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

HARRADEN. 

Ships that Pass in the Night. By BEATRICE HARRADEN. 

Illustrated Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

The Fowler. Illustrated Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. Cheap 

Edition, paper cover, 6d. 

In Varying Moods : Short Stories. Illustrated Edition. 

Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Untold Tales of the Past. With 40 Illustrations by H. R. Millar, 

Square crown 3vo, gilt top, 5s. net. 

Katharine Frensham. Crown 8vo, 6s. Cheap Edition, 

paper cover, 6d. 

HARRIS. 

The Disappearance of Dick. By WALTER B. HARRIS. With 

17 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

The Career of Harold Ensleigh. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
HARTLEY. Wild Sport with Gun, Rifle, and Salmon-Rod. By 

GILFRID W. HARTLEY. With numerous Illustrations in photogravure and half- 
tone from drawings by G. E. LODGE and others. Demy 8vo, 6s. net. 

HAY-NEWTON. Readings on the Evolution of Religion. By 

Mrs P. HAY-NEWTON. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

HEMANS. 

The Poetical Works of Mrs Hemans. Copyright Edition. 

Royal 8vo, with Engravings, cloth, gilt edges, 58. 

Select Poems of Mrs Hemans. Fcap., cloth, gilt edges, s, 
HENDERSON. The Young Estate Manager's Guide. By 

RICHARD HENDERSON, Member (by Examination) of the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England, the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, and 
the Surveyors' Institution. With an Introduction by R. Patrick Wright, 
F.R.S.E., Professor of Agriculture, Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical 
College. With Plans and Diagrams. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

HENDERSON. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. By Sir 

WALTER SCOTT. A New Edition. Edited by T. F. Henderson, Author of ' A 
History of Scottish Vernacular Literature.' With a New Portrait of Sir Walter 
Seott. In 4 vols., demy 8vo, 2, 2s. net. 

HERFORD. Browning (Modern English Writers). By Professor 

HERFORD. Crown 8vo, 2s. Sd. 

HERKLESS AND HANNAY. The College of St Leonard's. By 

JOHN HERKLESS and ROBERT KERR HANNAY. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. 

HEWISON. The Isle of Bute in the Olden Time. With Illus 

trations, Maps, and Plans. By JAMES KING HEWISON, D.D., R.S.A. (Scot.), 
Minister of Rothesay. Vol. I., Celtic Saints and Heroes. Crown 4to, 15s. net 
Vol. II., The Royal Stewards and the Brandanes. Crown 4to, ]5s. net. 



1 6 William Blackwood & Sons. 



HOME PRAYERS. By Ministers of the Church of Scotland 

and Members of the Church Service Society. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 

HUNT. A Handy Vocabulary: English- Afrikander, Afrikander- 
English. For the Use of English-speaking People in South Africa. By G. M. G. 
HUNT. Small 8vo, Is. 

HUTCHINSON. Hints on the Game of Golf. By HORACE G. 

HUTCHINSON. Twelfth Edition, Revised. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, Is. 

BUTTON. Italy and the Italians. By EDWARD HUTTON. With 

Illustrations. Second Edition. Large crown 8vo, 6s. 

IDDESLEIGH. Life, Letters, and Diaries of Sir Stafford North- 

cote, First Earl of Iddesleigh. By ANDREW LANG. With Three Portraits and 
View of Pynes. Third Edition. 2 vols. post 8vo, 31%. 6d. 

POPULAR EDITION. With Portrait and View of Pynes. Post 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

INCHBOLD. Phantasma. By A. C. INCHBOLD. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
INNES. 

Free Church Union Case. Judgment of the House of Lords. 

With Introduction by A. TAYLOR INNES. Demy 8vo, Is. net. 

The Law of Creeds in Scotland. A Treatise on the Rela- 
tions of Churches in Scotland, Established and not Established, to the Civil Law. 
Demy 8vo, 10s. net. 

INTELLIGENCE OFFICER. 

On the Heels of De Wet. By THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER. 

Sixth Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. Cheap Edition, royal 8vo, paper cover, 6d. 

The Boy Galloper. With Illustrations. In 1 vol. cr. 8vo, 6s. 
The Yellow War. Crown 8vo, 6s. Cheap Edition, paper 

cover, 6d. 

IRONS. The Psychology of Ethics. By DAVID IRONS, M.A., 

Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy in Bryn Mawr College, Penn. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 



JAMES. William Wetmore Story and his Friends. From 

Letters, Diaries, and Recollections. By HENRY JAMES. With 2 Portraits. In 
two vols. post 8vo, 24s. net. 

JAMES. 

Modern Strategy. By Lieut.-Col. WALTER H. JAMES, P.S.C., 

late R.E. With 6 Maps. Second Edition, thoroughly revised and brought 
up to date. Royal 8vo, 16s. net. 

The Development of Tactics from 1740 to the Present Day. 

Demy 8vo. [In the press. 

JOHNSTON. 

The Chemistry of Common Life. By Professor J. F. W. 

JOHNSTON. New Edition, Revised. By.ARTHUR HERBERT CHURCH, M.A. Ozon. 
Author of ' Food : its Sources, Constituents, and User. &c. With Maps and 109 
Engravings. Grown 8vo, 7s. 3d. 

Elements of Agricultural Chemistry. An entirely New 

Edition from the Edition by Sir CHARLES A. CAMERON, M.D., F.R.C.8.I. &c. 
Revised and brought down to date by C. M. AIKMAN, M.A., B.Bc., F.R.S.E. 
Professor of Chemistry, Glasgow Veterinary College. 17th Edition. Crown 8vo, 
68. 6d. 

Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry. An entirely New Edi- 
tion from the Edition by Sir CHARLES A. CAMERON. Revised and Enlarged 
by C. M. AIKMAN M.A., Ac. 95th Thouaand. With numerous Illustrations, 
Crown 8vo, 1*. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 17 

JOHNSTON. Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Acts, 1883 to 

1900 ; and the Ground Game Act, 1880. With Notes, and Summary of Procedure, 
&c. By CHRISTOPHER N. JOHNSTON, M.A., Advocate. Fifth Edition. Demy 
8vo, 6s. net. 

JOKAI. Timar's Two Worlds. By MAUEUS JOKAI. Authorised 

Translation by Mrs HEGAN KSNNARD. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

JONES. A Maid of Normandy : A Komance of Versailles. By 

DORA M. JONES. Crown Svo, 6s. 

KENNEDY. Hurrah for the Life of a Sailor ! Fifty Years in the 

Royal Navy. By Admiral Sir WILLIAM KENNEDY, K.C.B. With Illustrations 
from Sketches by the Author. Fifth Impression. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. 
CHEAPER EDITION, small demy Svo, 6s. 

KER. The Dark Ages. " Periods of European Literature." By 

Professor W. P. KER. In 1 vol. crown Svo 5s. net. 

KERR. 

Memories : Grave and Gay. By JOHN KEEK, LL.D. With 

Portrait and other Illustrations. Cheaper Edition, Enlarged. Crown Svo, 
2s. 6d. net. 

Other Memories : Old and New. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. net. 
KINGLAKE. 

History of the Invasion of the Crimea. By A. W. KINGLAKE. 

Complete in 9 vols., crown Svo, Cheap reissue at 3s. 6d. each. 

Abridged Edition for Military Students. Revised by 

Lieut.-Col. Sir GEORQE SYDENHAM CLARKE, K.C.M.G., R.E. Demy Svo, 15s. net. 

Atlas to accompany above. Folio, 9s. net. 

History of the Invasion of the Crimea. Demy 8vo. Vol. VI. 

Winter Troubles. With a Map, 16s. Vols. VII. and VIII. From the Morrow of 
Inkerman to the Death of Lord Raglan. With an Index to the Whole Work. 
With Maps and Plans. 28s 

Eotheri. A New Edition, uniform with the Cabinet Edition 

of the ' History of the Invasion of the Crimea. ' 6s. 

CHEAPER EDITION. With Portrait and Biographical Sketch ol the Author. 
Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. net. 

KNEIPP. My Water-Cure. Aa Tested through more than 

Thirty Years, and Described for the Healing of Diseases and the Preservation ol 
Health. By SEBASTIAN KNEIPP. With a Portrait and other Illustrations. 
Authorised English Translation from the Thirtieth German Edition, by A. de F. 
With an Appendix, containing the Latest Developments of Pfarrer Kneipp's 
System, and a Preface by E. Gerard. Crown Svo, 8s. Sd. 

LANG. 

A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation. By 

ANDREW LANG. Vol. I. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and Four Maps. 

Second Edition. Demy Svo, 15s. net. 
Vol. II. With a Photogravure Frontispiece. 15s. net 
Vol. III. With a Photogravure Frontispiece. 15s. net. 
Vol. IV. With a Photogravure Frontispiece. 15s. net. 

Tennyson. "Modern English Writers." 2nd Ed. Cr. Svo, 2s. 6d. 

CHEAP EDITION, paper cover, 6d. net. 

Life, Letters, and Diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote, First 

Earl ol Iddesleigh. With Three Portraits and a View of Pynes. Third Edition. 
2 vols. post 8vo, 31s. 6d. 

POPULAR EDITION. With Portrait and View of Pynes. Post Svo, 3s. 6d. 

The Highlands of Scotland in 1750. From Manuscript 104 

in the King's Library, British Museum. With an Introduction by ANDREW LANO. 
drown Svo, 5s, net. 



1 8 William Blackwood & Sons. 



LANG. 

The Expansion of the Christian Life. The Dufl Lecture 

for 1897. By the Rev. J. MARSHALL LANG, D.D., Principal of the University of 
Aberdeen. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

The Church and its Social Mission. Being the Baird Lecture 

for 1901. Crown 8vo, 6s. net. 

LAWSON. 

British Economics in 1904. By W. R. LAWSON. Crown 8vo, 

6s. net. 

American Finance. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
LEHMANN. Crumbs of Pity, and other Verses ; to which are 

added Six Lives of Great Men. By R. C. LEHMANN, author of ' Anni Pugaces, 1 
&c. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

LEIGHTON. The Life History of British Serpents, and their 

Local Distribution in the British Isles. By GERALD R. LEIGHTON, M.D. With 
50 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

LEISHMAN. The Westminster Directory. Edited, with an Intro- 
duction and Notes, by the Very Rev. T. LEISHMAN D.D. Crown 8vo 4s. net. 

LINDSAY. 

Recent Advances in Theistic Philosophy of Religion. By Rev. 

JAMBS LINDSAY, M.A., B.D., B.Sc., P.R.S.B., P.G.S., Minister of the Parish of 
St Andrew's, Kilmarnock. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net. 

The Progressiveness of Modern Christian Thought. Crown 

8vo, 6s. 

Essays, Literary and Philosophical. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

The Significance of the Old Testament for Modern Theology. 

Grown 8vo, Is. net. 

The Teaching Function of the Modern Pulpit, Crown 8vo, 

Is. net 

"LINESMAN." 

Words by an Eyewitness : The Struggle in Natal. By " LINES- 
MAN." Eleventh Impression, with Three Additional Chapters. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

The Mechanism of War. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
LITURGIES AND ORDERS OF DIVINE SERVICE 

(CHURCH SERVICE SOCIETY). 

The Second Prayer Book of King Edward the Sixth (1552). 

With Historical Introduction and Notes by the Rev. H. J. WOTHERSPOON, M.A., 
of St Oswald's Edinburgh ; and THE LITURGY OF COMPROMISE. Used in the 
English Congregation at Frankfort. From an Unpublished MS. Edited by the 
Rev. G. W. SPROTT, D.D., of North Berwick. 4s. net. 

Book of Common Order. Commonly called Knox's Liturgy. 

Edited by Rev. G. W. SPROTT, D.D. 4s. 6d. net. 

Scottish Liturgies of the Reign of James VI. Edited by Rev. 

G. W. SPROTT, D.D. 4s. net. 

Liturgy of 1637. Commonly called Laud's Liturgy. Edited 

by the Rev. Professor COOPER, D.D. 7s. 6d. net. 

The Westminster Directory. Edited by Very Rev. T. LEISH- 
MAN, D.D. 4s. net. 

Euchologion. A Book of Common Order : Being Forms of 

Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Ordinances of the 
Church. Edited by the Rev. G. W. SPROTT, D.D., of North Berwick. 4s. 6d. net. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 19 

LOBBAN. An Anthology of English Verse from Chaucer to the 

Present Day. By J. H. LOBBAN, M.A. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 5s. 

LOCKHART. 

Doubles and Quits. By LATTBENCB W. M. LOOKHART. Crown 

8vo, 3s. 6d. A New Edition, Crown 8vo, 2s. 

Fair to See. New Edition. Crown 8vo, 38. 6d. 
Mine is Thine, New Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d> 

LORIMER. The Author's Progress : or, The Literary Book of 

the Road. By ADAM LORIMER. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 



LYNDEN - BELL. A Primer of Tactics, Fortification, Topo- 

;raphy, and Military Law. E - 
Magrams Crown 8vo, 3s. net. 



graphy, and Military Law. By Lieut. - Colonel C. P. LYNDEN-BELL. With 

Diagran 



MABIE. 

Essays on Nature and Culture. By HAMILTON WEIGHT MABIE . 

With Portrait. Pcap. 8vo, 8s. 0d. 

Books and Culture. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
M'AULAY. The Safety of the Honours. By ALLAN M'AULAY. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. 

MACDONALD. A Manual of the Criminal Law (Scotland) Pro- 
cedure Act, 1887. By NORMAN DORAN MACDONALD. Revised by the LORD 
JTJSTICE-CLBRK. 8vo, 10s. 6d. 

MACKENZIE. Studies in Roman Law. With Comparative 

Views of the Laws of Prance, England, and Scotland. By LORD MACKENZIE, 
one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Scotland. Seventh Edition, Edited 
by JOHN KIRKPATRICK, M.A., LL.B., Advocate, Professor of History in the 
University of Edinburgh. 8vo, 21s. 

MACKINLAY, J. M. Influence of the Pre-Reformation Church 

on Scottish Place-Names. By J. M. MACK-INLAY, F.S.A. Scot. Demy 8vo, 
12s. 6d. net. 

MACLAGAN, R. C. The Perth Incident of 1396. By R. C. 

MACLAQAN, M.D. Demy 8vo, 5s. net. 

MACLEOD. The Doctrine and Validity of the Ministry and 

Sacraments of the National Church of Scotland. By the Very Rev. DONALD 
MACLEOD, D.D. Being the Baird Lecture for 1903. Crown 8vo, 6s. net. 

MACPHERSON. Books to Read and How to Read Them. By 

HECTOR MACPHERSON. Second Impression. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. net. 

MACPHERSON. A Century's Progress in Astronomy. By 

HECTOR MACPHERSON, Jun. Short demy Svo, 6s. net. 

MAIN. Three Hundred English Sonnets. Chosen and Edited 
by DAVID M. MAIN. New Edition. Fcap. Svo, 3s. 6d. 



2O William Blackwood & Sons. 



MAIR. 

A Digest of Laws and Decisions, Ecclesiastical and Civil, 

relating to the Constitution, Practice, and Affairs of the Church of Scotland. 
With Notes and Forma of Procedure. By the Rev. WILLIAM MAIR, D.D., lately 
Minister of the Parish of Earlston. New Edition, Revised. In 1 vol. crown 8vo, 
12s. 6d. net. 

Speaking ; or, From Voice Production to the Platform and 

Pulpit. Third Edition, Revised. Crown 8vo, 8s. 

MAITLAND. The Surrender of Napoleon. Being the Narrative 

of the Surrender of Buonaparte, and of his residence on board H.M.S. Belle- 
rophon ; with a detail of the principal events that occurred in that Ship between 
the 24th ot May and the 8th of August 1815. By Rear- Admiral Sir FREDERICK 
LEWIS MAITLAND, K.C.B. A New Edition. Edited, with a Life of the Author, 
by WILLIAM KIRK DICKSON. In 1 vol. post 8vo, with Portraits and other Illus- 
trations. Demy 8vo 15s. net. 

MARSHMAN. History of India. From the Earliest Period to 

the present time. By JOHN CLARK MARSHMAN, 0.8.1. Third and Cheaper 
Edition. Post 8vo, with Map, 6s. 

MARTIN. 

Poems of Giacomo Leopardi. Translated by Sir THEODORE 

MARTIN, K.C.B. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

The ^Eneid of Virgil. Books I.- VI. Translated by Sir THEO 

DORTS MARTIN, K.O.B. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d. 

Goethe's Faust. Part I. Translated into English Verse 

Second Edition, crown 8vo, 6s. tfinth Edition, fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Goethe's Faust. Part II. Translated into English Verse. 

Second Edition, Revised. Fcap. 8vo, 6s. 

The Works of Horace. Translated into English Verse, with 

Life and Notes. 2 vols. New Edition. Crown 8vo, 21s. 

Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine. Done into English 

Verse. Third Edition. Small crown 8vo, 5s. 

The Song of the Bell, and other Translations from Schiller, 

Goethe, Uhland, and Obhers. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 

Madonna Pia : A Tragedy ; and Three Other Dramas. Crown 

8vo. 7s. 6i. 

Catullus. With Life and Notes. Second Edition, Revised 

and Corrected. Post 8vo, 7s. 8d. 
The ' Vita Nuova ' of Dante. Translated with an Introduction 

and Notes. Fourth Edition. Small crown 8vo, 5s. 

Aladdin : A Dramatic Poem. By ADAM OEHLENSCHLAEGER, 

Fcap. 8vo, 5s. 

Correggio : A Tragedy. By OEHLENSCHLAEGER With Notes. 

Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 

Helena Faucit (Lady Martin). By Sir THEODORE MARTIN, 

K.C.B., K.C.V.O. With Five Photogravure Plates. Second Edition. Demy 8vo 
10s. 6d. net. 

MARTIN. On some of Shakespeare's Female Characters. By 

HELENA FAUCIT, Lady MARTIN. Dedicated by permission to Her Most Gracious 
Majesty the Queen. With a Portrait by Lehmann, Seventh Edition, with a new 
Preface. Demy 8vo, 7s. 6d. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 21 



MATHESON. 

Can the Old Faith Live with the New I or, The Problem of 

Evolution and Revelation. By the Bav. GKOBOK MATHESON. JXD. Third Edi- 
tion. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 

The Psalmist and the Scientist ; or, Modern Value of the Reh 

gious Sentiment. Third Edition. Grown 8vo, 5s. 

Spiritual Development of St Paul. Fourth Edition. Or. 8vo, 5s, 

The Distinctive Messages of the Old Religions Second Edi- 
tion. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

tfacred Songs, Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 
MAUGHAM. Richard Hawkwood. By H. N. MAUGHAM. A 

Romance. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

MAXWELL. 

Dumfries and Galloway. By Right Hon. Sir HERBERT 

MAXWELL, Bart. Being one of the Volumes of the County Histories of Scotland. 
With Four Maps. Second Edition. Deiny &vo 7s. 6d. net. 

Scottish Land-Names : Their Origin and Meaning Being 

the Rhind Lectures in Archeology for 1893. Post 8vo, 6s. 

The Chevalier of the Splendid Crest. Third Edition. Crown 

8vo, 6s. 

MELDRUM. 

The Conquest of Charlotte. By DAVID S. MELDRUM. Third 

Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Holland and the Hollanders. With numerous Illustrations 

and a Map. Second Edition. Square Svo, 6s. 

The Story of Margredei : Being a Fireside History of a Fife- 
shire Family. Cheap Edition Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Grey Mantle and Gold Fringe. Crown Svo, 6s. 

MELLONE. 

Studies in Philosophical Criticism and Construction. By 

SYDNEY HEBBEBT MELLONE, M.A. Lond., D.Sc. Edin. Post Svo. 10s. 6d. net. 

Leaders , of Religious Thought in the Nineteenth Century 

Crown Svo, 6s. net. 

An Introductory Text-Book of Logic. Second Edition, Re- 
vised. Crown Svo, 5s. 

MERZ. A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury. By JOHN THEODORE MEBZ. Vol. I., post Svo, 10s. 6d. net. 
Vol. II., 15s. net. 

MEYNELL. John Ruskin. " Modern English Writers." By Mrs 

MEYNELL. Third Impression. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 

MICHIE. The Englishman in China during the Victorian Era. 

As Illustrated in the Life of Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., D.C.L. By ALEX- 
ANDER MICHIE. With Illustrations, Portraits, and Maps. 2 vols. demy Svo, 38s. 
net. 

MICKLETHWAIT. The Licensing Act, 1904. By St J. G. 

MICKLETHWAIT, M.A., B.C.L., Barrister-at-Law. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. net. 



22 William Blackwood & Sons. 



MILL. 

The Colonel Sahib. A Novel. By GARRETT MILL. Second 

Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Ottavia. Second Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
Mr Montgomery : Fool. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
In the Hands of the Czar. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

MILLAR. The Mid-Eighteenth Century. " Periods of European 

Literature." By J. H. MILLAR. Grown 8vo, 5s. net. 

MILN. A Woman and Her Talent. By LOUISE JORDAN MILN. 

Crown Svo, 6s. 

MITCHELL. The Scottish Reformation. Being the Baird 

Lecture for 1899. By the late ALEXANDER F. MITCHELL, D.D., LL.D. Edited 
by D. HAY FLEMING, LL.D. With a Biographical Sketch of the Author, by 
James Christie, D.D. Crown Svo. 6. 

MODERN ENGLISH WRITERS. In handy crown Svo 

volumes, tastefully bound, price 2s. 6d. each. 

Matthew Arnold. By Professor SAINTSBURY. Second Im- 
pression. 

R. L. Stevenson. By L. COPE CORNFORD. Second Impression. 
John Ruskin. By Mrs MEYNELL. Third Impression. 
Tennyson. By ANDREW LANG. Second Edition. 
Huxley. By EDWARD CLODD. 
Thackeray. By CHARLES WHIBLEY. 
Browning. By Prof. C. H. HERFORD. 

In Preparation. 
GEORGE ELIOT. By A. T. Quiller-Couch. | FROUDE. By John Oliver Hobbes. 

MOIR. Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith. By D. M. 

MOIR. With CRUIKSHANK'S Illustrations. Cheaper Edition. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. 

MOMERIE. 

Dr Alfred Momerie. His Life and Work. By Mrs MOMERIE. 

Demy Svo, 12s. 6d. net. 

The Origin of Evil, and other Sermons. By Rev. ALFRED 

WILLIAMS MOMERIE, M.A., D.Sc., LL.D. Eighth Edition, Enlarged. Crown 
Svo, 5s. 

Personality. The Beginning and End of Metaphysics, and a Ne- 
cessary Assumption in all Positive Philosophy. Fifth Ed., Revised. Cr. Svo, 3s, 

Agnosticism. Fourth Edition, Revised. Crown Svo, 5s. 
Preaching and Hearing ; and other Sermons. Fourth Edition, 

Enlarged. Crown Svo, 5s. 

Belief in God. Fourth Edition. Crown Svo, 3s. 

The Future of Religion, and other Essays, Second Edition. 

Crown Svo, 3s. 8d. 

The English Church and the Romish Schism. Second Edition. 

Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. 

MONTAGUE. Military Topography. Illustrated by Practical 

Examples of a Practical Subject. By Major-General W. E. MONTAGUE, C.B., 
P.S.C., late Garrison Instructor Intelligence Department, Author of ' Campaign- 
ing in South Africa.' With Forty-one Diagrams. Crown Svo, 5s. 

MONTAGUE. Tales from the Talmud. By G. R. MONTAGUE. 

Crown Svo, 6s. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 23 



MUNRO. Uniform Edition Novels. 

John Splendid. The Tale of a Poor Gentleman and the Little 

Wars of Lorn. Sixth Impression. Grown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Children of Tempest : A Tale of the Outer Isles. By NEIL 

MUNRO. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Shoes of Fortune. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories. Fourth 

Impression. Grown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Doom Castle : A Romance. Second Impression. Crown 

8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Gilian the Dreamer. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

MUNRO. 

Rambles and Studies in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia. 

By ROBERT MUNRO, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.8.E. Second Edition, Revised 
and Enlarged. With numerous illustrations. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net. 

Prehistoric Problems. With numerous Illustrations. Demy 

8vo, 10s. net. 

MUNRO. On Valuation of Property. By WILLIAM MUNBO, 

M.A., Her Majesty's Assessor of Railways and Canals for Scotland. Second 
Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

MY TRIVIAL LIFE AND MISFORTUNE: A Gossip with 

no Plot in Particular. By A PLAIN WOMAN. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

By the SAME ATITHOB. 

POOR NELLIE. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
MYRES. A Manual of Classical Geography. By JOHN L. MYRES. 

Crown 8vo. [In the press. 



NEWCOMBE. Village, Town, and Jungle Life in India By 

A. C. NEWCOMBE. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net. 

NICHOLSON AND LYDEKKER. 

A Manual of Palaeontology, for the Use of Students. With a 

General Introduction on the Principles of Palaeontology. By Professor H. 
ALLETNB NICHOLSON and RICHARD LYDEKKER, B.A. Third Edition, entirely 
Rewritten and greatly Enlarged. 2 vols. 8vo, 3, SB. 

NICOL. Recent Archaeology and the Bible. Being the Croall 

Lectures for 1898. By the Rev. THOMAS NICOL, D.D., Professor of Divinity 
and Biblical Criticism in the University of Aberdeen ; Author of ' Recent Ex- 
plorations in Bible Lands.' Demy 8vo, 9s. net. 

N1SBET. The Forester : A Practical Treatise on British Forestry 

and Arboriculture for Landowners, Land Agents, and Foresters. By JOHN 
NISBET, D.O3c. In 2 volumes, royal 8vo, with 285 Illustrations, 42s. net. 

NOBLE. 

The Edge of Circumstance. By EDWARD NOBLE. Crown 8vo, 

6s. Cheap Edition, royal Svo, paper cover, 6d. 

Waves of Fate. Crown Svo, 6s. 

Fisherman's Gat : A Story of the Thames Estuary. Crown 

8vo, 6s. 



24 William Blackwood & Sons. 



NOYES. 

Poems by ALFRED NOYES. 7s. 6d. net. 

The Forest of Wild Thyme : A Tale for Children under Ninety. 

Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

Drake : An English Epic. Books I. -III. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 
O. The Yellow War. By O. Crown 8vo, 6s. Cheap Edition. 

Royal 8vo, 6d. 

OLIPHANT. 

Masollam : A Problem of the Period. A Novel. By LAURENCE 

OLIPHANT . 8 vols. post 8vo, 25s. 6d. 

Altiora Peto. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, boards, 2s. 6d. ; 

cloth, 8s. 6d. Illustrated Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. 

Piccadilly. With Illustrations .by Richard Doyle. New Edi- 
tion, 8s. 6d. Cheap Edition, boards, 2s. 6d. 

Episodes in a Life of Adventure; or, Moss from a Rolling 

Stone. Cheaper Edition. Post 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

The Land of Gilead. With Excursions in the Lebanon. 

With Illustrations and Maps. Demy 8vo, 21s. 

Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant, and of Alice 

Oliphant, his Wife. By Mrs M. O. W. OLIPHANT. Seventh Edition. 2 vols. 
post 8vo, with Portraits. 21*. 

POPULAR EDITION. With a New Preface. Post 8vo, with Portraits. 7s. 6d. 

OLIPHANT. 

The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs M. O. W. Oliphant. 

Arranged and Edited by Mrs HABBT COQHILL. With Two Portraits. Cheap 
Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Annals of a Publishing House. William Blackwood and his 

Sons ; Their Magazine and Friends. By Mrs OLIPHANT. With Four Portraits. 
Third Edition. Demy 8vo. Vols. I. and II. 2, 2s. 

A Widow's Tale, and other Stories. With an Introductory 

Note by J. M. BABBIX. Second Edition. Grown 8vo, 6s. 

Who was Lost and is Found. Second Edition. Crown 

8vo, 6s. 

Miss Marjoribanks. New Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d, 

The Perpetual Curate, and The Rector. New Edition. Crown 

8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Salem Chapel, and The Doctor's Family. New Edition. 

Crown 8vo, 8s. 6d 

Chronicles of Carlingford. 3 vols. crown 8vo, in uniform 

binding, gilt top, 8s. 6d. each. 

Katie Stewart, and other Stories. New Edition. Crown 8vo, 

cloth, 88. 6d. 

Katie Stewart. Illustrated boards, 2s. 6d. 

Valentine and his Brother. New Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Sons and Daughters. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. Old Lady Mary The 

Open Door The Portrait The Library Window. Fcap. Svo, 3s. Gd. 

OMOND. The Romantic Triumph. "Periods of European 

Literature." By T. S. OMOND. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 



William Black wood & Sons. 25 



O'NEILL. Songs of the Glens of Antrim. By MOIRA O'NEILL. 

Twelfth Impression. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

PAGE. 

Intermediate Text-Book of Geology. By Professor LAPWORTH. 

Founded on Dr Page's ' Introductory Text-Book of Geology.' Crown 8vo, 5s. 

Advanced Text-Book of Geology. New Edition. Revised and 

enlarged by Professor LAPWORTH. Crown 8vo. [In the press. 

Introductory Text - Book of Physical Geography. Crown 

8vo, 2s. 6d. 

Advanced Text-Book of Physical Geography. Crown 8vo, 5s. 
Physical Geography Examinator. Crown 8vo, sewed, 9d. 

PARKER Miss Lomax : Millionaire. By BESSIE PARKER. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. 

PAUL. History of the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen's 

Body-Guard for Scotland. By Sir JAMES BALFOUB PAUL, Advocate of the Scottish 
Bar. Crown 4to, with Portraits and other Illustration? 2, 2s, 

PEARSE. The Hearseys : Five Generations of an Anglo-Indian 

Family. By Colonel HUGH PEARSE. Demy Svo, 15s. net. 

PEILE. Lawn Tennis as a Game of Skill. By Lieut.-Col. S. C. 

F. PEILE, B.S.C. Revised Edition, with new Scoring Rules. Fcap. Svo, cloth, Is. 

PERIODS OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE, Edited by Pro- 
fessor SAINTSBURY. For List of Volumes, see page 2. 

PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

Edited by WILLIAM KNIGHT, LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy, University 
of St Andrews. Cheap Re-issue in Shilling Volumes net. 

[For List of Volumes, see page 2. 

PITCAIRN. The History of the Fife Pitcairns, with Transcripts 

from Old Charters. By CONSTANCE PITCAIRN. Demy Svo, 2, 2s. net. 

POLLOK. The Course of Time : A Poem. By ROBERT POLLOK, 

A.M. New Edition. With Portrait. Fcap. 8vo, gilt top, 2. 6d. 

PRESTWICH. Essays: Descriptive and Biographical. By 

GRACE, Lady PRESTWICH, Author of 'The Harbour Bar 1 and 'Enga.' With a 
Memoir by her sister, LOUISA E. MILNE. With Illustrations. Demy Svo, 10s. 6d. 

PRESTWICH. Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Prestwich, M.A. 

D.C.L., F.R.S. Formerly Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford. 
Written and Edited by his WIFE. With Portraits and other Illustrations. 
Demy Svo, 21s. 

PRINGLE-PATTISON. 

Scottish Philosophy. A Comparison of the Scottish and 

German Answers to Hume. Balfour Philosophical Lectures, University of 
Edinburgh. By A. SETH PRINQLE-PATTISON. LL.D., Professor of Logic and 
Metaphysics in Edinburgh University. Third Edition. Crown Svo, 5s. 

Hegelianism and Personality. Balfour Philosophical Lectures. 

Second Series. Second Edition. Crown Svo, 5s. 

Man's Place in the Cosmos, and other Essays. Second Edition, 

Enlarged. Post Svo, 6s. net. 

Two Lectures on Theism. Delivered on the occasion of the 

Sesquicentennial Celebration oi Princeton University. Crown Svo, 2s 6d. 



26 William Blackwood & Sons. 



PUBLIC GENERAL STATUTES AFFECTING SCOTLAND 

from 1707 to 1847, with Chronological Table and Index. 8 vols. large 8vo, 3, 3s. 
Also Published Annually with General Index. 

QUESTION OF COLOUR, A. A Study of South Africa. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. net. 

RANJITSINHJL The Jubilee Book of Cricket. By PRINCE 

RANJITSINHJI. 
POPULAR EDITION. With 107 full-page Illustrations. Sixth Edition. Large 

crown 8vo, 6s. 
SIXPENNY EDITION. With a selection of the Illustrations. 

REID. Christian Prayer. By WILLIAM A. REID. With Intro- 

duction by the Very Rev. Professor CHABTERIS, D.D., LL.D. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

REYNARD. The 9th (Queen's Royal) Lancers, from 1715 to 1903. 

By FRANK H. REYNARD. Royal 8vo, 2, 2s. net. 

ROBERTSON. 

The Poetry and the Religion of the Psalms. The Croall 

Lectures, 1893-94. By JAMES ROBERTSON, D.D., Professor of Oriental Languages 
in the University of Glasgow. Demy 8vo, 12s. 

The Early Religion of Israel. As set forth by Biblical Writers 

and Modern Critical Historians. Being the Baird Lecture for 1888-89. Fourth 
Edition. Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d. 

ROBERTSON. 

A History of German Literature. By JOHN G. ROBERTSON, 

Professor of German, University of London. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net. 

Schiller after a Century. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net. 
ROBINSON. Life of Sir John Beverley Robinson, Bart. By 

Major-General C. W. ROBINSON. Demy 8vo, 16s. net. 

ROBINSON. Wild Traits in Tame Animals. Being some 

Familiar Studies in Evolution. By Louis ROBINSON, M.D. With Illustrations 
by STEPHEN T. DADD. Cheaper Edition. Demy 8vo, 6s. 

RONALDSHAY. 

On the Outskirts of Empire in Asia. By the EARL OF 

RONALDSHAY, F.R.G.S. With numerous Illustrations and Maps. Royal 8vo, 
21s. net 

Sport and Politics under an Eastern Sky. With numerous 

Illustrations and Maps. Royal 8vo, 21s. net. 

RUTLAND. 

Notes of an Irish Tour in 1846. By the DUKE OF RUTLAND, 

G.C.B. (LORD JOHN MANNERS). New Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 

Correspondence between the Right Honble. William Pitt 

and Charles Duke of Rutland, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 1781-1787. With 
tntrodnctory Note by JOHN DTJKB o RUTLAND. 8vo. 7s. d. 

The Collected Writings of Janetta, Duchess of Rutland. With 

Portrait and Illustrations. 2 vols. post 8vo, 15s. net. 

Impressions of Bad-Homburg. Comprising a Short Account 

of the Women's Associations of Germany under the Red Cross. By the DUCHESS 
OF RUTLAND (LADY JOHN MANNERS). Crown 8vo, Is. 6d. 

Some Personal Recollections of the Later Years of the Earl 

of Beaconsfield, K.G. Sixth Edition. 6d. 

Employment of Women in the Public Service. 6d. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 27 

RUTLAND. 

Some of the Advantages of Easily Accessible Reading and 

Recreation Booms and Free Libraries. With Remarks on Starting and Main* 
taining them. Second Edition, Crown 8vo, Is. 

A Sequel to Rich Men's Dwellings, and other Occasional 

Papers. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 

Encouraging Experiences of Reading and Recreation Rooms, 

Aims of Guilds. Nottingham Social Guide, Existing Institutions, &c., &c. 
Crown 8vo, Is. 

SAINTSBURY. 

A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe. From 

the Earliest Texts to the Present Day. By GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A. (Oxon.) 
Hon. LL.D. (Aberd.), Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the Univer 
sity of Edinburgh. In 3 vols. demy 8vo. VoL I. Classical and Mediaeval Criti- 
cism. 16s. net. 

Vol. II. From the Renaissance to the Decline of Eighteenth Century Ortho- 
doxy. 20s. net. 
Vol. III. Nineteenth Century. 20s. net. 

Matthew Arnold. "Modern English Writers." Second Edi- 
tion. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d 

The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (12th 

and 13th Centuries). "Periods of European Literature." Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

The Earlier Renaissance. " Periods of European Literature." 

Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

"SCOLOPAX." A Book of the Snipe. By SCOLOPAX. 

Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

SCOTT. Tom Cringle's Log. By MICHAEL SCOTT. New Edition. 

With 19 Full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

SCUDAMORE. Belgium and the Belgians. By CYBIL SCTJDA- 

MORE. With Illustrations. Square crown 8vo, 6s. 

SERMONS TO BRITONS ABROAD : Preached in a Foreign 

Station of a Scottish Church. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 

SERREL. With Hound and Terrier in the Field. By ALYS 

F. SERREL. Edited by FRANCES SLAUGHTER. With numerous Illustrations. 
Demy 8vo, 15s. net. 

SETH. A Study of Ethical Principles. BY JAMES SETH, M.A., 

Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Eighth Edition, 
Revised. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d. 

SHARPLEY. Aristophanes Pax. Edited, with Introduction 

and Notes, by H. SHARPLEY. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net 

SHAW. Securities over Moveables. Four Lectures delivered at 

the Request of the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh, the Institute of Ac- 
countants and Actuaries in Glasgow, and the Institute of Bankers in Scotland, 
in 1902-3. Demy 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 

"SIGMA." Personalia: Political, Social and Various. By 

" SIGMA." In 1 vol. crown 8vo, 5s. net 

SIMPSON. Side-Lights on Siberia. Some account of the Great 

Siberian Iron Road : The Prisons and Exile System. By J. Y. SIMPSON, M.A., 
D.Sc. With numerous Illustrations and a Map. Demy 8vo, 16s. 

SINCLAIR. The Thistle and Fleur de Lys : A Vocabulary of 

Franco-Scottish Words. By ISABEL G. SINCLAIR. Crown 8vo, 8s. net. 



28 William Blackwood & Sons. 



SKELTON. The Handbook of Public Health. A New Edition, 

Revised by JAMES PATTEN MACDOUGALL, Advocate, Secretary to the Local 
Government Board for Scotland, Joint-Author of ' The Parish Council Guide for 
Scotland,' and ABIJAH MURRAY, Chief Clerk of the Local Government Board for 
Scotland. In Two Parts. Crown 8vo. Part I. The Public Health (Scotland) 
Act, 1897, with Notes. 3s. 6d. net. 

SKRINE. Fontenoy, and Great Britain's share in the War of the 

Austrian Succession. By F. H. SKRINE. With Map. Plans, and Illustrations. 
Demy 8vo, 21s. net. 

SMITH. 

The Transition Period. "Periods of European Literature. 

By G. GREGORY SMITH. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

Specimens of Middle Scots. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. 
SMITH. Retrievers, and how to Break them. By Lieutenant- 

Colcuel Sir HENRY SMITH, K.G.B. With an Introduction by Mr S. B. SHIRLEY, 
President of the Kennel Club. Dedicated by special permission to H.R.H. the 
Duke ot Cornwall and York. New Edition, enlarged. With additional Illus- 
trations. Crown 8vo. Is. 

SNELL. The Fourteenth Century. " Periods of European 

Literature." By F. J. SNELL. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

SOLBfe Hints on Hockey. By F. DE LISLE SOLBE. English 

International Team : 1897, 1898, 1899, 1900. With Diagrams. Fcap. 8vo, Is. 

"SON OF THE MARSHES, A." 

From Spring to Fall; or, When Life Stirs. By "A SON OF 

THE MARSHES." Cheap Uniform Edition. Orown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Within an Hour of London Town : Among Wild Birds and 

their Haunts. Edited by J. A. OWEN. Cheap Uniform Edition. Cr. 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

With the Woodlanders and by the Tide. Cheap Uniform 

Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

On Surrey Hills. Cheap Uniform Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
Annals of a Fishing Village. Cheap Uniform Edition. Crown 

8vo, 8s. 6d. 

SORLEY. 

The Ethics of Naturalism. By W. R. SORLEY, M.A., Fellow 

of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of 
Cambridge. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Recent Tendencies in Ethics. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net. 

SPROTT. 

The Worship and Offices of the Church of Scotland. By 

GEORGE W. SPROTT, D.D., Minister of North Berwick. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

The Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland, com- 
monly known as John Knox's Liturgy. With Historical Introduction and Illus- 
trative Notes. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. 

Scottish Liturgies of the Reign of James VI. Edited, with 

an Introduction and Notes. Crown 8vo, 4s. net. 

Euchologion: A Book of Common Order. Crown 8vo, 

4s. 6d. net. 

STEEVENS. 

Things Seen : Impressions of Men, Cities, and Books. By the 

late G. W. STEEVENS. Edited by G. 8. STREET. With a Memoir by W. E. 
HENLEY, and a Photogravure reproduction of Collier's Portrait. Memorial Edi- 
tion. Crown 8vo, 6s. 



William Blackwood & Sons. 29 



STEEVENS. 

From Capetown to Lady smith, and Egypt in 1898. Memorial 

Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

In India. With Map. Memorial Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
With Kitchener to Khartum. With 8 Maps and Plans. 

Memorial Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

The Land of the Dollar. Memorial Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
Glimpses of Three Nations. Memorial Edition. Cr. 8vo, 6s. 
Monologues of the Dead. Memorial Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
With the Conquering Turk, With 4 Maps. Ch. Ed. Cr. 8vo, 6s. 
From Capetown to Ladysmith : An Unfinished Record of the 

South African War. Edited by VERNON BLACKBURN. With Maps. Crown 8vo, 
3s. 6d. 

STEPHENS. 

The Book oi' the Farm ; detailing the Labours of the Farmer, 

Farm-Steward, Ploughman, Shepherd, Hedger, Farm-Labourer, Field-Worker, 
&nd Cattle-man. Illustrated with numerous Portraits of Animals and Engravings 
of Implements, and Plans of Farm Buildings. Fourth Edition. Revised, and 
in great part Re-written, by JAMES MACDOXALD, F.R.8.E., Secretary Highland 
and Agricultural Society of" Scotland. Complete in Six Divisional Volumes, 
bound in cloth, each 10s. 6d., or handsomely bound, in 3 volumes with leather 
bank and gilt top, 3, 3s. 

STEWAET. Haud Immemor. Keminiscences of Legal and 

Social Life in Edinburgh and London, 1850-1900. By CHARLES STEWART. With 
10 Photogravure Plates. Royal 8vo, 7s. 6d 

STEWART AND CUFF. Practical Nursing. By ISLA STEWART, 

Matron of St Bartholomew's Hospital, London ; and HERBERT B. CUFF, M.D., 
F.R.C.S., Medical Superintendent North-Eastern Fever Hospital, Tottenham, 
London. With Diagrams. In 2 vols. crown 8vo. Vol. I. Second Edition. 
3s. 6d. net. Vol. II., 3s. 6d. net. 
Also in 1 Volume, 5s. net. 

STIRLING. 

Our Regiments in South Africa, 1899-1902. Their Record, 

based on the Despatches. By JOHN STIRLING. In 1 vol. demy 8vo, 10s. net. 

The Colonials in South Africa, 1899-1902. Their Record, based 

on the Despatches. Demy Svo, 10s. net. 

STODDART. John Stuart Blackie : A Biography. By ANNA 

M. STODDART. POPULAR EDITION, with Portrait. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. 

STORMONTE. 

Dictionary of the English Language, Pronouncing, Etymo- 
logical, and Explanatory. By the Rev. JAMES STOKMONTH. Revised by the 
Rev. P. H. PHELP. Library Edition. New and Cheaper Edition, with Supple- 
ment. Imperial Svo, handsomely bound in half morocco, 18s. net. 

STORMONTH. 

ing Dictionary of the English 

s Selection of Scientific Terms. For use in 
of General Reference. The Pronunciation 

carefully revised by the Rev. P. H. PHBLP, M.A. Cantab. Sixteenth Edition, 
Revised. Crown Svo, pp. 1000. 5s. net. 

Handy Dictionary. New Edition, thoroughly Revised. By 

WILLIAM BAYNS. 16mo, Is. 



3O William Blackwood & Sons. 



STORY. William Wetmore Story and his Friends. From Letters, 

Diaries, and Recollections. By HENRY JAMES. With 2 Portraits. In 2 vols. post 
8vo, 24s. net. 

STEONG. Sonnets and Songs. By Archibald T. STRONG, M.A. 

Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 

SYNGE. The Story of the World. By M. B. SYNGE. With 

Coloured Frontispieces and numerous Illustrations by E. M. SYNGE, A.R.E., 
and Maps. 2 vols, 3s. 6d. each net. 



TAYLOR. The Story of my Life. By the late Colonel 

MEADOWS TAYLOR, Author ot 'The Confessions of a Thug,' &c., &c. Edited by 
his Daughter. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

THEOBALD. A Text-Book of Agricultural Zoology. By FEED. 

V. THEOBALD. With numerous Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 8s. 6d. 

THOMSON. Handy Book of the Flower- Garden. By DAVID 

THOMSON. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

THOMSON. A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of the 

GrapeVine. By WILLIAM THOMSON, Tweed Vineyards. Tenth Edition. 8vo, 5s. 

THOMSON. History of the Fife Light Horse. By Colonel 

ANSTRUTHER THOMSON. With numerous Portraits. Small 4to, 21s. net. 

THORBURN. The Punjab in Peace and War. By S. S. THOR- 

BURN. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net. 

THURSTON. 

The Circle. By KATHERINE CECIL THURSTON. Fifth Impres- 
sion. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

John Chilcote, M.P. Fourteenth Impression, crown 8vo, 6s. 

Cheap Edition, paper cover, 6d. 

TIELE. Elements of the Science of Religion. Part I. Morpho- 
logical. Part II. Ontological. Being the Gifford Lectures delivered before ttie 
University of Edinburgh in 1896-98. By C. P. TIELE, Theol. D,, Litt.D. (Bonon.), 
Hon. M.R.A.S., &c., Professor of the Science of Religion, in the University of 
Leiden. In 2 vols. post 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. each. 

TRANSACTIONS OF THE HIGHLAND AND AGRICUL- 
TURAL SOCIETY OP SCOTLAND. Published annually, price 5e. 

TRAVERS. 

The Way of Escape. A Novel. By GRAHAM TRAVERS (Mar- 
garet Todd, M.D.) Second Impression. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Mona Maclean, Medical Student. A Novel. Fourteenth Edi- 
tion. Crown 8vo, 6s. Cheap Edition, royal 8vo, paper cover, 6d. 

Windyhaugh. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
Fellow Travellers. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s, 



William Blackwood & Sons. 31 



TROTTER. 

A Leader of Light Horse. Life of Hodson of Hodson's 

Horse. By Captain L. J. TROTTBR, Author of ' Life of John Nicholson, Soldier 
and Statesman.' With a Portrait and 2 Maps. Demy Svo, 16s. 

The Bayard of India. Life of Lieut. - General Sir James 

Outram, Bart., G.C.B., G.C.S.I. With Portrait. Demy Svo, 16s. net. 

TRUSCOTT. The Marriage of Aminta. By L. PARRY TRUSCOTT. 

Crown Svo, 6s. 

TULLOCE. 

Modern Theories in Philosophy and Religion. By JOHN 

TTTLLOCH, D.D., Principal of St Mary's College in the University of St 
Andrews, and one of her Majesty's Chaplains in Ordinary in Scotland. 
Svo. 15s. 

TWEEDIE. The Arabian Horse: His Country and People. 

By Major-General W. TWEEDIE, C.8.I., Bengal Staff Corps; for many years 
H.B.M.'s Consul- General, Baghdad, and Political Resident for the Government 
of India in Turkish Arabia. In one vol. royal 4to, with Seven Coloured Plate? 
and other Illustrations, and a Map of the Country. Price 3, 3s. net. 

VETCH. Life, Letters, and Diaries of Lieut. -General Sir 

Gerald Graham, V.C., G.C.B., R.E. By Colonel R. H. VETCH, C.B., late Royal 
Engineers. With Portraits, Plans, and his Principal Despatches. Demy Svo, 21s. 

VOYAGE OF THE "SCOTIA," THE. Being the Record of 

a Voyage of Exploration in Antartic Seas. By THREE OF THE STAFF. Demy 
Svo, 21s. net. 

WADDELL. 

Christianity as an Ideal. By Rev. P. HATELY WADDELL, B.D. 

Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. 

Essays on Faith. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. 

WARREN'S (SAMUEL) WORKS: 

Diary of a Late Physician, doth, 2s. 6d. ; boards, 2s. 
Ten Thousand A- Year. Cloth, 3s. 6d. ; boards, 2s. 6d. 
Now and Then. The Lily and the Bee. Intellectual and 

Moral Development of the Present Age. 4s. 6d. 

Essays : Critical, Imaginative, and Juridical, 5s. 
WATSON. The Skipper. By GILBERT WATSON. Crown Svo, 6s. 
WATT. By Still Waters. By MACLEAN WATT. Is. 6d. net. 

Leather, 2s. net. 

WENLEY. Aspects of Pessimism. By R M. WENLEY, M.A., 

D.Sc., D.Phil., Professor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan, U.S.A. 
Crown Svo, 6s. 

WHIBLEY. 

Thackeray. " Modern English Writers." By CHARLES 

WHIBLEY. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. 

William Pitt. With Portraits and Caricatures. Crown Svo, 

6s. net. 



32 William Blackwood & Sons. 



WHITE. 

The Young Gerande. By EDMUND WHITE. In 1 vol. crown 

8vo, 6s. 

Bray of Buckholt. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

WILLIAMSON. Ideals of Ministry. By A. WALLACE WILLIAM- 
SON, D.D., St Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

WILSON. The Prophets and Prophecy to the Close of the Eighth 

Century B.C. By the Rev. ALEXANDER WILSON, M.A., Minister of Ythan Wells, 
Aberdeenshire. With Introductory Preface by the Rev. ALLAN MENZIES, D.D., 
Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University of St Andrews. Fcap. 8vo, Is. 
net. 

WILSON. 

Works of Professor Wilson. Edited by his Son -in -Law, 

Professor PESKIER. 12 vols. crown 8vo, 2, 8s. 

Christopher in his Sporting- Jacket. 2 vols., 8s, 

Isle of Palms, City of the Plague, and other Poems. 4s. 

Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, and other Tales. 4&, 

Essays, Critical and Imaginative. 4 vols., 16s. 

The Noctes Ambrosianse, 4 vols., 16s. 

Homer and his Translators, and the Greek Drama. Crown 

8VO, 4s. 

WORSLEY. 

Homer's Odyssey. Translated into English Verse in the 

Spenserian Stanza. By PHILIP STANHOPE WORSLEY, M.A. New and Cheaper 
Edition. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. 

Homer's Iliad. Translated by P. S. Worsley and Prof. Con- 

ington. 2 vols. crown 8vo, 21s. 

WOTHERSPOON. 

Kyrie Eleison (" Lord, have Mercy "). A Manual of Private 

Prayers. With Notes and Additional Matter. By H. J. WOTHERSPOON, M.A., 
of St Oswald's, Edinburgh. Cloth, red edges, Is. net ; limp leather, Is. 6d. net. 

Before and After. Being Part I. of 'Kyrie Eleison.' Cloth, 

limp, 6d. net. 

The Second Prayer Book of King Edward the Sixth (1552) and 

the Liturgy of Compromise. Edited by Rev. G. W. SPROTT, D.D. Crown 8vo, 
4s. net. 

YATE. Khurasan and Sistan. By Lieut.-Col. C. E. YATE, C.S.I., 

C.M.G., P.R.G.S., Indian Staff Corps, Agent to the Governor-General and Chief 
Commissioner for Baluchistan, late Agent to the Governor- General of India, and 
Her Britannic Majesty's Consul-General for Khurasan and Sistan. With Map 
and 25 Illustrations, and Portraits. Demy 8vo, 21s. 

ZACK. 

On Trial. By ZACK. Secnd Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Life is Life, and other Tales and Episodes, Second Edition. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. 

11/06, 



HOME USE 

CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
MAIN LIBRARY 

This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
1-month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405. 
6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books 

to Circulation Desk. 
Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior 

to due date. 

ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL 7 DAYS 
AFTER DATE CHECKED OUT. 


AUG19197546 

GIB. JUL1 4 76 



LD21 A-40m-l2,'74 
(S2700I*) 



General Library 

University of California 

Berkeley