Full text of "Jungle trails and jungle people; travel, adventure and observation in the Far East"

See other formats

UNGLE TRAILS

AND

UNGLE PEOPLE

CASPAR WHITNEY

UDRARY

uNivttsirr of

L CAUfOlNfA

JUNGLE TRAILS

AND

JUNGLE PEOPLE

THE LOTUS EATERS.

JUNGLE TRAILS

AND

JUNGLE PEOPLE

TEAVEL, ADVENTURE AND
OBSERVATION IN THE FAR EAST

CASPAR WHITNEY

AUTHOR OP "ON SNOW-SHOES TO THE BARREN GROUNDS," "HAWAIIAN AMERICA,"
"A SPORTING PILGRIMAGE," ETC.

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1905

LOAN SIACK

Published September, 1905

Press of

Tie New Era printing Commix
Lancaster. Pa,

OS 54 *

J. HENRY HARPER

FOR THE SAKE OP AULD LANG SYNE

447

A CONFESSION

SOMETIMES CALLED " FORE WARD " OR " PREFACE "

I wonder if it is quite fair to ask an author's
" underlying motive" for writing a book. The
Publisher declares that it is— and he is a sage in
his day and generation. He says the public wants
to know ; but I say that the public does not care a
" whoop "—if you remember what that precisely
signifies. Between ourselves, it is a tradition of
bookmaking which exacts toll of you and me with-
out giving either of us any return of happiness.
Besides, suppose the public does want to know, and
suppose the desire to be prompted by curiosity
rather than by interest, as is more than likely—
should the author yield to the demand? To be
sure he may owe much to the indulgent reader, who
too frequently gets little enough of a run for his
money,— but is not the author paying rather too
dearly by thus taking the further risk of incurring
criticism of his motives in addition to the criticism
which may salute his book? It seems to me that
to face one risk is enough for one author— cer-
tainly enough for this one author.

Then, too, perhaps the author wants to keep the
intimate whisperings of his day dreams to himself ;

vii

viii A CONFESSION

perhaps he hesitates to voice the call which, un-
heard by his fellows of the work-a-day world,
sounds ever and again to him without warning,
insistent and impelling amid the comforts and
pleasures and duties of conventional life.

Know then, you to whom the message of this
book is meaningless, that the " underlying motive' '
which prompted the journeys recorded in the fol-
lowing pages, was— flight of a spirit that would be
free from the crying newsboys and the pressure of
conventions; in a word,— the lust of adventure.
Those who open this volume to view thje contents
as of a game bag, would better close it and thus
save time— and money. There is here the hunting
and the killing of big and formidable game, but
'twas not for that alone or even chiefly I trav-
elled far from the habitations of man. The
mere destruction of game, always has been of
least interest to me in my wilderness wanderings,
and I hope I have never given any other impres-
sion. It is not the killing but the hunting which
stirs the blood of a sportsman— the contest between
his skill, persistence, endurance, and the keen
senses and protective environment of his quarry.
I acknowledge to the joy which comes in triumph
over the brute at the end of fair and hard chase—
not in the pressing of the trigger, which I never
do, except to get needed meat or an unusual trophy.

A CONFESSION ix

The wilderness in its changeful tempers, the
pathless jungle, the fascination of finding your
way, of earning your food, of lying down to sleep
beyond the guarding night stick of the policeman,
—these are the things I sought in the larger world
of which our conventionalized smaller one is but
the gate way. To pass through this gate way, to
travel at will, by my own exertions, and un-
chaperoned,— and to tell you in my halting style
something of the human and brute life which I saw
in the big world— that is why I went into the won-
drous Par East, into India, Sumatra, Malay and
Siam.

So there you have the "Foreword"— also the
confession.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE KING'S MAHOUT 1

CHAPTER II

THROUGH THE KLAWNGS OF SIAM 37

CHAPTER III

PHRA RAM MAKES A PILGRIMAGE 59

CHAPTER IV

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 87

CHAPTER V

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS Ill

CHAPTER VI

THE TROTTING RHINO OF KELANTAN 130

CHAPTER VTI

IN THE SWAMPS 164

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE EYE OF DAY: THE LOST SELADANG OF NOA

ANAK 186

Xll CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

JIN ABU FINDS AN ELEPHANT 209

CHAPTER X

UDA PRANG— JUNGLE HUNTER 241

CHAPTER XI

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 276

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE LOTUS EATERS Frontispiece

THE FINAL STAGE OF THE KING'S ELEPHANT HUNT
IN SIAM
A popular holiday; spectators flock to the scene by the thou- Facinff
sands and where the herd crosses the river the stream is ****
covered with boats 12

DRIVING THE HERD TOWARD THE KRAAL

The shifting, darting crowd of spectators hang constantly

on the heels of the elephants 24

NOOSING AND DRIVING THE HERD AROUND THE KRAAL

SO AS TO SINGLE OUT THE ROPED ELEPHANTS 32

ALONG THE KLAWNG (CANAL)

Fully half of the native house usually develops into verandah 42

A GAMBLING PLACE OFF THE SAMPENG IN BANGKOK

In the background a band is hard at work entertaining the
patrons 42

A BUSY KLAWNG IN BANGKOK

Passenger-boats. House- and freight-boats 48

A NATIVE HOUSE ON THE KLAWNG TO RATBURI

Picturesquely but uncomfortably (mosquitoes) situated in a
grove of cocoa betel-nut trees 56

THE HOUSE-BOAT WHICH SERVED ME WELL 56

PHRA RAM AND HIS BODY SERVANTS 78

SOME OF MY HUNTERS

Who assumed the clothing of civilization in an effort to
protect their bodies against the briars 84

CAMPING ON THE EDGE OF THE JUNGLE, SIAM 84

THE FAR EASTERN DEER 94

xiii

XIV ILLUSTRATIONS

FORDING A JUNGLE RIVER IN SIAM 98

MY THREE SIAMESE HUNTERS DRESSED TO MEET THE
THORNS OF THE JUNGLE
Thee. Nuam. Wan 108

THE LARGER AND MORE COMMON TYPE OF SAKAI

His sole weapon consists of the blow-gun and quiver of
poisoned darts, which he shoots with great accuracy 116

THE SMALLER AND LESS COMMON TYPE OF SAKAI

A father and his two sons. They carry the poisonous darts
in their hair and very closely resemble the Negritos of the
Philippines 118

THE SAKAI GROUND-HOUSE 122

SAKAIS CUTTING DOWN A TREE

The man cutting is about 30 feet from the ground and the
tree is 200 feet high and 6 feet in diameter. They build the
scaffolding and fell the tree in one day, using only the small
crude axe such as that seen in the topmost man's hand 126

MALAYAN DANCERS

Some dances are full of graceful though monotonous move-
ment; at times the performers paint their faces fantastically 142

THE MALAYAN WOMAN OF THE COUNTRY

Who wears the same skirt-like garment, called sarong, as the
men, only she folds it above her breasts 150

THE MALAY BAND

The violin seen here ordinarily has no place in the native
orchestra 158

CHEETA, MY FAITHFUL TAMIL, A SERVITOR OF ONE

CASTE BUT MANY FIELDS OF USEFULNESS.. 168

A MALAY VILLAGE

The houses in a Malayan village are always upon the water,
if possible, and invariably raised on piles above the ground
from six to eight feet 176

THE WILD BOAR AND HIS PUGNACIOUS COUSINS 182

THE LARGE AND FORMIDABLE ORIENTAL WILD CATTLE

FAMILY 196

ILLUSTRATIONS XV

THE PARTY WHICH NOA ANAK LED ASTRAY FOR
SELADANG
Lum Yet, the wise. Noa Anak. Scott 206

PACKING THROUGH THE SUMATRAN JUNGLE 218

ELEPHANTINE PLAYFULNESS— BAMBOO CLUMP BROKEN

DOWN AND SCATTERED 230

UDA PRANG

Who served successfully both his God and Mammon 242

TIED UP IN THE JUNGLE STREAM FOR NOON MEAL 256

ALONG THE KAMPAR, TYPICAL OF SUMATRA RIVERS.... 256

A "REAL LADY" OF THE SIAMESE JUNGLE NEAR THE
BURMA LINE
Dressed for the express purpose of having her photograph
taken by the author 268

AT THE HEAD WATERS

Disembarking from our dugout and setting out for the
interior 268

A GROUP OF INDIAN BEATERS

With the panther successfully driven out and bagged 280

STARTING OUT FOR A TIGER DRIVE IN INDIA

The howdah elephants and sportsmen leading; the pad or
driving elephants following 292

LUXURIOUS HUNTING IN INDIA

The camp of a large party, with porters in the foreground . . 302

JUNGLE TRAILS AND
JUNGLE PEOPLE

CHAPTER I
THE KING'S MAHOUT

HE was not impressive as to face or figure,
yet Choo Poh Lek was a notable character.
Of his class he was one of the few energetic,
and the only ambitious native little man with
whom I became acquainted in the Far East. And,
quite as wonderful, he did not gamble. Unques-
tionably he came honestly by his active qualities,
for Choo was a Simo-Chinese ; his father, Lee
Boon Jew, being one of the many thrifty Chinese
that, thirty-five years before, had found their way,
from the crowded Canton district of China, with
its desperate daily struggle for mere existence, to
Bangkok, whose half million people prefer mostly
to leave the business of life to Chinamen. Lee
began his commercial career humbly as a peddler
of fruit and vegetables ; and he prospered. In the
very beginning he had carried his daily stock in two

2 THE KING'S MAHOUT

heaping bushel baskets hung from a bamboo pole
which he swung from shoulder to shoulder, as,
staggering under the really heavy burden, he
called aloud his wares through the Sampeng and
other narrow land streets of the poorer quarter.
In one year he had done well enough to enable him
to buy a small dug-out, which he paddled through
the klawngs* and on the Meinam River, making
new acquaintances and new customers, while a
plook-peef compatriot in his employ supplied the
already established trade from the baskets. In
three years he had four boats; and in two more,
or five years from the day of his landing, Lee
Boon Jew had a shop in Sampeng, one on the
Meinam,— which, in addition to a general stock,
did a little trading in bamboo and rattan— a small
fleet of boats— and a Siamese wife. In due course
a son came to gladden the Chinese heart that
always rejoices in boy children, and by the time
the fond father was permitted to pridefully ex-
hibit the gaudily dressed infant in the nearby
floating shops, the little son came to be known as

* Canals.

fPlook-pee is the poll tax exacted of Chinamen, who emigrate
to Siam and do not enter Government service. It costs four
ticals and a quarter with a tax seal fastened about the wrist, or
six ticals and a half (about $3.90) for a certificate instead of the
wrist badge. Lee had paid the extra ticals in preference to wear-
ing the visible alien sign.

• THE KING'S MAHOUT 3

Choo Poll Lek, after a celebration which quite
dimmed the customary New Year festival.

Meantime not only did the business develop, but
Lee Boon Jew, who was now one of Bangkok's
merchants, attained to such prominence among his
compatriots that by the time Choo was fifteen, Lee
had become Collector in the Bird Nest Depart-
ment of the Government Revenue Service; a post
for which he was eminently fitted by both name
and nature.

The cares of office did not, however, necessitate
abandonment of the trade, grown now to an extent
that kept several large boats of his fleet solely and
constantly engaged in rattan and bamboo, for
which they made long trips up river. It was Lee's
dearest wish that his son should succeed to the
commercial enterprise which so confidently prom-
ised to make wealthy men of them both; espe-
cially since his most intimate associate, Ho Kee
Peck, had been recently appointed Farmer, under
the Government, of the Onion, Bees Wax and
Rattan Department.

Truth to tell, Lee had dreamed rosy-hued celes-
tial dreams of Choo Poh Lek's opportunities, and
the possible prosperity that might easily come to
a business having two silent partners in the local
revenue service. Between the good offices of the
Bird Nest and of the Onion, Bees Wax and Rattan

4 THE KING'S MAHOUT

departments, how much profitable trade might not,
indeed, and readily, be diverted to the boats of Lee
Boon Jew & Son !

But Choo proved a sore disappointment to his
ambitious father. He had, it is true, given all of
his boyhood and much of his young manhood to
Lee's boats, and in fact, was accounted among the
shrewdest traders and most skilled boatmen on
the river. There were even those who thought the
son more astute than his non-talkative but deep
thinking Cantonese parent. At all events, Choo
attained to such efficiency that his father sent him
frequently up the river on the more important
mission of trading for rattan and bamboo. And
it was on one of these trips inland that Choo
crossed the trail of the elephant catchers, and fell
under the influence which was to govern, not to
say guide, his life's star thereafter and forever
more.

From that day, it seemed to Choo that boats
were the most uninteresting things in all the
world, and trading the least ambitious of all pro-
fessions. He felt the spell of the elephant catch-
ers, the silent mystery of the jungle, the excite-
ment of the chase; and then and there he deter-
mined that an elephant catcher he would be. Choo
was naturally of an adventuresome temperament,
which is decidedly unusual in one of his race ; but

THE KING'S MAHOUT 5

Choo was an unusual type, as already I have inti-
mated. The humdrum life of the fruit and vege-
table boats, of haggling over trades in rattan, and
of, between times, pulling a heavy oar, had become
as iron in his soul long before he found the real
trail in the jungle. Deep in his heart was the
realization that life for him lacked the spark
which makes it worth while ; yet until that eventful
day far in the forest, he knew as little of what he
really wanted as did his father. On the day he
found the elephant encampment, however, Choo
found his spark and his vocation.

Now filial duty rules strong in the Asiatic son,
and Choo had no thought of deserting his father ;
but by Oriental cunning he brought it about that
the rattan business, necessitating up-country trips,
became his chief concern in the firm of Lee Boon
Jew & Son, while the vegetable and fruit end of
the firm's interest fell to subordinates. Thus it
was that Choo took up the double life of elephant
catching and the more prosaic, if profitable, occu-
pation of rattan trading. It must be recorded
that he neglected neither and prospered in each;
to such a degree, in fact, did the rattan and
bamboo interests develop that Lee, the father,
found his position in Bangkok advanced from
small trader to one whose shipments were solicited
by the local steamship company.

6 THE KING'S MAHOUT

Meantime the son rose from one of the half
hundred beaters employed in elephant catching to
mahout, for which he seemed to have marked apti-
tude. Indeed his quick and sympathetic under-
standing of elephants, and ready comprehension
of their management convinced the head man, who
had served the king for twenty years, that in Choo
he had found a mahout of exceptional promise.

It came to pass one day that Chow Chorn Dum-
arong— who was a cousin of one of the children
of one of the forty-seven wives of the king, and
something or other in the War Department-
chanced to be at the encampment of elephant
catchers and a witness of Choo's really clever
handling of a tame tusker just ending a period of
"must,"* during which it had been somewhat
difficult of control. Choo's work astride the neck
of the unruly bull, which he had finally subdued,
had been so courageous and so intelligent, that it
impressed the king's cousin and he forthwith com-
manded Choo to be regularly engaged in Govern-
ment service. So it came about that Choo did
more elephant than rattan hunting, increasing his
prowess and reputation in one as his activity in
the other decreased, much to the mental anguish

* " Must " is the temporary madness which now and then, though
not invariably, overtakes the male elephant when kept apart from
his mates.

THE KING'S MAHOUT 7

of his father, Lee Boon Jew, who, although waxing
opulent between his own post in the Bird Nest De-
partment and the sympathetic co-operation of his
wise and understanding friend Ho Pee Peck, the
Onion Farmer, was aggrieved to the depths of his
frugal Chinese soul by the unexplained falling off
in the rattan and bamboo branch of his up-river
business.

But one day, after two years more of mental
perturbationy and gradually diminishing rattan
profits, the father's heart leaped for joy under the
word brought him at Bangkok, that Choo had been
summoned into the presence of Krom Mun
Monrtee Deeng— another one of the king's mul-
titude of cousins, as well as a high man in the
Interior Department— and regularly enrolled
among the royal mahouts who drive in the period-
ical elephant catch or parade on festive occasions,
or personally conduct the jaunts of the king's chil-
dren when one of his majesty's several dozen goes
forth on an official airing. And so ended the
double life of Choo Poh Lek ; for henceforth there
was no further pretence of attending to the rattan
business. Choo's soul was freed from trade bond-
age. Incidentally I must however add, because I
became much interested in Lee, quite a character
in his way, that the honor reflected upon the father
through this appointment of his son, and the em-

8 THE KING'S MAHOUT

ployment of a capable man to look after the up-
country rattan interests, combined to place the
name of Lee Boon Jew & Son among the foremost
traders of the city.

I knew Lee weeks before I met Choo; and the
first time I saw the latter was in the royal stables
within the king's enclosure where I was giving
rather disrespectful scrutiny to the sacred white
elephants, which, notwithstanding surroundings
and attendants, impressed me only because of
seeming insignificance in their washed out hide
and pale blue eyes. I immediately lost interest in
the elephants on discovering Choo. Even had his
obviously at home air failed to attract my wander-
ing gaze, his dress would have arrested my eye,
for it was the most resplendent thing in the way
of native costume I had seen outside the palace.
Not that it was so rich or remarkable in itself,
but because the average Siamese is poor and dirty
and inconspicuously, not to say sombrely, clad;
whereas Choo was clean and brilliant and well fed.
He wore a red and blue check panung,* a yellow

* The panung is a strip of cloth or silk three yards long and a
yard broad. It is put on by a turn about the waist, the end being
then carried between the legs and up through the waist and down
through the legs again before fastened finally to the waist, to thus
make a pair of loose, baggy knee breeches that, however, open up
the back of the leg as the wearer walks. Fashioned in this way,
the panung is worn by both men and women.

THE KING'S MAHOUT 9

silk jacket fastened to the chin, with buttons made
from silver half ticals, a round piece of Siamese
money worth about thirty cents ; and was bare of
head, and legs from knee down to stockingless feet.

He was an important looking personage ; nothing
like him in fact had I met in the royal enclosure,
where I had gone seeking the unusual. But my
attempt to engage him in conversation was a fail-
ure, for he spoke no English.

The second time I saw the king's mahout was a
few days later, in Lee's shop on the river, where I
was making purchases for my hunting outfit which
I was then getting together. Lee knew English
fairly well and I often chatted with him, though
he had never spoken to me of his distinguished
son, so that, when I saw Choo walk into the shop
and make himself very much at home, I naturally
asked about him; then Lee opened his heart, for
he was very proud of the boy, and told me the
whole story as I have told you.

Choo at once became a very interesting person-
ality to me ; because of the unusual type of Asiatic
he represented, and on my own account because,
having seen something of elephant catching in
India, I wanted also to see the work of rounding
up the elephants in the jungle preparatory to their
being driven into the kraal at Ayuthia, the old
Siamese capital, for what is called the " royal

10 THE KING'S MAHOUT

hunt," but what is nothing more or less than a
means of adding to the work-a-day elephants kept
in the king's stables.

Lee comfortingly assured me he thought it could
be arranged for me to make a trip with Choo to
the elephant encampment ; and sure enough it came
about in due course that as his Majesty, Phrabat
Somdet Phra Paramendr Maha Chulalongkorn
Klou, otherwise and more briefly known as Chula-
longkorn I, had commanded a royal hunt, Choo
and I in season set out on our way up the river in
a canoe, carrying no provisions, for we were to
stop the nights en route with friends of the firm
of Lee Boon Jew & Son.

Choo's journey to the jungle resembled the tri-
umphant march of a popular toreador. 'Twas
fortunate we had given ourselves ample time, for
we tarried often and long; not that I objected,
because I am always on the lookout for human
documents, and this trip was full of them, many
not altogether agreeable, but interesting, for these
were the real people of Siam. Now, the real
people of Siam are not always pleasant to live
with ; too many of them are poor, and dirty, not-
withstanding the river flowing past the door—
though, speaking of dirty things, it would be diffi-
cult to find water farther from its pure state than
these rivers which serve to sewer and to irrigate

THE KING'S MAHOUT 11

Siam. Also the houses as often as not are in
wretched condition, for it seems to be traditional
with the Siamese not to repair them, but when
they have tumbled about their ears, to vacate and
build another: not a particularly expensive plan,
since the house consists of loosely put together
bamboo raised on stilts six to eight feet ; and bam-
boo grows at everyone's back door in Siam.

Siamese food principally consists of dried, fre-
quently rotted fish, and rice, done into curries
which comprise a little of about every kind of
condiment, and especially a very popular sauce
called namphrik, a chutney-like and thoroughly
mixed thing made of red pepper, shrimp, garlic,
onions, citron, ginger, and tamarind seeds. The
only reason for the fish being putrid is because the
natives like it so, for fish are plentiful in the
rivers and fishermen numerous, though their ways
of catching are rather amusing and antique. One
favorite method, borrowed from the Chinese, is
beating the waters with long bamboo sticks to
frighten the fish into an eight or ten foot squarish
net which is lowered into the river from a frame-
work on the bank by a system of wheels and ropes
and pulleys ; and hoisted up again when the catch
is complete. I must confess that when the fish in
the curry chanced to be dried instead of decayed,
I found the concoction toothsome. In fact a really

12 THE KING'S MAHOUT

good curry is in a class apart ; but one must go to
India or the Far East to get it at its best. Some-
times the natives eat pork and oftentimes chicken,
but for the most part, rice and the fish curry con-
stitute their chief diet, supplemented by the fruit
of the country, of which there are many kinds—
mangosteen, mango, pineapple, banana, orange,
bread fruit, and that most healthful of all Siamese
fruits, the papaya, which grows back from the
water and is a greenish oval melon that suggests
cantaloupe wThen opened.

We did not get really outside of the Bangkok
city limits the first day of our up-river journey,
as we spent the night at the home of one of Choo's
admiring friends, in the centre of a little floating
community, where a " poey " was given in his
honor. Now a poey may take several different
directions of hilarity, but is always an excuse for
eating and gambling. The poey in honor of Choo
included about everything on the entertainment
catalogue. First was a feast which overflowed
from the house of Choo's friend into adjoining
ones, attended by two dozen men and women who
sat in groups on the floors eating a loud smelling
fish sauce with gusto— and with their fingers;
neither wine nor spirits were in evidence— the Sia-
mese as a rule drinking water. Then came ad-
journment to the river bank, where on a raised

PC 3

o .S

O &

THE KING'S MAHOUT 13

platform, roofed, but open on its four sides, three
girls danced and posed after the gracefully delib-
erate Siamese fashion, accompanied by the melo-
dious, always quick time, though dirge-like, music
of a small native orchestra. The dancing was of
the usual Oriental character, not, as popularly sup-
posed among Occidentals, of the " couchee cou-
chee " Midway variety, but a posturing in which
hands and arms and shoulders played the promi-
nent part. In a word it was a kind of slow walk-
around to exhibit and emphasize the movements of
arms and hands, the supreme test of the dancer
being suppleness of wrist and shoulder; some of
the most expert could bend back their hands so
that the long finger nails almost touched the fore-
arm. The band itself consisted of a group of
metal cups, ranging in size from five to fourteen
inches in diameter, a series of hollow bamboo
sticks, also arranged to scale, two drums and a kind
of flute ; and the musicians sat on the floor.

Nearby, and attracting at least an equal number
of spectators, was another platform level with the
ground, where gambling proceeded industriously.

Siamese silver money seems to have been fash-
ioned to meet the native passion for gambling. It
ranges in value (gold) from six cents up to sixty
cents, and in size from a small marble with its
four sides flattened (which describes the tical),

14 THE KING'S MAHOUT

down to that of a French pea. There is also much
flat money made of copper, glass and china, run-
ning into fractions of a cent. The favorite game
is a species of roulette, for which purpose the
money is admirably suited to the rake of the
croupier. Comparatively recently the Government
has been issuing flat ten cent silver pieces, and the
extent of gambling is suggested by the great num-
ber of these coming to one in the ordinary course
of the day's business, that have been cupped to
facilitate their handling on the gaming board.

After four days on the Meinam we turned off
on a smaller river somewhere below Ayuthia, and
took a northeasterly direction through heavy
foliage, and more monkeys than I had ever seen.
The first night we stopped at a house dilapidated
rather more than ordinarily, where inside a lone
old woman sat weaving a varied colored cloth,
while outside on the veranda-like addition— which
is practically half of every up-country Siamese
abode— were a girl and a boy making water buckets
and ornaments of bamboo.

I often wondered what these Far Eastern people
would do without bamboo. It is a pivot of their
industrial life. Growing in groves ranging from
twenty to forty feet in height, though I have seen
some higher, it varies in diameter from two to
fifteen or even more inches. The tender shoots of

THE KING'S MAHOUT 15

the young bamboo are good eating, while the tree
in its different sizes and conditions of growth pro-
vides a valuable article of export, the timber for
house making, the fibre for mats and baskets and
personal ornaments, while, in hollowed sections,
it is made into buckets and water pipes.

Another day's travel on the smaller river
brought us to the encampment of the elephant
catchers. Here were about one hundred men,
bared to the waist, and a score of tuskers; the
former divided among a small colony of elevated
bamboo houses, and the latter scattered at graze
in the surrounding jungle, wearing rattan hobbles
around their feet, and bells of hollow bamboo at
their necks. This was the home camp, where
preparations had been making in leisurely and
truly Oriental fashion for the start toward the
interior ; but on the evening of our arrival a mod-
erate state of excitement resulted from a native
bringing in the report, which he had got third
liand, of a large white elephant seen in the jungle.

The day was in Siam when the lucky man who
discovered a white elephant was raised to the rank
of nobility, and in case of its capture, very likely
was given one of the king's gross of daughters in
marriage. In the old days the catching of such
an elephant was a signal for general holiday-
making and feasting; nobles were sent to the jun-

16 THE KING'S MAHOUT

gle to guard it, and ropes of silk were considered
the only suitable tether for an animal accustomed
to the deference of a populous country.

When My Lord the Elephant had rested at
the end of his silken tether sufficiently to become
reconciled to his encompassed condition, he was
taken in much glory to Bangkok, where, after
being paraded and saluted, he was lodged in a
specially prepared palace. Here he was sung to
and danced before, given exalted titles, shaded by
golden umbrellas and decorated with trappings of
great value. In fact the white elephant was once
made a great deal of, but never really worshipped,
as some writers have declared. Because of its
rarity it is still very highly prized by the king and
though capture is unusual enough to create excite-
ment, yet popular rejoicing and honors for the
catcher do not nowadays attend the event. But
the white elephants continue to stand unemployed
in the royal stables at Bangkok— where western
ideas are becoming evident in electric lighting and
trolley cars. There were four in the royal stables
at the time of my visit, leading lives of luxurious
ease. The real local consequence of the white ele-
phant rests in it being to Siam what the eagle is
to America, the lion is to England— a national
emblem. On a scarlet background it forms the
Siamese imperial flag, and gives name to one of

THE KING'S MAHOUT 17

the highest orders of merit in the gift of the
king.

So while the little colony of catchers in the
jungle lost no sleep and missed no fish curry on
account of the reported white elephant, which, let
me say here, did not materialize, yet the move-
ment toward the interior began on the day after
our arrival. We moved slowly — very slowly, for
the elephant normally does not travel faster than
about four miles an hour— through heavy, rather
open forest, and stretches of thinnish woodland,
where the jungle undergrowth was so dense that
even the elephants avoided it. Quite the most
interesting jungle thing I saw on these several
days of inland travel was the Poh tree, sacred to
the Siamese because, it is said, under its shade
Buddha had his last earthly sleep.

At night we camped in groups; the mahouts
divided between two, the beaters or scouts, who
walked, scattered among a dozen others. The
whole formed a large circle, of which the inner
part was filled with little bamboo platforms raised
four or five feet above the ground for sleeping.
Outside this circle was a larger one around which
flamed the many separate fires of each group of
mahouts and beaters, that were used first for cook-
ing, and kept burning throughout the night as a
danger signal to prowling beasts, and as an inade-

18 THE KING'S MAHOUT

quate protection against mosquitoes, of which
there were myriads. Choo and I made a group of
our own, and although he did not exactly fill the
roll of servant to me, he did my cooking, and kept
the fire burning. Beyond the outside circle of
fire grazed the hobbled elephants in the nearby
jungle.

The king's mahout had offered me a seat behind
where he rode on the elephant's neck, with his
knees just back of its ears, but I preferred to walk,
and was well repaid by the little side excursions I
was thus able to make and the many closer inspec-
tions afforded of small red deer, flitting insects and
flying birds. For a week we continued our north-
easterly travel by day and our mosquito fighting
by night, slowly drawing closer to the section
where the scouts reported wild elephants in several
herds; for always as we moved in the day the
scouts kept well ahead, prospecting. Finally, one
night Choo made me understand that our outposts,
so to say, were in touch with the enemy.

And now began the, to me, only interesting work
of reconnoitring the elephants; of obtaining posi-
tive knowledge as to the number of herds, the loca-
tion of each with relation to the others and to the
surrounding country, the number of elephants in
each herd— their size, and their apparent temper
collectively and individually.

THE KING'S MAHOUT 19

Elephant catching in Siam differs quite mate-
rially in procedure and in difficulties from catch-
ing elephants in India, where also its economical
value is appreciated. The Indian Government
maintains an official department, with men well
paid to study the ways of elephants and the best
method of catching and subsequently training
them ; which means training schools scattered over
the country. In India no systematic attempt is
made to consolidate two or more wild herds, but
when the scouts have discovered one it is stealthily
surrounded, and held together by a ring of men,
two about every forty feet, who keep the elephants
intact, as well as in control, by days of exploding
guns, and nights of crashing gongs and blazing
fires. Meanwhile a log keddah (corral) is build-
ing close at hand with all the speed possible to be
got out of several hundred natives by a terribly
earnest white headman who sleeps neither day nor
night. In fact no one sleeps much in the few
anxious days between surrounding the herd and
constructing the corral. From two to four days
are required to build the keddah, which when com-
pleted is an eight to ten foot high stockade formed
of good-sized logs, one end planted firmly in the
ground, and the whole securely bound together by
rattan, thus enclosing about an acre of partially
cleared jungle, with the big trees left standing.

20 THE KING'S MAHOUT

Into this keddah, through a funnel-shaped runway
reaching to the human circle, the frightened,
scrambling, grunting herd is urged by the beaters
on tame elephants ; once within, the wild elephants
are noosed one by one by the legs and tied to trees
by the catchers mounted on the tame elephants.
All the while the human circle is in evidence around
the outside of the keddah to help on the deception
played upon the huge beasts, that they cannot
escape.

The native way of catching elephants both in
India and in the Far East, is usually by the simple
means of digging pitfalls along their routes to the
rivers ; for the elephant is a thirsty beast and when
in herds makes beaten paths to water, always
returning by the same way. Thus easily they fall
into the waylaying pits, which are about eight feet
wide on the top, six feet wide at the bottom and
eight feet deep.

In Siam, catching elephants is a different and an
easier game for several reasons; because (1) the
region over which they roam is much more con-
fined than in India, and (2) as the so-called hunt is
a periodical event of many years' standing, large
numbers of jungle elephants have been rounded up
and corralled so comparatively often as to have
become semi-tame. Of course there are many in
every drive that have not been corralled, and some

THE KING'S MAHOUT 21

that do not take kindly to the king's utilitarian
and amusement-making scheme. Aside from the
white elephant, which is an albino, a freak, there
are two varieties in Siam: a smallish kind with
tusks, quite easily broken to work if not too old;
and a larger, stronger, tuskless species that is not
so easily handled, is something of a fighter and is
avoided in the roval hunt in favor of the smaller,
some of which, however, carry ivory of splendid
proportions. The Siamese elephant belongs, of
course, to the Asiatic species, which in size both
of body and tusks, is inferior to the African. Of
the Asiatic, the Siamese averages neither so large
as the Indian nor so small as the Malayan; and
sometimes its ivory compares favorably with that
of any species. The largest tusk ever taken from
a Siamese elephant measures 9 feet, 10J inches in
length, and 8 inches in diameter at the base, and is
now in the Royal Museum at Bangkok. Inciden-
tally I wish to say that almost never have I found
tusks of any kind of elephant of the same length,
one showing usually more wear from root digging
or what not than the other.

So soon as the scouts brought back word of our
being in touch with the herds, camp was pitched
and the tame elephants hobbled ; and then the en-
tire force spread out till a full one hundred yards
separated one man from another, making a pains-

22 THE KING'S MAHOUT

taking and wide survey of the country within a
five-mile radius. The camp and the scouts were
kept some distance from where the elephants had
been located, and withdrew from their immediate
neighborhood so fast as others were discovered—
because the elephant, being mostly nocturnal and
hence with its senses of smell and touch very
acutely developed to enable it to distinguish the
various kinds of trees and shrubs upon which it
feeds, would be warned by the man scent and move
off. For that reason our advance party, through
all the manoeuvres of locating the elephants, be-
came a thin brown line of scouts. It was not so
difficult to find the elephants, moving casually in
herds of varying sizes up hill and down, for they
are very noisy and destructive; the difficulty was
to escape detection, which in this preliminary sur-
vey might result in frightening them away.

Working in this way the scouts had within ten
days located one fairly sized herd and two smaller
ones, besides some scattered, making altogether
about two hundred and forty. And this successful
and rather speedy result was not to be credited
entirely to their efforts on the present hunt; a
large share being due the system in vogue. These
men are more or less in touch with the elephants
most of the time ; in fact, in a measure they are to
the elephant haunts what the cowboys are to the

THE KING'S MAHOUT 23

cattle range. In a broad sense the elephants are
practically always under their eyes— a very broad
sense, of course, but they know where to find them
and the direction of their migrations. Yet some-
times weeks and months are spent by these ele-
phant catchers in rounding up and heading stray-
ing herds preparatory to starting the final gath-
ering for the drive toward Ayuthia.

With the three herds located, perhaps five miles
separating the one on the extreme north from the
stragglers at the extreme south, the plan of consol-
idation was begun. For this purpose the thin
brown line stretched its two halves, one across the
north and the other to the south of the herds, while
the tame tuskers and their mahouts covered the
east approach. As the big herd was at the south,
the plan was to form a junction by driving the
two smaller ones and the scattering individuals
down to the larger. Beginning unobtrusively, it
was three days before the individuals had joined
the smaller herds, and it took two days more before
all these were headed south. Short as was the dis-
tance, it required six days longer to consolidate
those herds; patient days and anxious nights, for
the danger in elephant catching is the beast's ner-
vous, fearful temperament which subjects him to
ungovernable fits of panic. Writers of romance
to the contrary notwithstanding, the elephant is

24 THE KING'S MAHOUT

a most undependable beast. Hence everything
is done quietly, with no sudden movements to
startle the elephants, or any unnecessary direct-
ness of approach. The entire effort of gathering
scattered herds is furtive as much as the circum-
stances will allow. Once the elephants have been
got together into one herd, the line of scouts may
become a circle with a human post and a lurid
brush fire alternating every ten yards around its
length ; or it may simply herd the beasts according
to their temper. But no noise is made except in
cases where elephants move too closely to the
limits of the enclosure; elephants have broken
through and escaped, but rarely.

Choo's fitness for the post of head mahout was
evident from the day of leaving the home camp
back on the little river; but only when the drive of
the consolidated herd toward Ayuthia began, did
his consummate skill manifest itself. His hand-
ling not only of his own elephant, but his execu-
tive ability in placing the other elephants, and the
beaters, made perfectly easy of comprehension
why he had advanced so rapidly among his fellows.
Although he was kind to his elephants, Choo never
showed them the slightest affection ; holding them
under the strictest discipline and exacting instant
obedience under penalty of severe punishment. A
trainer of reputation with whom in my boyhood

THE KING'S MAHOUT 25

days I was on terms of daily intercourse, once told
me that there are two things you must never do
with an elephant if you wish to control it. First,
never disappoint, and second, never show affec-
tion for it, as the animal 's own regard for you
will be sure to diminish in proportion as you are
demonstrative. Certainly Choo achieved brilliant
success with just such methods. Often, however,
he talked to his elephants, sometimes encour-
agingly, sometimes sharply, as the occasion war-
ranted, but never tenderly. His usual tone was a
complaining one, and though I could not under-
stand what he said, I have heard him for several
minutes at a time in an uninterrupted high-pitched
oratorical effort, rather suggesting a father read-
ing the riot act to a sluggard son. Perhaps it was
my imagination— and at all events I do not offer
it as a contribution to the new school of animal
story-tellers— but it always seemed to me that
Choo's mount showed unmistakable contrition in
the, as it appeared to me, absurdly abashed expres-
sion which came into his face, and the droopiness
of the pendent trunk. Often I went into roars of
laughter at sight of Choo leaning over the ele-
phant's ear solemnly lecturing, while the beast
blinked its uninviting little pig eyes. At such
times the king's mahout included me in the tale
of woe he confided to the elephant's great flopping

26 THE KING'S MAHOUT

ear. Always Choo wore an amulet of jade and
now that he had doffed his yellow silk jacket and,
like the others, wore a cotton panung, with bare
upper body, I noticed that he also kept around his
neck a tiny human image of a kind I had seen
Buddhist priests making of tree roots and selling
to ease native superstition.

Choo's plan of driving the herd was masterful;
there was no confusion, nor any sign to indicate
that the task was difficult. Perhaps a half mile
area was occupied by the gathered elephants when
the final drive began, and it was not possible from
one side of the herd to see the other side of the
jungle. Choo placed four of his largest tame
tuskers, two at each opening, as extreme western
outposts of the driving line, and somewhat closer
to the herd. The remaining tuskers were divided
among the north and south sides and the rear, with
more of them at the sides than in the rear, where
were the most beaters. So far as I could see, the
only apparent anxious movement was in getting
the herd started, and that was finally accomplished
by half a dozen tame elephants taking positions at
the head of the lot. In fact, Choo kept several of
these at the head of the herd throughout the drive
to the river. Sometimes the elephants would
move steadily as though really travelling with
an objective in view; again they fed along leis-

THE KING'S MAHOUT 27

urely, scattered over the considerable enclosure
within the driving lines. Sometimes several
would come against one side of the driving line
and be startled into sudden retreat, or stand in
questioning attitude before backing into the main
body. But always the herd moved on, day and
night, though sometimes not over five miles would
be covered in twelve hours. It was a leisurely
saunter, but never a moment did Choo relax his
vigilance.

There was not the amount of trumpeting some of
us have been led to believe. Once in a while the
shrill trunk call of fear would be heard, but more
often the low mouth note, a sort of grunting or
questioning sound— and not at all on the drive
toward the river was heard the throat roar of rage.
It was, in fact, because of Choo 's generalship and
individual skill, a very well behaved herd of ele-
phants that pursued its snail-like course river-
wards without accident.

On the tenth day Choo brought the herd to the
jungle at the river's edge just in front of Ayuthia,
and early the following morning four Siamese im-
perial flags floated above the kraal as signal for
him to begin the final drive into the enclosure. In-
stanter the camp was in a buzz of serious-faced
preparation for the final, and in some respects the
most difficult, stage of the elephant catching ; weeks

28 THE KING'S MAHOUT

of patient toil and a successful drive might be lost
by mishap in getting the herd across the river and
the remaining couple of miles. The king's mahout
prepared for the test with the apparent confidence
and thoroughness that had stamped all his work
on the drive. First he put two men on each of
his score of tame elephants, the second carrying
a bamboo pole; then he sent three of the tuskers
thus equipped into the side of the herd nearest
the river. These made their way slowly, never
hurriedly, yet always determinedly, among the
wild ones, cutting out a group of eight which they
headed riverwards. Then two other tuskers en-
tered the herd and began similar tactics ; and
simultaneously the tuskers guarding the outer
circle, and the beaters crowded forward. Some-
times one of the wild ones, being moved outside of
the herd in the lead, would escape and return.
Then shone out in bold relief Choo's unflinching
grasp of his business. There would be no chasing
of that escaped elephant, no hustling movements
by any one to suggest that the unusual had oc-
curred; but three other mounted tuskers would
work into and through the herd in apparent aim-
lessness, yet always toward the truant. The es-
caped one might shift about among its fellows,
might dodge, but sooner or later it found itself
between two of the tuskers, with the third at its

THE KING'S MAHOUT 29

stern; and eventually it was back whence it had
broken away, all without fuss or excitement by
either the tuskers or the mahouts on their backs.
Sometimes an hour would be consumed returning
such a one ; but return was inevitable.

Choo knew, with the river once in sight, at least
half his troubles would be over, for elephants take
to water like ducks ; so he maintained the arrange-
ment of beaters and the several tuskers in the lead,
the lot travelling at not more than a mile an hour,
until the bank was reached, where the tuskers
slipped to one side and the entire herd was soon
in the river, bathing and blowing water through
their trunks, to indicate in elephantine way their
joy of living. With spectators on the banks and
afloat in numberless small craft, the drive out of
the river into the wings running down to the kraal
entrance is always a critical period, so Choo per-
mitted the herd to wallow and squirt water over
themselves to their heart's content; for nearly an
hour in fact. Then he placed fully half his tuskers
at the head of the herd and with the remainder
covering its rear, began the move toward the kraal,
less than a quarter mile distant. Happily for
Choo the bath had put the elephants in a very com-
fortable frame of mind and they moved forward,
following the tuskers unhesitatingly out on to the
bank, despite the fact that all Ayuthia and many

30 THE KING'S MAHOUT

besides were holiday making within a few hundred
yards. As the herd swung ponderously along into
the funnel-shaped enclosure— which is made of
massive twelve-foot high posts firmly planted
every two feet and leads directly to the gate of the
kraal— Choo withdrew from the lead to the rear
all save two of the tame elephants. The herd
moved peacefully however until a big female, with
its little calf walking almost concealed under the
mother's stomach, endeavored to break back from
the side, and made quite a commotion when checked
by the rear guard. Although no general panic
resulted, the row seemed to get on the nerves of
the elephants, whose questioning, expectant ex-
pression of countenance suggested painful timor-
ousness. As the herd neared the kraal, getting
more compact all the time in the narrowing run-
way, the elephants appeared to sense a trap,
crowding together and breaking into groups
against the heavy posts, so that Choo had to bring
up several of his tuskers whose mahouts prodded
the obstreperous ones into harmony. It was
pretty much of a rough-and-tumble scramble at
the kraal gate, large enough to admit only one ele-
phant at a time. Perhaps a third of the herd fol-
lowed the leading tame tuskers into the kraal, but
the remainder got jammed, and the ensuing scene
of confusion and of wild endeavor to get some-

THE KING'S MAHOUT 31

where, tested the rear guard to its utmost and must
have given the king's mahout at least a few uncom-
fortable moments. At length, however, the kraal
gate closed on the last elephant, and Choo had
brought his part of the royal hunt to a successful
conclusion.

The Ayuthia elephant kraal was built over one
hundred years ago, not long after the seat of the
Siamese Government had been moved from this
ancient capital to Bangkok. It is an enclosure
about two hundred feet square, surrounded by a
brick wall averaging perhaps fourteen to fifteen
feet in thickness, with a height of nine feet. On
each side is a parapet forming an excellent prome-
nade under the shade of some large trees. About
twenty feet inside the brick wall is a smaller en-
closure made of huge teak logs, planted firmly, so
as to leave just space enough between every two
for a man to squeeze through, and standing above
the ground full twelve feet. In the centre of the
kraal is a little house strongly surrounded by logs,
which sometimes the superintendent in charge uses
to direct the selection of elephants to be caught,
and sometimes becomes a house of refuge; and
always it serves to break up the herd rounded about
it. Three sides of this great square are reached by
steps and open to the public. Along one side of
the wall and over the centre of it is a covered plat-

32 THE KING'S MAHOUT

form which contains the royal box, and other more
democratic accommodations for natives of nobility
and foreigners. There are two entrances to the en-
closure, both guarded by very strong heavy timber
gates hung on pins from crossbeams above, which,
closed, reach below the ground level, where they
fit into a groove. Opened, they make an inverted
V, just large enough to permit the passage of one
elephant at a time.

The attitude of a herd on first realizing that it
has been trapped and cannot escape, varies accord-
ing to the temperaments of its members, and is
enlightening, not to say enlivening, at times, to
the onlooker. For the herd, which without serious
opposition has permitted itself to be taken from
its jungle and driven, uttering scarcely an objec-
tion through days and nights, will, when once in
the kraal, throw off its good manners and become
rampant. Some fight the posts, some fight one
another; in groups they surge against the stout
sides of the enclosure, grunting prodigiously, and
wherever a venturesome spectator shows a head
between the post, he is charged. Not all the herd
are so violent. Some show their perturbation by
thrusting their trunks down into their stomach res-
ervoir and drawing forth watex which they squirt
over their backs; others express contempt for
things generally by making little dust piles which

^.' * .MB>

■1' ll

•<

n^iHit iiUMiB

'-'; :;;#

£«

1 E^ 1M

»<■ . . . -
i I

•,v;
1 ? 1

SflBr ;

"X^rfj

«s

'■ . •'•-*!

1 »^TBft>.

■N i

■: ■ •

.-.•

I -'';

"Hi

1 1

J-i it

r i

L -?

TzfK \5jff

it*"- _#**

^*m' AJ.

■&*, ^S x ^^^^^'^il

t rial is

" •••• \,*-V

*.*:

;j^t^ -v •;£?$ *L *

%~ sdfe^

r *

*%■

.?* ^ *. *

^■^^

THE KING'S MAHOUT 33

they blow over everything in sight, including their
own legs ; some utter the mouthing low note ; some
rap the ground with their trunks, thus knocking
out several peculiar rattling crackling high notes.
The calves squeak through their little trunks
shrilly and frequently.

The programme extends over three days ; on the
first, after the herd is corralled, the head mogul of
the royal stables points out the young elephants to
be caught ; on the second the selected captives are
noosed; and on the third day the remaining ele-
phants are driven out and across the river and into
the jungle to wander at will, until such time as
his majesty issues commands for another royal
" hunt."

The most interesting feature of the performance
in the kraal is the work of the trained elephants.
You would never think from the peaceful, mild
countenance of the tusker, that he is in league with
the men on his back. He is the most casual thing
you can imagine, sidling up to the victim in manner
unpremeditated and entirely friendly. It is the
same unhurried, unrelaxing work he did in the
jungle under the eye of Choo, who is now no doubt
viewing proceedings critically from the covered
platform. Sometimes a cantankerous elephant is
looking for a fight ; and then the tusker is a busi-
ness-like and effective bouncer, and such " rough

34 THE KING'S MAHOUT

house " as results on this occasion you have not
elsewhere seen. The tusker moves not swiftly but
with overwhelming momentum, and not infre-
quently an offender is sent quite off its feet sur-
prised and wiser, rolling in the dust.

The actual catching consists in slipping the
noose, held at the end of the bamboo prod by the
second mahout, over the elephant's hind foot.
When the noose is successfully placed it is at once
pulled taut, and the end of the rope which has been
attached to the tame tusker's rattan girdle is let go,
to be subsequently, as occasion offers, carried by
a dismounted mahout to the edge of the enclosure,
where other attendants fasten it to the post, and
take in the slack as the captive is pushed back by
the tuskers. When the victim is snubbed fairly
close to the post comes the putting on of the rattan
collar, which is accomplished by mahouts mounted
on two tame elephants that hold the victim between
them. With the collar lashed on, the captive is
butted out through the gate, where he is pinned
between the tuskers and fastened to them by the
collars they also wear for this very purpose. Then,
thus handcuffed, with noose rope trailing and a
third elephant behind to keep him moving, the
captive is carried off to the stables and securely
tied up. And so endeth the liberty of that
elephant.

THE KING'S MAHOUT 35

Sometimes the mahout drops to the ground
under cover of his tusker and slips the noose ; and
it is not so easy as it reads. The elephant's foot
must be caught off the ground before the noose is
thrown, and sluggish as he seems, the elephant
kicks like chain lightning ; the kick of a mule is a
love pat by comparison. It is a curious but sub-
stantiated fact that, while at times there is much
fighting, with mahouts, tame tuskers and the wild
elephants in mixed melee, it is rare that a mahout,
so long as he is mounted, is injured. Although the
mahouts could easily be pulled off their perches,
the wild elephants never make even an attempt to
do so in the kraal; but the dismounted mahout
needs to look out for both trunk and feet. Acci-
dents are rare, although sometimes when the ele-
phants are being driven out one will break away
and require a great deal of prodding and rough
handling before brought back into the herd.
Sometimes in little groups of twos or threes ele-
phants will rush at the shifting spectators who
crowd near them; for the Siamese are rather fond
of running up, by way of a dare, to an elephant
coming out of the narrow gateway and dodging its
short-lived pursuit before the mahouts head it back
into the herd. This is not so dangerous a game
as it sounds, for the elephant is by no means the
swiftest thing on earth and a man can easily dodge

36 THE KING'S MAHOUT

it if the ground is smooth and firm. Yet fatal
accidents have occurred to the over-confident who
did not dodge fast enough. And there have been
times, too, when, enraged at their failure to catch
the tormentor, the elephants have wreaked their
vengeance on nearby fences or buildings or any-
thing happening to be within reach.

The process of elephant catching in India as well
as in Siam tends to rather undermine one's settled
notions of elephant sagacity, and to create instead
the feeling that a lot of sentimental nonsense and
misleading, ignorantly conceived animal stories,
have been put forth about My Lord, the Elephant.
The literal truth is that the elephant, for all its
reputed intelligence, is driven into places that no
other wild animal could possibly be induced to
enter; is, in its native jungle, held captive within
a circle through which it could pass without an
effort, and is bullied into uncomplaining obedience
by a force the smallest fraction of its own numbers.
Part of this is, no doubt, due to its exceedingly sus-
picious nature ; the other part because of its lack
of originality, which latter defect, however, has
great value for man since it accounts for the ele-
phant's notable amenability to discipline.

CHAPTER II
THROUGH THE KLAWNGS OF SIAM

WATERMEN more expert than the Siamese
do not live in the Orient, nor in the world
indeed, unless it be among the Esquimaux, or the
South Sea Islanders ; and Saw Swee Ann was one
of the most skilful I met during my wanderings in
the Far East. Saw, for so I at once abbreviated
his tuneful name, was a " saked " man and bore
the indelible mark which all those wear who serve
royalty without pay. Not that it is a service of
especial honor, but a species of traditional slavery.
Nor does every saked man serve the king. In the
intricate and far-reaching systems, which cross-sec-
tion the social fabric of Oriental peoples and per-
plex the western mind, are provided separate and
distinct places for every class of native mankind
from royalty to the lowliest subject. Siam has
perhaps more than its share of such subdivisions,
and so it happened that Saw also had his servant,
for that man is indeed low in Siam's social scale
who is without a servitor. Saked men, however,
are those in the service of the king or those at-
tached to the person of a noble or a tribal head.
Those who serve about the royal palace, and those

38 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

in any of the companies connected more or less
directly with the king, are marked on the left side,
a little below the armpit ; all others are marked on
the fore-arm. And the mark (" sak "), always
the insignia of him in whose service the man is
enrolled, is pricked into the skin, and then made
permanent by applying a mixture of India ink and
peacock bile. None but a native, I believe, may
be a saked man, and as I travelled and studied the
country, it seemed to me that in the course of
another quarter century pure Siamese blood will
flow in the veins only of royalty and of the poor-
est of Siam's inhabitants. The average native is
an indolent, improvident, good-natured creature,
happy so long as he has enough to keep his stomach
from protesting, and a few ticals to gamble with.
Great Britain, fortunately for the commercial
world, controls the export trade of Siam, and the
Chinaman is its industrial backbone. More than
that, John Chinaman is becoming Siam's small
trader as well, and father of the only dependable
laborer growing up on its soil; for the Siamese
woman marries him in preference to her own coun-
trymen, because he makes a better husband. The
result of this union is called a Simo-Chinese, but
really is a Chinaman in looks, in habits— so
strongly does the son of Confucius put his stamp
upon his progeny. Thus the native Siamese is

OF SIAM 39

being crowded into the lowest walks of life. Even
in Bangkok, the capital, where reside the king and
all Government officials, he finds it difficult to
retain prestige, while the town itself is taking on
the motley appearance of an Oriental city turned
topsy-turvy by electric lights and trolley cars pene-
trating quarters of such squalor, one marvels that
life can exist there at all.

It is a strange, half -floating city, this Bangkok,
overrun by pariah dogs and crows ; Oriental despite
its improvements, and one of the most interesting
places in the Par East. Yet a sad city for the
visitor with mind apart from " margins " and time
saving machinery. At every turning are evidences
of the decay of native art, and in their stead com-
monplace things bearing the legend " Made in Ger-
many." One would scarcely believe to-day, after
a visit to Bangkok, that at one time the Siamese
were distinguished, even among Asiatic artisans,
in silk weaving, in ceramics, in ivory carving and
in silversmithing. Yet the royal museum, with
treasures not found elsewhere in the world, serves
to remind one how far Siam has fallen from the
place she once occupied among art-producing na-
tions. When, therefore, we behold a people dis-
couraging and losing their splendid ancient arts,
and giving instead a ready market to the cheap
trash which comes out of the West, we may hardly

40 THKOUGH THE KLAWNGS

look for native industrial development. The day
is probably not far off when Siam's industries will
depend upon foreign guidance; and if England,
not France, supplies that impetus— the world will
be the gainer.

By those people who delight in comparisons—
and read travellers' folders especially compiled for
tourist consumption— Bangkok has been variously
called the Constantinople of Asia and the Venice
of the East. True, there is pertinence in both com-
parisons. Certainly Bangkok is the home of the
gaunt and ugly pariah dog, which spends its day
foraging to keep life in its mangy carcass ; multi-
plying meanwhile with the fecundity of cats in a
tropical clime, because the Buddha faith forbids
its killing. Nor are outcast dogs the only pests
of Bangkok, to grow numerous because of native
religious prejudice ; more noisy crows perch of an
early morning on your window casing, than in
the space of a day hover near the " Towers of
Silence " at Bombay awaiting the pleasure of the
vultures that are feeding on the earthly remains
of one that has died in the faith of the Parsee.

Some people imagine Bangkok a city of islands ;
hence I suppose the comparison with Venice.
Bangkok has, indeed, a very large floating popu-
lation, and the city is intersected by many
klawngs or canals; at certain times of the year,

OF SIAM 41

too, perhaps half the town and the surrounding
country is under a foot or more of tide-water.
Yet the larger half of Bangkok's four hundred
thousand citizens lives on land, though the easiest
means of travel throughout much of the city is by
boat, and in fact, half of it is reached in no other
way. The Siamese woman of the lower class daily
paddles her own canoe to the market ; or, if of the
better class, she goes in a " rua chang," the com-
mon passenger boat which, together with the jin-
rikisha, the land hack throughout the Orient, is
included among the household possessions of every
Siamese who can afford them.

The native city has a surrounding wall nine feet
thick and twelve feet high, and but a single street
where a horse and wagon can travel. For the rest,
the streets are no wider than needed for passing
jinrikishas, and at least one of them, Sampeng,
is too narrow for comfort— even for such traffic.
Most native thoroughfares are mere passage ways,
trails ; for the Siamese by virtue of their swamp-
like lower country travel single file, first by neces-
sity, afterwards through habit.

Sampeng is a street of character; it is the Bow-
ery of Bangkok. It is a continuous bazar from
end to end, with many alley-like tributaries, lead-
ing, for the greater number, to open-air theatres,
or to large crowded rooms where natives squat to

42 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

gamble, and a band sends up uninterrupted melody
from out of the darkness at the rear. But the most
imposing array of shops is on the Meinam River,
the Strand of Bangkok, along which for six miles
the city spreads itself in floating shops. On the
klawngs, that wind throughout the. city with the
deviousness, and apparently with all the aimless-
ness of a cow path, the natives rear single-room
veranda-like houses on stilts, six to eight feet above
the "water. The Siamese builds his house of one
story and on stilts for several reasons. The first,
no doubt, is to avoid the unpardonable sin of living
on a lower story while an upper one is occupied by
other human beings, especially women, who, in
Siam, are not regarded as of much importance.
The second, and I should say the most practical,
if not the most aesthetic, reason is to have a waste
gate of easy access for the continually flowing sa-
liva from betel-nut chewing, and household refuse,
which may thus be easily disposed of through the
crevices of an openly constructed floor. And not
the least advantage of this style of house, is the
opportunity its elevation affords dogs, pigs, crows
and other scavengers, whose immunity from death
at the hands of man is only another proof of many
why Buddha should have given a religion to this
people. A lesser reason is to secure a higher and
a healthier floor to live upon above the damp soil ;

ALONG THE KLAWNG (CANAL).
Fully half of the native house usually develops into verandah.

1 — fit

aax 4 mm m^^mm * ^ 'Jk

SGI - 1 ^w ««

i— . . ■ '.' . ^"^- Jmmmmm

■Mm ^^Iteiii-i. s*Jk

A GAMBLING PLACE OFF THE SAMPENG IN BANGKOK.

In the background a band is hard at work entertaining the patrons.

OF SIAM 43

and no doubt yet another is to escape from the
snakes, toads, worms and multitude of other crawl-
ing things which drag their length over the soil of
lower Siam.

Past the floating houses along the river, and
among the stilted houses through the klawngs,
flows a scarcely ever ending procession of passen-
ger boats, house boats, freight boats and canoes of
all sizes, for in Siam may be seen the most remark-
able variety of water craft in the world; and, I
may add, of the most graceful lines. Unless it be
the Burman, really of about the same stock, no
builder anywhere compares with the Siamese, who
make their boats large and small of teak, and give
them lines unequalled. Here is one art at least in
which the natives continue proficient.

My travels have never brought me among a peo-
ple seemingly more contented, more happy, than
these Siamese. Their wants are few and easily
supplied: a single piece of stuff completes the
scanty, inexpensive costume; rice and fruit and
fish, to be had for almost nothing, constitute the
food ; betel-nuts, which high and low chew, may be
gathered. Life moves very easily for them, and
they go to their death with unbounded faith that
Buddha will take care of the next world, wherever
it may be. Living, they hold to their simple faith
as conscientiously as the Mohammedans, which is

44 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

tantamount to saying more conscientiously than
the Christian sects. Dying, they pass with confi-
dence into the unknown; and their bodies are
burned and the ashes scattered to the four winds.
Their attitude towards life is truly philosophic;
and friends left behind conduct themselves with
equal sanity. If they cannot afford a private
funeral pyre, there are public ghats where the
bodies of their relatives and friends may be
burned. To be sure, at some of these ghats vul-
tures aid in the disposal of the late lamented, but
as a rule fire consumes the greater part of the flesh.
The Siamese are not a sporting nation, but if there
is any time when they may be said to hold sports
it is at a private cremation. As Hibernian clans of
Tammany reckon the social importance and polit-
ical pull of a departed brother by the number of
carriages his friends muster at the funeral, so in
Siam the scale and variety of the funeral festivities
mark the wealth and status and the grief of the
bereaved family. The pyre is built within the pri-
vate walls of the family estate, and after the simple
ceremony of the yellow-robed priests of Buddha,
the nearest male relative applies the match. Then
while the flames crackle the grieving family and
friends of the deceased make merry over the
cakes and sweetmeats and wines provided for the
occasion, and sometimes hired talent performs at

OF SI AM 45

different games. The bodies of those intended for
private cremation are embalmed and usually kept
for some time, even for many months. A Sia-
mese gentleman in inviting me to the forthcoming
conflagration of a brother, added that the remains
had been awaiting combustion for a year!

All Siam is divided into three parts: (1) That
tributary to and dependent upon the Mekong
River, which rises far in the north and with a
great bend to the east flows south, emptying
through several mouths into the China Sea, after
a devious course of two thousand five hundred
miles. (2) That upon the Salwin Eiver, which
also rises far in the north, not more than one hun-
dred and fifty to two hundred miles to the west
of the Mekong's source, and flowing south sweeps
to the west, into the Bay of Bengal. And (3) that
upon the Meinam— mother of rivers— which rises
not so far in the north and flows due south, empty-
ing into the Gulf of Siam. Politically speaking,
all Siam appears to be divided: (1) Into that
(Mekong) which French jingoism seems to view
as destined by especial Providence as solely for
their colonial exploitation; (2) that (Meinam)
which no one disputes as being purely Siamese;
and (3) that (Salwin) which serves as the extreme
boundary of British jurisdiction.

French geographers since 1866 have been re-

46 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

drafting Siam, and gradually narrowing the lines
of native territory. Ever since the French
marched into Anam, where they did not belong,
and became inoculated with territorial expansion,
there has been a constant dispute as to where
French jurisdiction ends and Siamese begins over
Mekong River way. Thus, with Burma (Eng-
land) on the north and west, and France on the
east, the buffer-state-condition of Siam is not the
happiest one for its king. But I wish to go on
record before dismissing this side of the subject,
as saying that whereas Great Britain's influence
has developed trade and worked to the country's
prosperity, the influence of France, seen largely in
the exaction of duties and of tribute for petty
offences, has had by comparison an embarrassing
and retarding effect. In a word, the influence of
Great Britain makes for the betterment of Siam,
whereas the influence of France appears to have
been detrimental to Siam, and of no appreciable
benefit to France. If the past be accepted as a
criterion, it would be an unfortunate day for the
commercial world if the influence of France in
Siam were to be extended. In fact, the more that
influence is narrowed the better for Siam and the
world.

Life clusters along the rivers, throughout Siam.
There is comparatively little overland travel in

OF SIAM 47

the north and almost none in the south. Thus,
these three rivers constitute Siam's highways
north and south, while many tributary rivers and
klawngs of various width and length make east
and west connections all through the lower country.
It was through a series of such klawngs and
tributary rivers that Saw Swee Ann, the saked
man, piloted me to Ratburi, where I intended or-
ganizing a buffalo-hunting expedition into the wes-
tern border of Siam and on into Burma. My boat-
ing party, besides Saw and his servant, a Siamese
boy of say twelve years, who was forever balanc-
ing himself on the gunwale of the tug, consisted of
two Simo-Chinese boatmen, a Siamese engineer-
stoker, a Chinese cook and my servants. My in-
terpreter, Nai Kawn, a graduate of Lehigh, and I,
lived on the house-boat with one man bow and
stern; the balance of the party remained aboard
the steam launch. The house-boat, next to the rua
chang, is the most common river craft from end to
end of Siam, and the one commonly used by the
traveller. It may be any size, from one manned
by two oarsmen to one requiring eight, four each
bow and stern. In the latter case there is a small
bit of deck room at either end of the house— none
too much, however, to permit of the free use of
your hands with murderous intent upon the mos-
quitoes, which are so big, so numerous, so vicious

48 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

and so persistent, that you feel that you have never
heard of mosquitoes before, even though you may
have stopped a week's end nearby the New Jersey
meadows, or ventured into the region of Great
Slave Lake in the springtime. As a rule the house
on these boats is barrel-shaped, erected amidships,
and made of atap leaves, supplied by the palm-like
plant which grows all over this country and is the
Siamese shingle. The boat is propelled by oars,
bow and stern, set in a twisted cane rowlock fas-
tened to the top of a post about eighteen inches or
more high and set on the port side of the stern and
on the starboard side of the bow. The oarsmen
send the boat forward by pushing the oar from
them, bringing it back with the familiar canoe-
paddle motion without taking the blade out of the
water. It is much like the stroke of the Venetian
gondolier, only the boat movement of the Siamese
is more rhythmical, and becomes graceful in the
rua chang, where the left foot of the oarsman
clears the deck on the forward push and swings
in unison with the blade. There is less oppor-
tunity for pleasing motion on the house-boat where
strength rather than grace is the desideratum, and
in freight boats laden with rice— which are simply
house-boats built heavier and broader— the men
heave on their oars without any other regard than
getting the boat along ; and this they do with nota-

OF SIAM 49

ble success. I have seen freight boats of large size
and heavily laden with padi (rice) moving along
the klawngs propelled by two men, one bow and one
stern. In open rivers these padi boats sometimes,
with a fair wind, hoist sail.

I have said that Saw was an expert waterman,
but that does not sufficiently describe the skill he
displayed in taking us safely around the many
turns of the klawngs, and in avoiding collision
with the innumerable and often recklessly piloted
craft we were continuously meeting. Seldom have
I had a more interesting trip than through these
klawngs, literally alive in parts with boats of all
sizes, carrying crews of men, women and children.
Every now and again we passed a settlement, and
always there was human life on the water and
jungle-life along the banks. Now we come to a
squat, heavily laden rice-boat moving ponderously,
yet steadily under the two oars of its crew of one
Chinaman and a single Simo-Chinese. Then an im-
portant looking house-boat with teak instead of the
usual atap top covering, and crew of four China-
men, stripped to the buff, working industriously,
passes us moving smartly; on its deck stretch
two smoking Siamese officials coming down from
the Burman border to report at Bangkok. Again,
a freighter, carrying squared logs of teak, is creep-
ing along its laborious way, turning corners awk-

50 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

wardly, carefully, and yet with consummate skill.
Always we were meeting peddlers' boats somewhat
of the rua chang type, sunk almost to the gunwales
under their loads of fruit or betel-nuts or cocoa-
nuts, and darting alongside of and among the jour-
neying craft of the klawng. But the boat most
commonly met is a short, narrow dug-out, flat at
both ends and shallow. The life on the boats is
as interesting as the boats themselves. As a rule
Chinamen furnish the motive power with here and
there a Tamil (native of Madras, India), for all
types except the peddling rua chang and the dug-
outs, which are generally manned by Siamese, and
as frequently as not by women, who form a large
part of the floating population in the smaller craft.
Another boat, a little longer than the dug-out, but
of the same character and very numerous, was
almost always propelled by women, of which we
saw a great many. It seemed to be the house-boat
of the poorer native, and I often passed one with
its little charcoal stove, in full blast, boiling the
rice, on the tiny deck at the stern, while a lone
woman managed the paddle and the domestic econ-
omy of the establishment simultaneously, and a tot
of a baby toddled about, apparently in danger of
toppling overboard every instant yet never did..
Although the boat had not more than two or three
inches freeboard and often rocked and jumped

OF SIAM 51

alarmingly in the waves made by passing craft,
kettles, knives and babies adhered to its deck as if
fastened.

As to the obliging nature and the friendliness
of these Siamese, an experience I had one night
will speak for itself. To save time I hired a steam
launch at Bangkok to tow us. If I were making
the trip over again at the same season I should
confine myself to human motive power, for at given
periods of the year the changing tides leave the
klawngs so shallow that the deeper-draught launch
scrapes the mud bottom more or less of the time :
and, with a Siamese crew, to scrape means to
stick, for urgency is an unknown element in their
mental equipment. We stuck in the mud with
such exasperating frequency that I always took ad-
vantage of good water, even though it came in the
night. Thus we travelled a great deal when others
were tied up sleeping— somewhat to the disgust of
my crew, even of Saw Swee Ann, who didn't like
to miss the evening of gossiping and smoking and
foraging ashore, in which he always indulged when
we laid up at a settlement. One night nearing
some houses we scraped bottom and soon the launch
stopped, but from the fact that we were well over
toward the side of the bank I believed it possible
to get off into the deeper water of the centre and
under way before the falling tide really held us.

52 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

So I urged the crew to effort, and Nai Kawn, who
was an exceptionally energetic Siamese and proved
a treasure in more ways than one, bombarded them
with native expletives and other impelling terms,
though without the desired result. And so we
gradually settled in the mud. While thus hung
up, an old man and woman came paddling up to us
in one of the little ten or twelve-foot long dug-outs,
heaped high amidships with cocoanuts. There
seemed hardly more than an inch or so of freeboard
anywhere between bow and stern, yet those two
friendly old souls, standing respectively on the bow
and stern of their boat, pushed and shoved, and
lifted and pushed again— meanwhile keeping their
own little craft under them without so much as
disturbing a single cocoanut— until they moved
our unwieldly launch into deeper water. All that
they would take in return for their aid was a little
tobacco. Such was my experience wherever I
went in Siam. I always found the pure-blooded
natives obliging, good-natured and the reverse of
avaricious. If the surrounding country was fa-
miliar or the thing I asked within their daily
knowledge, their readiness to assist was ever in
evidence. On the other hand, I could not hire
them for love or money to go inland beyond points
they had not traversed or which their fathers
before them had not penetrated. And the mixed

OF SIAM 53

breed of native I did find inland was less depend-
able and very much less honest, not honest at all
in fact.

Always, where we could, we tied up for the night
at the house of an " umper " (a small official who
answers to the Government for the peace of his
settlement), and as I was travelling under the pro-
tection of the king, we were never molested by
thieves with which the klawngs are well infested.
On the rivers, on the klawngs, always as we jour-
neyed, we came at intervals to joss houses for
worshipful Chinamen, rest houses for pilgrim
Buddhist priests, and " prachadis " standing to
emphasize this people's unending propitiation of
their patron gods. If there is a dominant trait
in Siamese character it is that of " making merit."
The one thought of their religious life is to do
something that will temper the ill fortune which,
the philosophy of life Buddha teaches, is pretty
sure to come mortal's way. Hence, always the
Siamese is seeking favor in the eyes of those im-
mortals whom he believes able to influence his joys
and his sorrows ; therefore over all Siam you will
find little spire-shaped monuments (prachadis),
built to propitiate the gods, to make merit, and
rudely fashioned after the slender peaks of the
" wats," which are convents for the Buddhist
priests and worshipful temples for the people.

54 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

The exterior decorations of these wats is fanciful
and not always pleasing, but the interior usually
presents a lavish display of gold and silver orna-
ments. Wat Phra Keo in Bangkok has a fortune
in vases, candelabra and altar vessels ; not to men-
tion innumerable gold statues of Buddha, or the
Emerald Image of the presiding deity, with its jade
body and eyes of emeralds. Countless little brass
bells hung around the eaves of this wat tinkle
softly with every passing breeze, and you enter the
temple through mother-of-pearl inlaid ebony doors
of a ton weight. Wats are for the more settled
sections, but prachadis of uniform model but vary-
ing size I found everywhere in Bangkok, on the
rivers, the klawngs, in the settlements, even on the
road to the jungle. Prachadis marked my path,
in fact, to the very edge of habitation. They are
built of a kind of earthen composition, often
fantastically decorated with broken bits of differ-
ent colored china, but may be as low as three feet
or so high as thirty feet, according to the material
prosperity of the supplicant. The more of these
one man builds the more merit he makes, conse-
quently he builds as frequently as the remorseful
spirit moves and the purse permits. I recall one
small bit of ground belonging to a Siamese on the
outskirts of Bangkok that looks like a chess board,
so closely placed are the tokens of his merit

OF SIAM 55

making. In the small settlements these sacred
spires are less elaborate, and at the edges they
cease to exist in the common type and become little
altars, built of bamboo and rattan and cane or other
material immediately at hand. Many a time, jour-
neying inland, did I come to one of these simple
little structures, built in religious fervor, with an
ear-ring, or an amulet made of bamboo, or perhaps
only a piece of fruit or a bit of root, or a small rag,
offered in all contrition and faith and humility,
with the mark of the devotee, so that all the pass-
ing world might know that Lim Kay Thai, or Low
Poh Jim, or other wandering child of Buddha had
left here the token of his merit making. And
these little altars stand so long as the elements
permit, for none would dare or even think of dis-
turbing them. Another of the commendable traits
of this simple people. Where such credulity
abounds, it is natural to find a plenty of priests;
if they were fewer the poor Siamese would be
better off, for among these yellow-robed holy men
of Buddha are many that have been attracted to
the cloth because of the easy living it assures.
Everywhere you meet him, the priest, swathed in
yellow cotton, making his daily calls for contribu-
tions of food; or at the wats in groups you see
them standing silently with bronze bowl held out
for rice, and a netted bag at girdle for fruit offer-

56 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

ings. And the people hurry to feed them, for it
is written that no priest must go hungry, be his
numbers never so large.

Often where we stopped for the nights there was
music and dancing by young girls painted after the
Chinese manner, but much better looking than the
girls of Bangkok. Saw appeared to think so at
all events, and by the time we reached Eatburi I
grew to look upon him as an authority. And the
girls danced as well as any I saw— the usual Far
Eastern hand and shoulder action; the body-pos-
turing of India and Polynesia is not seen in this
part of Asia. To me the music, Burmese and Sia-
mese—it is practically the same— is delightful be-
cause of its entrancing melody, its scale of soft
mellifluous notes, barbaric withal, you would
believe impossible to metal cups.

For the first days of our travel the banks of the
klawng were so low that our boat frequently rode
higher than the land adjoining; and at night the
fireflies made the trees and brush immediately at
hand electrical and beautiful. The jungle on the
klawng bank seemed aflame with the pulsations
of light, which come with instant brilliancy and
died as suddenly. By day or by night, klawng
travel unfolded a panorama of tropical foliage.
Sometimes there were the high cocoanut trees,
sometimes the betel-nut trees, which are not quite

A NATIVE HOUSE ON THE KLAWNG TO RATBURI.
Picturesquely but uncomfortably (mosquitoes) situated in a grove of cocoa betel-nut trees.

THE HOUSE-BOAT WHICH SERVED ME WELL.

OF SIAM 57

so high as the cocoanut, and have a small leaf ; at
times only the atap covered the bank in dense
growth, impenetrable to the eye and fifteen to
twenty feet in height; and always monkeys chat-
tered in the trees at each side— monkeys of all sizes
and of many different expressions of face.

Finally we left the klawngs as we reached the
river that was to take us direct to Ratburi, and
here the banks attained to a height of three or four
feet above the water, and the country became more
open, with fairly largish trees— the handsome
mango, the feather-duster-looking cocoanut, the
tamarind, with its fine out-spreading limbs like
the oak, and bamboo clumps, of which there were
many of especially fine quality. Now on the
broadening, open river, occasional pieces of culti-
vation began to appear, and at intervals we passed
rest houses, where Buddhist priests stop the night
to replenish their exhausted larder from the
slender resources of the near-by inhabitants. Here
and there I noticed a muslin fish, or cloth lizard,
floating from poles stuck in the bank, for good
luck to the fishing boats; and frequently we en-
countered set nets which we had more difficulty in
avoiding than the busy craft of the klawngs.
There is bad blood between the boatmen and the
fishermen, and often Saw dug an oar into a net-
fastening when he thought I could not detect him.

58 THROUGH THE KLAWNGS

At length we came to the town of Ratburi, where
lived Phra Ram, chief of the Burma-Siam boun-
dary line, who was to escort me to the Karens,
among whom I hoped to engage guides for my pro-
posed buffalo hunt.

It was worth going to Siam, if only to meet Phra
Ram.

CHAPTER III
PHRA RAM MAKES A PILGRIMAGE

THREE things are dearer to the Siamese heart
than life itself: (1) chewing the betel-nut;
(2) " making merit "; (3) a pilgrimage to the an-
cestral home. The first is at once his joy and
solace, the second his simple method of mollifying
Buddha through the building of prachadis, or mon-
umental sacred spires, of greater or less preten-
sion ; the third the Mecca of his active years, and
the comforting reminiscence of old age.

Now, although Phra Ram was the governmental
chief of the line separating Burma from Siam, the
king's representative to the Karens— jungle folk
living on both sides the boundary— and an official
before whom the common people prostrated them-
selves, yet was he none the less Siamese. As to
temperament he was distinctly native, but exotic
in the clever ways and means devised to satisfy
appetite and tradition simultaneously. He was
an enlightened Oriental who acquiesced in the
harmless and somewhat delightful superstitious
humbuggery surrounding him — but lost never an
eye to the main chance. In the vernacular of the
street, he was " sawing wood " all the time.

60 PHEA EAM MAKES

When, therefore, the king's minister ordered him
to escort my hunting expedition to the Burma line,
Phra Earn saw his opportunity for making that
long deferred pilgrimage through the land of his
fathers.

The average Oriental is a ,bluff, inscrutable for
only a brief period if you are a little wise in the
ways of the Far East ; Phra Earn was a pastmaster
in wearing the disguise. In fact, just to know the
chief of the Siam-Burma line, was a liberal educa-
tion in Far Eastern life philosophy ; not that he had
travelled, or was beautiful to look upon, or learned
in his Buddhist faith ; but he was so ingenuous in
his ingenuity. You would never have thought he
even had ancestors, much less suspect him of plan-
ning a pilgrimage to their abiding place; on the
contrary the preparations making for the journey
would have convinced you that the jungle imme-
diately on the outskirts of Eathburi overflowed
with tiger, elephant and buffalo ; especially buffalo
—that being the game I sought. And he could be
so important and so busy and so bumptious over
the trifles of life ! you could not persuade yourself
that he had a thought above the knotting of his
sarong, or the quality of his betel-nut. Eeally, he
was deliciously artful; the most subtle gentleman
I ever encountered. Not that I would infer dis-
honesty—by no means; he was just Oriental.

A PILGRIMAGE 61

With all, tie was jolly, even-tempered, obliging,
and a source of unceasing entertainment through-
out the journey. He gave me an interesting trip,
and an experience which subsequently proved in-
valuable ; and should this fall under his eye in the
Far East, I hope he will accept the felicitations of
a pupil to the master.

Despite a cross in his left eye, Phra Earn carried
a certain air of distinction which he supported im-
periously in intercourse with his people. He was
about fifty years of age, with a generous stomach,
an assortment of wives, and a pair of gray cloth,
black buttoned spats he had got from a German
on one of his occasional trips to Bangkok, and
which he wore, over bare feet, only when in full
dress. He was a loud and constant talker, with a
voice that even Italian could not have mellowed,
and which rasped the nerves of those within reach
of its nasal, unmusical, Siamese twang.

Seated tailor fashion on a square of cocoa mat-
ting, with several attendants arranged in semi-
circle behind him, Ram spent the greater part of
the night of our arrival unfolding the extensive
plans he had made for my hunting. Between dis-
closures he consumed betel-nut ; and as it was my
first intimacy with a betel-nut chewing gentleman,
the performance interested me greatly. Prepara-
tion of the morsel began by the approach of one of

62 PHRA RAM MAKES

three attendants, who came servilely forward, bent
nearly double, and took his place at the right of
the chief, where were displayed a bewildering as-
sortment of silver boxes of exquisite workmanship.
Having made his obeisance by bending first on
knees and then to elbows as he pressed the floor
with his forehead at the feet of Ram, the attendant
settled cross-legged before the boxes. Taking a
green leaf he smeared upon it a dab of lime paste
tinted with the juice of the aromatic plant tur-
meric. Into this he pressed several different seed-
like things, one of which I recognized as cardamon,
and over all liberally sprinkled pieces of a betel-
nut which he had divided into eighths with an iron
pair of cutters elaborately inlaid in gold on handles
and blade. Then deftly rolling this cone-shape,
he offered it on bended knee to Phra Ram, after
diligently smiting the floor with his forehead a few
times.

During all this process Ram watched his servant
carefully, at times crooning in pleasurable antici-
pation, at times bursting into an impatient loud
note of disapproval ; and when he had slowly and
deliberately placed the tid-bit well back between
his molars, the look of peace that came over his
countenance would have put a babe to sleep in con-
fidence. Silence would now continue while Ram
chewed a few moments in undisturbed ecstasy; but

A PILGBIMAGE 63

when a bright red juice began to run from the
corners of his mouth his tongue was loosed again.
Occasionally, while he talked, an attendant at his
left held up for contribution a silver cuspidor-
looking affair ; and Earn was a liberal contributor.
Betel-nut chewing is the national diversion of
the Siamese. Every one, from high to low, is ad-
dicted to the habit, and preparation of the quid for
those too poor to own ingredients and boxes is, in
every town, quite a business of itself; in the
smallest settlements one sees peddlers squatting
before their trays of little boxes holding lime and
seeds and tobacco, and packages of syrah, or green
betel leaves. The betel tree is among the most
common in Siam, sending up a trunk sometimes
full sixty feet, always, like the cocoanut, limbless
except for its bush of a top where, again like the
cocoa, the nuts grow in closely attached bunches, to
harden and redden before gathered. Adding the
cardamon-seed, or clove, to the preparation, is an
extra of the well-to-do, and especially of the
women ; the common habit among men of the coun-
try being to add a pinch of tobacco after first rub-
bing it over their gums. The bright red saliva
from chewing is, in the town house, carefully de-
posited in a handsome silver receptacle ; in the up-
country house spaces between the open bamboo
flooring obviate the necessity for such niceties.

64 PHEA KAM MAKES

But always on formal occasions, even in the jungle
edge, the betel-nut chewer carries his box for the
freely flowing juice that stains the teeth a deep
red, which, among the better class, with care and
attention becomes a highly polished black. And
this is true even of Siam's most enlightened classes,
whom contact with the outside world appears not
to win from the betel-nut and discolored teeth. In
Bangkok I talked with one of royal blood and his
wife, both of whom had lived several years in
England, yet the teeth of each were black as ebony,
and the woman frankly expressed her disgust at
the white teeth of foreigners. Dogs and other four
footed animals she declared have white teeth.
Blessed is contentment !

The betel-nut boxes are to the Siamese what
toilet articles are to the Occidental— a necessity
made ornamental ; for just as one of us may take
pride in the pattern and workmanship of the
dressing table equipment, so the Siamese search for
the unusual in design and quality, and possess with
frank pleasure the series of little boxes which may
range from plain brass to handsomely carved sil-
ver, or even to gold. And you can learn the Sia-
mese social scale by a study of these boxes. As the
Mexican will unhesitatingly put his last dollar into
a wondrously and valuably ornamented bridle or
saddle, or hat, so the betel-nut boxes of the Sia-

A PILGRIMAGE 65

mese may represent the sum total of his worldly
wealth. Frequently I saw a native who kept body
and soul together with difficulty on the fish that he
caught and the fruit that he plucked, bring forth
with much pride a betel-nut set which represented
money enough to maintain him in luxury and in
idleness for a year. I am sure the Siamese would
cling to the betel-nut if he had to choose between it
and food. In fact, such incidents came under my
personal observation. Often I stopped at a native
house where, although the larder was empty, they
still had betel-nut to chew, and to offer to the trav-
eller; for the betel-nut is the token of hospitality
here as the cup of tea is in the Far North.

During the few days following my arrival Phra
Ram was the busiest man you ever beheld getting
his men and carts together ; and, as each new prob-
lem necessitated a period of consultation— and
betel-nut chewing— and as the latter periods were
prolonged by the constant arrival of new coun-
sellors, the decision of problems rated as about one
to the half day. Meanwhile I made acquaintance
with Ratburi, and took little journeys up and down
the river. Ratburi was soon explored without re-
sults for, despite its local halo as the one time resi-
dence of the king, it is none the less an unkempt,
dirty, little town, full of Chinese shops and filthy,
mangy dogs that skulk at your heels or peer out

66 PHRA EAM MAKES

f earsomely from behind house corners as you pass :
the king showed excellent taste indeed in moving
elsewhere. But the river journeys were produc-
tive. Once I came up with a picturesque group
of yellow-robed priests resting in a mosquito net-
ting camp on their pilgrimage to the far-famed
Wat Prabat, where the faithful may view
Buddha's sacred footprint. Another time I
sought refuge in one of the rest houses, which, at
intervals of about a day's journey, are scattered
along well defined routes for the free use of pil-
grims to the many wats around Bangkok, and
other travellers less religiously inclined. These
houses, which are built at the expense of the king
or the Government or of some private individual
as a merit-making enterprise, consist of a raised
floor covered by a roof supported at its four cor-
ners by plain teak wood posts and open on all four
sides. As the average journeying priest or Sia-
mese wayfarer is none too clean, it is well, if you
use the rest house, to be provided with a brand of
insect destroyer of unfailing killing power. If
you are thus well armed, you may have a piece of
the wooden floor to yourself, and pick up a fruit
and fish breakfast from the peddlers who make
the rest house a first call on their early route.

The day of our departure was heralded far and
wide and all Eatburi, with its sisters, cousins and

A PILGEIMAGE 67

male relatives gathered to behold our expedition
set forth. And no doubt, with Phra Earn afoot
leading the procession, closely attended by his
group of body servants, we were a sight for the
gallery, as we wound our way through the town;
for it must not be supposed that the chief missed
such an opportunity of impressing the natives.

We came out of the town at the end of the main
street, and under the king's deserted palace high
on the hill we paused while I photographed the
outfit. Then for the couple of days it required to
reach the jungle edge country, our road wound
through padi fields where water stood one or two
feet deep. Of our eleven carts, three were devoted
to Phra Eam's personal luggage, one to a wife of
his, and the remainder carried provisions and the
personal luggage of my interpreter, Nai Kawn,
and myself. The carts were truly primitive, with
long, narrow, high body (about a foot and a half
wide, by two feet high and six feet long) and a
wheel hub full two feet deep. The bullocks were
small, having withers raised, like all Asiatic
draught cattle, into a well developed hump, and
of no great strength; quite appropriate indeed to
the cart they hauled. Attached to the nose of each
was a small rope on which their drivers laid hold
as occasion needed ; but that was not often, for the
temperament of the cattle and of the natives

68 PHRA RAM MAKES

seemed fittingly harmonious, and mostly com-
mands were given by word of mouth. There were
two drivers to every yoke and they by turn talked
almost continuously to the bullocks. Now they
would beseech faster gait by such earnest, direct
appeal, as " your father left word with me that
you were to go on this journey "; again they would
threaten to expose the sluggard to the cow mother
and all the bullocks of Ratburi district ; and often
there came a singsong of entreaty in a peculiar,
whining tone which even Nai Kawn could not in-
terpret. Rarely did a driver lose patience and
upbraid his cattle ; and I do not recall an instance
of beating. But nothing quickened their steps.

On the third day we came into a more or less
open section lying between the lowland and the
jungle edge, and then for ten days journeyed in
the most attractive country I saw at any time.
Here I had the only pleasing, outdoor camp life
of my Far Eastern experience. The country was
wooded, but neither densely, except in patches, nor
with large trees. Intervals were filled with bam-
boo clumps and bushes of various kinds— most of
the latter more beautiful to view than to touch.
And there was scarcely an hour when we were out
of the sound of cooing doves. I never saw so many
doves in my life, and my reputation as a mighty
hunter suffered seriously with my party, because

A PILGRIMAGE 69

I would not shoot into the large and close coveys
upon which we were repeatedly coming. There
were quantities, also, of small, brilliantly plumaged
paroquets, which zigzagged around us as rapidly
as swallows. Also there were vultures, and an
ugly appearing kind of hawk. It was entirely de-
lightful to tramp along with scent of the fragrant,
pulsing earth and of the moist forest ascending
to your nostrils, while bird voices sounded high
and low. Everywhere were patent evidences of
refreshment, and all nature united in rejoicing and
in thanksgiving for the rain that had quenched
its thirst. Of birds there were many and strange ;
birds with sombre plumage and voices melodious
as our thrush or meadow lark; birds of beau-
tiful plumage and no voice, like one little canary
kind of creature with wondrous golden-red feath-
ers. Daily I listened to the curiously fascinating,
liquid tones of the poot-poot bird, with its nat-
ural and flat notes sounded simultaneously, for ,
all the world like a xylophone. Another bird
trilled long on a single high note, with lowering
and ascending cadence. And perhaps most fre-
quent and certainly most familiar of all was the
caw of the crow. A large woodpecker, black gray
and golden nearly overcame my scruples against
shooting out of mere desire for possession, so at-
tractive was it ; but there was another, long-legged

70 PHRA RAM MAKES

and about the size of the dove, against which mur-
derous thoughts ever arose on sight. It had a
brown body and wings spotted with black, black
and white striped head, with a white ring about
its neck, red bill and red eyebrows. 'Twas not its
appearance that disturbed, but its voice and its
habit. In the jungle whenever we came upon
fresh game tracks, we were almost sure imme-
diately after to hear this bird set up its distracting,
incessant cry. Like the teru tero of South Amer-
ica it is commonly called the sentinel of the jungle ;
and an alert sentinel it is that sounds its warning
note on the slightest suggestion of man's approach.
Luckily it does not penetrate deep into the jungle.
Occasionally we came upon a yellow morning-
glory-shaped flower with black centre; and now
and then in open grassy spots I nearly stepped on
a tiny, blue and white thing growing close to the
ground and resembling the forget-me-not. Imme-
diately about us at all times, butterflies of exquisite
and varied coloring fluttered irregularly, uncer-
tainly, everywhere. Strangely, in this land of
tropical extravagance as to foliage, birds and but-
terflies, there should be no handsome varieties of
wild grass. Variety in bushes, however, is not
lacking in Siam; they grow in all sizes and shapes,
bearing every kind of thorns, differing in pattern
perhaps, but all fashioned to hold whatever has

A PILGRIMAGE 71

been secured. There are straight and curved
thorns of different lengths; some curve forward,
some curve back; and one of the back-curving
class has a barb-like addition somewhat like a fish
hook. When this double-thorned, unholy thought
breeder fastens upon you, do not try to yank your-
self free, but stop, return smilingly with the limb
to the parent bush and there sit you down with a
contrite heart and a patient hand to untiringly fol-
low the back track of the tenacious thorn. And
keep your eye open lest it further entrap you.
Once as I sat thus engaged— and thinking things-
other barbed thorned branches reached out while I
worked in happy industry, and embraced me by
the shoulders, at the collar, at the skirt of my coat,
in the pockets, so that when I finally arose I
stood in my shirt sleeves. The largest tree we saw,
sometimes attained to a diameter of two feet,
though half that was usually its average; always
its light gray trunk was smooth and bore no
branches until at its very top, which stood against
the early morning sky grotesquely.

Mostly the jungle edge is noiseless. Just at the
first light of day when the stars are beginning to
fade and the darkness is losing some of its density,
birds begin to twitter: one with a voice like the
meadow lark ; one, a cross between a bobolink and
a canary; another, with a single note, first slow

72 PHRA RAM MAKES

and at deliberate intervals, gradually increasing
in volume and rapidity ; one chirping like a robin ;
a second like a lost chick; a third like a catbird.
Then a burst of melody as day breaks, and the gray
sky grows lighter and lighter until it is blue.
From out of the southeast, where the sun is soon
to shed his rays, a rosier hue shows ; and the rakish
tree tops, and palms and festooning canes lighted
by a gray-blue sky make an early morning picture
of brilliant beauty. As the sun rises, bird notes
grow fewer and when the heat of the day has fully
developed, the quiet of the grave again settles upon
the country; a quiet that reigns always in the in-
terior of the dense jungle, where one does not see
the sun or hear a single bird note.

At night, as dusk closes upon the jungle edge
there comes the catlike, distressful call of the pea-
cock, as it speeds swiftly to its roosting place in
the very top of the highest tree it can find.

Through the more or less open country ap-
proaching the jungle edge, the heat increased
during the day until it became close and sultry,
though seldom the thermometer registered above
94° (and this was December) but the nights were
comfortably cool and insect life comparatively less
disturbing. Though mosquitoes were plentiful
and persistent, of the small kind requiring a fine
mesh of netting, yet the real insect pest was red

A PILGRIMAGE 73

ants that took hold of one with no tentative grip
and held on. But as to attendants, it was the most
luxurious camping that ever I had, for, with our
thirty men, there was a servant if you did but raise
your hand. Phra Earn had been directed by the
king's minister to make this journey in fitting style
—at my expense — and he was not leaving anything
undone to add to my comfort or to increase the
importance of his pilgrimage. Usually we started
at daylight and pursued our lumbering way, at
the rate of about two and one-half miles the hour
until sundown, with a two-hour stop during the
fierce heat of midday for the benefit of the bullocks,
which were not up to much and were being pretty
well worked by the heavy roads. The night camp,
made after much loud direction on the part of
Ram and equally much misdirected energy on the
part of the natives, was always picturesquely
located in a clearing in the jungle ; and while the
men ate, the bullocks wandered in and out and
around and over like so many dogs, the natives occa-
sionally chiding them for too abrupt friendliness.
Occasionally a bullock made his way to where we
pitched our tent just outside the circle of carts;
but invariably fled discomfited by the contempt
with which my servant reminded it of being " but
a slave that had tried to play the gentleman."
Bullocks never stray far from camp, however. At

74 PHRA RAM MAKES

dark they are driven in to form scattering groups
within the circle of carts. Each driver ties his
own cattle around him and builds a little fire,
which every now and again during the night he
awakes with a start to replenish as the bullock
plunges on the tie rope in an agony of timorous
fancy, suspecting every noise in the surrounding
jungle to be a prey-seeking tiger. If wood is
scarce, a lantern is kept lighted. The bullocks are
quite as fearful of the night jungle as the Siamese
themselves; which is saying much —for the low
caste are cowardly, beyond any people I ever fell
among. Poor, simple souls, they are so supersti-
tious that supplication and merit making occupy
most of their waking hours.

A bedraggled young Siamese who came ex-
hausted into our camp one night, reported having
seen the wet tracks of a tiger and of spending his
night building a merit making shrine in appeal to
his mightiness " the animal " that he be allowed
to pass safely to the camp of Phra Ram for whom
he carried a letter announcing the illness of his
head wife ; news which Ram and his accompanying
wife discussed with obvious interest. Wherever
natives journey these crude little altars are erected.
Sometimes the supplicant offers in tribute articles
of comparative value, such as their bamboo orna-
ments, or a piece of the cloth of which a turban-

A PILGRIMAGE 75

like head covering is fashioned; sometimes it may
be only a handful of leaves gathered nearby ; some-
times fruit. I never saw betel-nut offered. The
low caste Siamese of the jungle have few wants,
and live like animals, eating chiefly wild fruits and
rice, which they raise in small, cleared spots,
wherever they happen to settle temporarily. Like
the Karens, the jungle people of Burma, they are
always on the move, and in common with all mixed-
caste Siamese are petty thieves of an incurable
propensity. Yet they are obedient, servile to an
unpleasant degree from the Westerner's view-
point. They manufacture nothing save crudest
domestic household necessities and personal orna-
ments from bamboo. Clothes are of slight conse-
quence. On the jungle edge they go uncovered,
men and women, above the waist, the panung
reaching within four inches of the knee ; but deep
in the jungle they are practically naked. Their
single implement is a long-bladed, butcher-like
knife used as path maker, as weapon (together
with a wood spear) , and industrially, in fashioning
out of the ubiquitous bamboo their ornaments,
their buckets, their rope, their string, their houses
and the food receptacles which take the place of
pots and pans and plates. Nearly all of the jungle
folk on both sides the Siam-Burma line tattoo the
thigh, sometimes from knee to hip, more often

76 PHRA EAM MAKES

from the knee to only six inches above. The de-
sign may be a turtle, or the much dreaded tiger
done elaborately, but the one most frequently
seen, and the simplest, is a sort of a lace or
fringe pattern in the middle of the thigh, or just
below the knee, like a garter. The women do
not tattoo, believing in beauty unadorned ; heaven
knows they need adornment as my photograph of
an average looking jungle lady will bear me
witness.

Before we had travelled many days together my
doubts concerning the efficiency of the men of our
expedition as hunters, became convictions. When
we had passed through the comparatively open,
park-like country and got well into the jungle, the
attractive, natural settings and the pleasing bird
notes were replaced by dense timber and bush
growths, which shut out the sun, and an appalling
silence that was broken only by the sounds we our-
selves made in pushing through the forest which
so hedged us in that a clear view of fifty yards was
unusual. For a few days after reaching the jungle
proper we occasionally heard the choking, startling
cry of a big, blackish, gray ape— but even that
lone disturber of the solitude soon ceased his un-
even efforts. We were now in what Phra Ram
was pleased to term the hunting country, and I
have forgotten just how many he declared my bag

A PILGRIMAGE 77

should be of buffalo (the animal I particularly-
sought), of gnuadang (the wild red ox) and of
kating (the local name for the Indian gaur and
the Malayan seladang) .

At least the chief appeared to have full confi-
dence in his assurances for he hunted diligently.
In the open country he went forth regularly with
sundown to jack rabbits, while in the jungle he
sat up many a night on a platform over a tied-up
bullock in the hope of getting a shot at tiger. To
see— and to hear— Ram and his servant escort de-
parting for and returning from these platforms
was perhaps the most impressive event of the pil-
grimage. He always set out for the platform
before dark and returned at daybreak. Long
after he passed out of sight as he went, and long
before we could see him on the return, we would
hear his strident voice reaching up out of the wil-
derness about us, and the smashing and slashing
of brush as his servants cleared his way— and inci-
dentally announced his approach to all the jungle
four-footed folk in the province. In the morning,
as the chief emerged from the jungle with trailing
servants, bearing his gun, hat, tea-making set, cig-
arettes, knives, slippers, wraps, lantern, he would
make direct for my tent, where he saluted and then
recounted to Nai Kawn in voice so loud as to be
distinguishable at the farthest corner of our camp

78 PHRA EAM MAKES

every thought he had owned and every sound he
had heard since the previous afternoon. He
always told his experience with great gusto and
much good humor, while the servants squatted
around him nodding energetic affirmation of the
thrilling recital ; for there was sure to be something
thrilling.

Ram's servants were a picture in themselves.
One aged chap carried over his shoulder a pole
with native bamboo-made bird cage inclosing
Ram's pet dove, swinging from one end, while at
the other hung a Chinese paper umbrella, which
was held over Ram's head when he ventured from
under his covered cart during the strong noon heat.
A second servant carried in his arms a rooster
which he invariably tethered by a short string to
the first convenient bush whenever a halt was
made. Why Ram included this rooster in his ret-
inue I never could learn, but it stayed with us the
entire trip to enliven the monotonous silence of the
early jungle morning by lusty crowing. A third
servant carried Ram's armory of kris and gun. A
fourth and fifth shared his personal luggage. A
sixth and seventh divided the betel-nut chewing
paraphernalia. The eighth, Si, really came very
near to eclipsing the glory of Ram himself ; not in
raiment, however, for of that there was not enough
to mention. Si wore long hair, an unceasing smile

A PILGRIMAGE 79

and a G-string, and enjoyed wide distinction
among his fellows as being the man who had
erected the king's tent throughout the latter 's up-
country pilgrimage. The honor appeared to have
put him in perpetual good humor with himself
and the world. He was always laughing or cut-
ting some kind of monkey shine, and in fact was
the cap and bells of the expedition. He seemed to
prefer my camp-fire to that of his own, and he and
our busy little Chinese cook, who never worked
without a fan in one hand, which he alternately
devoted to himself and to the fire, were constantly
falling foul of one another, for Si was ever playing
practical pranks on the Chinaman. The gem of Si's
earthly possessions was a short, white jacket, which
he informed us had been given him by the king
and which as his sole clothing he wore on his body
only on very special occasions. At all other times
he wore the jacket on his head fashioned into a
kind of turban. One day, as he tormented the
Chinese cook, the latter grabbed the coat-turban
and cut off a half of one of its sleeves before Si
could come to the rescue. And that was the end of
Si's jollity; for the remainder of the trip he was
content to follow demurely last of the train of
Barn's personal followers.

The chief was not permitting this pilgrimage to
ancestral lands to move unheralded, and probably

80 PHRA RAM MAKES

there was not a man, woman or child on the hither
side the Burma line who had not heard of our
proposed invasion before we left Eatburi. At
every camp they came flocking to swell the expedi-
tion and to reduce our provisions, until the thirty
men of our original party had increased to about
seventy-five. Some of these had guns, and many
of them professed to be hunters, so on my sugges-
tion, Phra Ram sent a dozen or two or three of
them scouring the country for tracks. Usually
they reported either none or old ones. Sometimes
they brought tales of fresh tracks and excellent
prospects. As a result of these hopeful stories I
made a number of side hunting excursions of sev-
eral hard days' duration after buffalo and kating;
but without luck, for though the tracks at times
were rather fresh and success seemed imminent,
yet after eight or ten hours' tramping the Siamese
usually decided the game had passed into another
section and was too far to reach for " that day."
The day never seemed long enough for us to reach
game. There was plenty of the little muntjac deer,
with its reddish coat, white marked breast and
rump and dog-like tenor bark. The natives call this
deer by blowing a leaf, making a bleating noise
somewhat like that caused by blowing on a blade
of grass between the hands. But it is a skulker
and not so easy to kill, though many opportunities

A PILGRIMAGE 81

offered, of which I did not avail myself, having
already one head as a trophy. Several times I saw
a red-necked jungle fowl, about the size of a small
hen, and counted myself very lucky in the sight,
for it is shy; and three times a splendid shot
offered at the dark brown Far Eastern sambar
deer, which is about the size of our Virginia deer,
and carries two to four upstanding, branchless
spikes varying from eight to twelve inches in
length. After several of these excursions the Sia-
mese showed a disinclination for further jungle
searching, complaining to Nai Kawn that I walked
too long and too far, but a little tea, judiciously
doled out reawakened their interest and the daily
hunting trips continued.

Within two weeks I had seen and had oppor-
tunity to shoot about everything in the jungle, in-
cluding elephant, except the buffalo which was the
only quarry I wanted, but as we approached the
Burmese border we developed into an itinerant
police court with calendar so full and interesting
that no Siamese could be induced to forego any of
its sessions. Apparently the jungle folk had not
for some time before been given the chance of tell-
ing their tales of woe. And they were mostly do-
mestic tales, unsavory and shamelessly personal
and frankly recited. Ram always held court at
noon in the most open spot to be found in the

82 PHRA EAM MAKES

jungle where we might be, and here under the
shade of a tree with his servants on either hand, he
would sit in judgment upon the cases brought for
his consideration. Squatting in humble attitude,
in the immediate foreground, were the plaintiff
and defendant, and behind them in a semi-circle,
reaching back as far as the clear spot would per-
mit, squatted the entire expedition and the visiting
spectators. Whether it was a man seeking to cast
off one of his wives who had ceased to delight him,
or a woman wishing freedom from a cruel hus-
band, or a case of theft, the chief read the law
without fear of contradiction, and to the apparent
satisfaction of all concerned. And when court
adjourned Ram's servants gathered up the pres-
ents laid before " his honor " in open evidence
that the jungle folk knew it wise to humor any
man on a pilgrimage to the home of his ancestors,
especially when that man happened to be a per-
sonage so intimately connected with their state as
Phra Ram, chief of the border line, and possessor
of many wives. Always these proceedings were
followed by a love feast in which curry and rice
and fowl served to bring harmony even to the
recent disputants. In time I came to share local
homage, because from having given quinine and
cathartic pills to some of the men of our party it
got noised about that I was a medical wizard. At

A PILGRIMAGE 83

every camp I became the object of adoration and
petition by individuals, families and groups, ailing
from one thing or another, who approached me on
bended knee, begging drugs. At times I was prac-
tically mobbed. It mattered not what the ailment,
or whether it was fancied or real ; they had heard
of my medicine and would not be denied. In the
thought of ridding myself of their embarrassing
entreaties, I one day gave out some pills— the
bitterest things ever compounded; but the " pa-
tients,'' to my utter consternation, chewed them
greedily. The more distasteful the stuff, in fact,
the more convinced they seemed to be of its
medicinal properties. In a foolish moment at one
camp, I painted some grotesque figures in iodine
on a woman's swollen breast which had been
offered for treatment ; and within three days every
similarly affected woman dogged my footsteps
until I had to appeal to the chief for deliverance
from their importunities. Citronelle, too, which
I had brought in the delusion of its sparing me
from mosquitoes, proved a great favorite with the
gentle sex.

Personally, I used very little medicine. Al-
though advised by doctors in town to take five
grains of quinine daily, it seemed to me that such
a course would get my system so accustomed to the
drug that it would not respond when there was

84 PHEA EAM MAKES

really need to dose. Days did come when I needed
it pretty badly, yet never so badly that I could not
travel, and on such occasions I took from fifteen
to twenty-five grains to knock out the fever I could
feel coming on. And the knockout generally fol-
lowed, for though I got into some notoriously un-
healthful country here and elsewhere in the Far
East, I escaped serious attacks. I always took the
precaution to first boil water before drinking it,
and, in the most noxious parts of the swampy
jungle where we had many times to camp, to
keep a fire going all night with the smoke blow-
ing across me; yet I did not wholly escape.
Another plan I pursued and which I believe in a
large measure answered for my good health, was
to have my servant bring me at daylight a full,
large cup of strong, milkless, sugarless coffee,
which I drank to fortify my stomach against the
early morning miasma. It may have been fancy,
but it served me well. Dysentery, which may run
into fatal cholera, is the most dreaded of lurking-
jungle dangers, but though attacked several times
chlorodyne safeguarded me promptly and effec-
tually.

Earn continued to hold court day after day and
to assure me between sittings of my getting the
buffalo I sought ; but by this time I knew that until
the chief of the Burmese line had completed his

SOME OF MY HUNTERS.
Who assumed the clothing of civilization in an effort to protect their bodies against the briars.

CAMPING ON THE EDGE OF THE JUNGLE, SIAM.

A PILGRIMAGE 85

pilgrimage and reached the Karens on the border
I was not likely to get much game. The Karens
I had heard were accustomed to hunting and were
experienced in the jungle, whereas the Siamese we
had, and were rapidly acquiring, knew nothing of
the jungle beyond the beaten paths or the sections
immediately near their settlements. So I made a
virtue of necessity and became reconciled, abiding
the time we should reach the Karens. Meanwhile,
during the closing days of the court's circuit, the
best sport I had was with peacock, which, as I
learned, is a mighty difficult bird to get. I had fan-
cied it easy until I tried. Seldom do you see the bird
during the day, for it is wary and very rarely takes
to wing, relying upon its hearing and legs ; and in
confidence as it well may, for it runs swiftly where
you make way slowly and with much labor. There-
fore you listen for the catlike call with which the
cock invariably announces his flight to the roosting
tree at dusk. He is too high, as he soars swiftly, to
reach on wing with a shot gun, even if you see him
in flight, and too indistinct a mark in the gathering
darkness for the rifle; so you watch where he
alights, if you can, or you guess it if you have not
seen, as most likely you have not, and then you
quietly camp under that tree until dawn. The
chances are that you are under the wrong tree,
and that while you are trying to locate the bird in

86 A PILGRIMAGE

the morning, he will suddenly spring from a
nearby treetop and go away so rapidly that you
have only time to glimpse his long, trailing tail.
He must be located with certainty, for with the
very first break of day he leaves his roost with a
rush. Many an unrewarded, long night I spent
before being favored.

It was with great relief that I sighted the Karen
settlement and felt Phra Ram's pilgrimage to be
finally at an end ; yet the trip had provided me with
needed experience and, now qualified to distin-
guish the jungle man from the town loafer, I set
about engaging men for my buffalo hunt on the
Burmese border.

CHAPTER IV
HUNTING WITH THE KARENS.

WHEN we left the Karen village, we left
behind also the assortment of Siamese
whom we had been collecting all along the route
of Phra Ram's pilgrimage, though it required
some strategy to get clear of them, for they were
unwilling to allow so well-provisioned an outfit to
escape. But the Karens we gathered were little
better than the Siamese we abandoned; it came
near to being' a case of jumping out of the frying-
pan into the fire. I had no difficulty whatever in
securing Karens to join our expedition; but alas,
the hope, which had buoyed me during the pil-
grimage, of getting efficient men among these peo-
ple, was rudely shattered. Real hunters, men who
knew the jungle and the wilderness folk— were
few and far between. In fact there was not a man
of my party, nor could I find one, who had ever
seen a buffalo, the game I particularly sought.
One chap was presented with much flourish as
being the son of a man who at one time had made
his way into the interior of Burma and killed
buffalo and other game ; but the son, though he had
hunted the wild red cattle a great deal, had never

88 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

killed buffalo. On the Burma side the Karens are
more at home in the jungle, but those of the border
line are more like the Siamese, who never ven-
ture into jungle not known to some of their people.
The little village where I picked up my men was
the temporary abode of a small tribe, with its
about one dozen houses standing on bamboo poles
eight feet above the ground, and straggling along
a small stream for several miles. Here they had
made a clearing and were cultivating rice which,
together with a kind of pumpkin (gourd), wild-
growing bananas, some jungle vegetables, and
chickens constitute their food. The houses were
placed to command the rice fields, over which con-
stant guard is maintained by a system of scare-
crows and crudely constructed noise-making im-
plements. For example : running from the house
to the padi fields, sometimes as much as one hun-
dred yards away, were lines of bamboo poles every
one with a hole in its top. Through these holes
a native-made rope was attached at the padi field
end to a very large, thoroughly dried, hollow
bamboo placed upon another of the same kind at
an angle of forty-five degrees. Always someone
is on watch at the house end of this line. When
birds or animals steal upon the padi field, the rope
is pulled and let go quickly and repeatedly, which
alternately lifts and drops one hollow bamboo upon

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 89

the other, making a booming yon can hear for a
good mile in the jungle. And all this clearing and
bnilding is repeated annually, for the Karens are
a nomadic people, so constantly changing their
abodes that the same piece of ground is not often
planted a second time. If during the planting or
the ripening of the crop someone should fall ill
of smallpox, the afflicted, the house and the rice
fields are immediately deserted, because the Karens
are deadly afraid of it and fly for their lives on
its appearance, setting up sharp sticks on all roads
leading to the settlement to intercept the demon
of disease.

Like the Siamese, the Karen women are not good
to look upon, and do not improve their appearance
any by the style of ornaments they affect. When
very young their ears are pierced to admit a small,
round stick which is gradually increased in diam-
eter, until by the time the little girls have become
women their ears easily accommodate a two-inch
disc of blackened bamboo. This stretches the ears
hideously, as may be imagined; and when the orna-
ment is laid aside temporarily!— well— picture the
thin strips of pendant ear lobe! As a rule the
Karen women wear their hair long, but, like the
Siamese, some cut it short, and others again keep
it cropped close, except on top of the head, where
it is allowed to grow to its natural length, which

90 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

does not add to their by-no-means over abundance
of good looks. Sometimes the unmarried woman
wears a breast cloth, but for the most part men
and women wear a loin girdle, and sometimes even
that is set aside in hot weather.

To appreciate thoroughly the Japanese women
one should begin the Far Eastern trip at the Malay
Peninsula, journeying thence through Siam,
Anam, Cambodia and China— though I confess to
preferring a good looking Chinese girl to the
alleged Japanese beauty.

Bracelets and necklaces of bamboo are the other
usual ornaments, except when they can afford a
narrow neckband of silver which protects the
wearer, so it is believed, against many evils that
lurk along life's wayside, even in the jungle. The
men also wear this neckband, and bamboo an inch
in diameter and about four inches long stuck
through their ear lobes. Some of the boys are
rather good looking. They wear their hair in a
knot, like a horn— on the forehead, or at one side
or the other of the head, or on top ; and usually a
turban crowns the topknot. All in all, the Karens
differ not a great deal from the Siamese in phys-
iognomy, but the people in this section of the Far
East shade into one another rather easily.

Whatever the Karens know of hunting is ac-
quired from sitting on platforms in the dry season

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 91

watching waterholes for the drinking beasts; and
they do not much of this for they are not a meat-
eating people.

In a word, the new men engaged were of mighty
little service to me except as burden bearers ; and
so far as increasing the efficiency of my party, I
was no better off after my visit to the Karen village
than before. My immediate " hunting " force
continued unchanged, and consisted of the Sia-
mese, Thee, Nuam and Wan, who had been secured
by Phra Ram as the best three in all the country.
And that was true enough, for although a long
ways from being good hunters, they were really
about the only natives I met in Siam who pre-
tended to have any jungle hunting experience;
and, except for Wan, even their knowledge went
no farther than chance gossip. Thee's chief occu-
pation was courting the ladies of the jungle and of
the villages; the moment we crossed the trail of
the eternal feminine Thee was lost to our party. I
always hoped he was more capable, not to say suc-
cessful, in this field than he was in the one where
I paid for his experience. All three carried muz-
zle-loading guns which had been presented to them
at Ratburi by the chief; but only Wan possessed
any markmanship whatever. Phra Ram had in
fact laid in a stock of such guns for distribution
to the distinguished among the jungle stragglers

92 HUNTING WITH THE KAEENS

whom we met on the pilgrimage, and they were
appropriated with frank pleasure, and carried
with much ostentation. But Earn got no thanks
from me for his generosity. The natives fired at
every living thing which crossed our path, making
such a f usilade that hunting was simply out of the
question. When I took Earn to task he solemnly
assured me that the men would not dare venture
into the jungle without the guns ; and when I told
him I could get along better without both men and
guns he protested that the king would cut off his
head if he allowed the " distinguished foreign
hunter," who had been intrusted to his care, to ven-
ture unprotected into the jungle. So I proceeded
to take the law into my own hands by getting pos-
session of the small supply of caps and deliberately
exploding every one of then on Wan's gun, which
I borrowed for the purpose. Mutiny followed,
but none of the gun owners left I am sorry to
say— we had too much good grub. While we
stopped at the Karen village reports innumerable
came to us of game, especially of elephants, of
which the jungles were said to be full, as indeed
it seemed after we got started. Leaving the
little village at daybreak, we had not walked more
than a couple of hours before we found broad,
defined tracks, and later a wallowing pool.
Whether or not you are hunting elephant, it is a

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 93

joy to come upon their tracks, for they make a
path easily traversed through jungle of clinging
vine and thorn bushes, through which ordinarily
you could make way laboriously only by constant
use of the knife. Though I was not hunting
elephant, the ready-made pathway was quite as
acceptable.

After a while we came upon buffalo and red
cattle tracks in a thickly wooded country of small
trees, where the coarse grass grew higher than
one's head. Between these stretches were occa-
sional swamps without timber, covered with the
lalang common to all Malaya— and as wet. Not
a stitch remained dry after going through one of
these places. Picking up the buffalo tracks, for
they alone interested me, we followed them unin-
terruptedly all that first day, coming again to mud-
holes in which the roiled water showed plainly
their recent passing. Later we got into denser
jungle and found fresher tracks. It seemed as
though we must at least get sight of the game;
but after eight hours' steady going Thee decided
we could not reach it that day. As I have said,
Thee was the ladies' man, yet Phra Ram had made
him leader of the hunters. I understood later that
his people had certain agricultural interests near
Ratburi which gave him importance in the eyes
of a chief interested in the local rivel toll.

94 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

The experience of the first day was the expe-
rience of the following two weeks, during which
we travelled over the country and across its fre-
quent streams, making our way towards one par-
ticular section, which all united in declaring was
sure to yield us buffalo if we were not earlier suc-
cessful. There was scarcely a day in those two
weeks that we did not cross elephant tracks, and
the tracks of deer, and the Siamese variety of the
guar ; several times I had the luck to sight the deer
itself.

In the Far East is an interesting and exclusive
Oriental group of deer (Rusine), which includes
the sambar of India, Burma and Siam, with its
numerous Malayan varieties; and several closely
allied similar forms through Malaya and the Phil-
ippine Islands. Most important but least nu-
merous is Schomburger's deer (Cervus schom-
burgki), standing about four feet at the shoulder,
and carrying a good-sized head, entirely unique in
the whole world of deer for its many-pointed ant-
lers. This was the only deer at which I should
have risked a shot while in the buffalo section ; but,
unhappily, I never saw one, as it is very scarce
except in the far northern parts of Siam, and not
plentiful even there. In fact, good heads are rare.

Also in Siam is the little barking (Cervulus
muntjac) or ribfaced deer, about twenty inches

HE FAR EASTERN DEER

Hog deer of Indian plains, Cervus porciniis.

Ranges through Burma. z{ ft. at shoulder.
Sambar, common, Cervus unicolor. This is more

like the Indian type. 4 to 5 ft. at shoulder.
Ribbed faced deer, barking deer, Cervulns munt-

jac. 20 to 22 in. high.

4. Celebes, Cervus moluccensis. 3 ft. high.

5. Northern Siam, Cervus Schomburgki. 3 ft. 5 in.

high.

6. Thameng, Cervus eldi. Burma.

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 95

shoulder height, and known to almost all sections
of the Far East. This I saw frequently, though
it is a solitary wanderer and passes most of its
time in thick cover, coming out to graze in the
early morning and at sunset. Its longest antlers
(of antelope-like form) do not exceed four inches,
and the head is carried very low, so that it has an
ungainly, somewhat sheep-like gait, though of con-
siderable speed. One is constantly hearing its
somewhat dog-like, somewhat fox-like yelp.

The other deer most commonly seen is the sam-
bar (Cervus unicolor), ranging from four to five
feet at the shoulder, an Oriental species which,
with its numerous sub-species, is common to
Burma, Malay, Siam and several of the East
Indian islands, the most attractive head being car-
ried by the Celebes variety, although the deer itself
is smaller than the Indian or Malayan type.

Then there are the hog deer (Cervus porcinus)
of India, two and one-half feet at the shoulder,
which ranges through Burma, although not plenti-
fully; and the strictly Burmese variety called the
themeng (Cervus eldi), about the size of a big
antelope, with its Barren Ground caribou-like ant-
lers. Except for the Schomburger, the antlers of
all these deer are of simpler type than those of
the European or American groups ; as a rule, they
have a single brow-tine, with the beam rising

96 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

nearly straight and terminating usually in a simple
fork. The sambar is quite the largest of the
Oriental group, and a fine deer it is, of powerful
build, standing nearly five feet in height at the
shoulder in the hills where it is most abundant.
At the other side of the world, in Argentine and in
Chili, South America, I found another deer, locally
known as the huemul, which carries antlers quite
similar to those of the sambar.

There are some parts of the Malay Peninsula
where the Sakais kill the muntjac, and even the
sambar, wTith poisoned darts from their blow gun ;
but none of these Oriental peoples are hunters of
deer except by the method of watching from a
platform erected near a drinking hole in the dry
season. During the rainy season no attempt is
made to get deer, and therefore they know nothing
whatever of the science of hunting. Truth to tell,
hunting craft, wood craft, is of little service in
these dense Par Eastern jungles, because there is
no such thing as following game up wind except
by chance, or of calculating its probable range and
crossing upon it, or nine times out of ten of cir-
cumventing it in any legitimate manner. If ever
the hunter gets the game at a disadvantage it is
entirely luck ; for there is no other way of hunting
in these dense jungles than by following tracks
wherever they may lead. Thus it will happen that

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 97

you may be travelling down wind or up wind. If
when you come within striking distance you are
going up wind, a lucky star indeed shines over you.
If down wind— disappointment, as you hear but
never catch sight of the fleeing game. Nowhere in
the world I have hunted is successful stalking
more difficult than in this piece of Siam-Burma.
A tangle of hanging things overhead, of creeping
things underfoot, and of thorn bushes on every
side; all ready to hold or to prick or to sound
instant alarm to the wild folk. Stalking through
such going means travelling as a cat approach-
ing a mouse— picking up one's feet with utmost
care and placing them with equal caution, the while
using your long knife industriously, silently, to
ease your passage.

For a few days after leaving the village, Ram's
habit was to send forth every morning as prelimi-
nary to the day's hunting, twenty or twenty-five
Karens to scour the country for tracks; but they
made so much noise I insisted that the practice be
abandoned and that the Karens remain in camp
well away from the region I intended hunting. The
only real use I got out of these men was in crossing
streams, as we did with more or less frequency.
Because of our weakling bullocks, we almost never
crossed a stream without getting stuck; and on
such occasions the " hunters " came in handy to

98 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

push and haul the carts out to the bank. One day
we came to a river that was too deep to ford, and
the Karens saved the situation by swimming the
bullocks across, after floating over the carts. Then,
wading chin deep, they portaged on their heads all
the stuff that had been taken out of the carts,
shouting and laughing and playing all the time like
a lot of boys in the old swimming hole. We were
two days at this place, and the Karens had the time
of their lives. Meanwhile Phra Ram stood on the
bank adding his unmusical voice to the general
hubbub during intervals of betel-nut chewing.

After this crossing we travelled through some
fairly open, grassy country, where I saw several
varieties of handsomely plumaged birds, notably
a woodpecker, of a glorious golden red. Here we
had our first view ahead of the " mountains," a
range of small hills in Burma which looked very
blue, and of course densely wooded. Soon, how-
ever, we entered a swampy, noisome section where
both Nai Kawn and I fought dysentery which the
drinking water gave us, although we boiled and
limited to a cup a day. The nights were cool
enough to make sleeping under a light rug com-
fortable, but very damp; the tent was wringing
wet each morning, and our rifles had to be well
greased every night to keep them free of rust.

The bullocks here made very slow time, not over

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 99

two miles an hour, the men plugging along single
file. A week of this, with nothing to cheer the out-
look, and even the usually lighthearted Karens fell
into silence. Then one day we came upon firmer
soil, and within forty-eight hours we sighted a set-
tlement of three houses. I was in the lead of the
advance group of my party, and besides discover-
ing the village, also learned a lesson in native hos-
pitality. When we arrived all the little group
with me except Wan left and went into one of the
houses, where they sat, eating bananas and bamboo
cane (like sugarcane), none of the residents either
inviting me into the house or offering me anything
to eat. Wan was indignant and after a little while
went to the house where our men sat eating, and
I could hear the high notes of his complaining
voice coming fast and furious. Shortly a Karen
came to me with presents of sugarcane and cocoa-
nut powder, for which in return I made him a
present of the seed beads they prize highly. Ex-
change of presents is the only means of barter with
these jungle people, who carry all their belongings,
including betel-nut, the most important, tied into
a pouch at the end of their loin cloth and hung
about their middle.

We had another siege of Ram's court holding at
this place, and he had to pass judgment on some
of the most unlovely specimens of the human race

100 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

that I ever beheld. Something of the frank nature
of these courts may be judged when I say that a
woman, who complained that her husband had left
her for a younger one, was asked by Ram if she
had any disease, at which the entire gathering
yelled with great delight, the woman herself and
the court (Phra Ram) joining in. In fact Ram
always got a lot of enjoyment out of these sittings,
joking plaintiff and defendant impartially, and
having, obviously, a thoroughly good time. I
noticed, too, that the presents were always more
numerous where Ram was in good form ; and you
may be sure that did not escape the chief, to whom
the delay here and the further opportunity it
afforded for court holding and present receiving
were by no means distasteful.

Ram told me we were to await the arrival of
some men who were really hunters of buffalo ; and
I groaned, for my daily prayer had become that
I might lose those we already had. But we tarried.
Meanwhile, Wan and I went out into the surround-
ing jungle, chiefly with the idea, as far as I was
concerned, of getting away from the unending im-
portunities of the dirty people among whom we
camped. The country immediately surrounding
these houses was a little bit more open than that
which we had come through and we saw no buffalo
tracks but did see a tiger— rather an unusual expe-

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 101

rience, and the only tiger I saw in Siam. We were
in a very dense bamboo thicket and I was seated,
smoking, with my rifle standing against a nearby
bamboo clump. As I sat, a something about
twenty yards on my right moved, and looking
quickly, I just got a fleeting glimpse of a tiger
slinking silently, swiftly out of the bamboo into the
jungle. I jumped to my feet, but before I could
seize my rifle it had disappeared. I followed the
tracks as long as I could see them, but never got
another sight of the royal beast.

After three days the arrival of the " buffalo
hunters " was the signal for a pow-wow that
lasted well into the night before Ram's tent. Such
incessant jabbering I have never heard, and every-
body in the neighborhood gathered to hear and to
take part in the conference. I fancy everyone
enjoyed it but me. To my repeated question of
Ram if the newcomers knew anything of buffalo,
the chief would as repeatedly reply they had .not
got to that yet. For most part of the time their
talk was the gossip of the jungle, usually of the
character commonly exploited in Ram's open
court. Thus half the night passed. Finally, how-
ever, it developed that these men, who had been
searched out at a neighboring settlement, and for
whom we had waited three days, had not hunted
buffalo, but knew another who had killed one!

102 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

Ram suggested waiting for the friend; but by this
time I was bored about all I could hold without
explosion, and I demanded a start the next morn-
ing. So next day we moved on, headed for the
especial section where buffalo were said to be fairly
plentiful. And now in a few days more we came
to the real jungle, where it was impossible to take
the carts, which were sent along to a settlement
where we were to join them later. I took good
care to send off with the carts every last man that
could be spared, keeping with me only those
actually required as porters, and my Siamese hun-
ters, Thee, Nuam and Wan.

I now entered upon two weeks of the hardest,
most persistent hunting I have ever done. The
jungle everywhere was of the same dense, matted,
thorn-filled character, but that was of slight con-
sequence if only buffalo materialized, as seemed
likely by the tracks. There was no doubt of the
game being here.

The Indian buffalo (Bos buhalos) in its per-
fectly wild state appears to be restricted to India
and to up-country sections of the great Indian
peninsula, including that elevated section where
Burma and Siam join. So-called wild buffalo are
found in other parts of the Far East which are,
however, probably descendants of domesticated
individuals; for in the Philippines and on the

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 103

Chinese and occasionally on the Malayan coast, the
buffalo serves as patiently as the bullock, and with
greater strength. Perhaps, next to the rhino, the
buffalo in its entirely wild state, is the most difficult
beast to find because, like the rhino, its favorite
haunts are the densest jungles, especially in the
neighborhood of swamps, where patches of thick,
towering grass provide covered runways, in which
they are completely concealed. You might pass
within a dozen feet and not see them.

In India buffalo are more apt to be in herds
than in the Siam-Burma section, and in both places
they are fond of passing the day in the marshes.
They are related to the Cape buffalo (Bos caffer),
but distinguished from them by the length and
sweep of their horns and the wide separation at
their base; as well as by the less thickly fringed
ears and 4;he more elongated and narrow head.
Besides, they are bigger, standing from five to six
feet at the shoulder, while the Cape species aver-
ages from four and one-half to five feet. As to
horns, those of the Indian will average a full ten
inches longer with an incomparably wider spread.
The record outside length of an Indian is 77 inches,
that of the African 49; but the average of the
former is from 56 to 60, and of the latter 44 to 47
inches.

A breed is maintained by the Rajahs of India for

104 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

fighting whose horns have not the sweep of the
Indian buffalo, but the shape of the African, with
a short curve turning downward over the eye.
They are tremendously more massive, however,
having a diameter at the base of twenty-six inches.

Perhaps a day taken straight from my diary will
best suggest the kind of hunting I had after this
Indian buffalo on the Siam-Burma frontier.

" Started at five o'clock in the morning, my three
hunters, Thee, Nuam and Wan, and with us a
Karen, the only one of the Karen crowd supposed
to know this country. Speedily found tracks,
which we followed for some little time, the Karen
going carelessly and noisily, rushing ahead, appar-
ently bent only on seeing the track without thought
of the hunters behind him. Within a couple of
hours of this kind of going we jumped a buffalo ;
could hear him crashing through the jungle not
over twenty yards ahead of us. The Karen, in
much excited state of mind, claimed he had seen
it; but I did not and I was close behind. This
experience, however, made me determined to keep
the Karen back, so I ordered him to the rear and
put Wan in front of me with the jungle knife, as
it was necessary to cut our way continuously.
Much annoyed by the bungling Karen, I tried to
make him understand my feelings. Ugh— it is to
laugh. Went ahead again, but the Karen came

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 105

crashing up the line, jumping in ahead of Wan.
Then I smote him— hard and recurringly. While
I thus bade him be good another something, which
we discovered later to be a red ox, jumped up and
away, crashing and smashing, into the jungle.
With the Karen again in the rear we went on, and
soon were on the buffalo tracks. For three hours
we followed these through dense jungle, finally
over a hill, and practically all the time moving
down wind. Suddenly again the buffalo; he got
our wind and bolted. Could not have been over
fifteen or twenty yards off, though we could not
see ten. Three hours later, after hard, patient
tracking, with Wan in the lead using his parang
very carefully, we again started the buffalo.
Again he got our wind. At none of these times
could we see the beast, although so close to him.
To get that near to the same buffalo four times in
one day may have reflected creditably upon our
tracking, but was extremely disappointing, none
the less. Such conditions made scoring impossi-
ble ; you may not take advantage of the wind ; you
must simply follow the tracks and circle round
and round or straight away wherever they lead
you. You make, of course, very little headway,
consuming a lot of time in you patient plodding,
for you must literally cut your way. Without the
experience one can scarcely imagine the strain of

106 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

this kind of stalking, not to mention the irritation
of having around you such blundering hunters.
The difficulties of getting buffalo are many, but
especially because they lie up in the dense clumps
during the day; and it is literally impossible to
skirt around under cover, as one might do in more
open country."

Thus day after day I hunted buffalo, setting out
in the morning by sunrise and keeping at it without
cessation until dark. I often took the precaution
of moving camp several miles from where we
found or stopped on tracks. And in such manner
I went over every bit of that buffalo section.
There were days when I did not start buffalo, days
when I did not get even on their tracks, but for the
most part I started game every day of hunting.
One day, for example, after setting out at daylight
and walking six miles to tracks, I started nothing
until late in the afternoon, about four o'clock.
Another day I found no fresh spoor until shortly
before sunset, and then I came upon four, a bull,
two cows and a calf. I was about one hour behind
them and the tracks were getting fresher as I pro-
ceeded. The fact that they were leading to a piece
of jungle a little less dense than usual made me
hopeful, and I followed as rapidly as I could make
my way noiselessly, urging Wan to go swiftly, but
silently ; and Wan did his work well. The tracks

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 107

kept getting fresher and fresher. Suddenly I
could hear the chopping of bamboo, and shortly
afterward the tracks indicated that the buffalo had
begun running. Soon we came almost at our
camp. The buffalo had got the wind of our camp
which, together with the noise of bamboo cutting,
had frightened them out of leisurely travel. The
men in camp said they had seen the buffalo cross
just below, running at full speed.

Next morning at daybreak I picked up these
tracks again and followed them for eight hours
through thick jungle swamp, but early in the after-
noon they led to hard ground and soon we lost
them.

It was several days before I found other tracks
and late, just about dark. So we picked them up
the next morning and followed all day until nearly
dark; again through the dense jungle among cu-
rious clumps of bamboo, raised mound-like as a
huge ant hill, and occasional trees, looking like
three or four trees stuck together, having a gross
diameter of eight to ten feet. We left the tracks
when it grew too dark to see them, but I deter-
mined to follow them up in the morning and to go
on alone with Wan. In fact, my party had by
now dwindled to Thee, Nuam and Wan, for the
others, walked to a standstill, had returned to the
main camp. And indeed I was glad to be rid of
them.

108 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

With the first light of day in the morning we
found the tracks, but nothing developed until about
three o'clock when, hearing a little noise, we
stopped in our stalking and listened. I tried to
learn the direction of the wind, but it was impos-
sible to say if there was wind, and if so, what its
direction. Yet again the noise, and we stood so
still on those very fresh tracks with the noise of
the moving buffalo sounding in our ears, that I
could hear my heart beat. It happened that where
we stood was about the densest of dense jungle ; we
were literally encircled with twining rotan, bushes
and cane and thorn vines. I was fearful of
moving, but move we must in order to approach
the buffalo. I took the jungle knife away from
Wan and gave him my gun, for I wanted to be
sure no noise was made in cutting our path. Soon
I discarded the jungle knife and drew the smaller
one I always carry in my belt for eating and gen-
eral utility. We made our way a few feet at a
time, bending low in the effort to get a sight ahead
and locate the buffalo which we could now plainly
hear moving. It seemed not over ten or fifteen
yards off. The* suspense was intense. The most
agonizing thoughts chased through my head— that
Wan would drag my rifle, that I would drop my
knife, or stumble, or something would happen to
scare off our quarry, or that I might sight it run-

HUNTING WITH THE KARENS 109

ning before I could get my rifle ; yet I dared not let
Wan do the cutting for, good man as lie proved,
I was afraid of a slip ; so afraid. I could not talk
to him, could not impress upon him the importance
of quiet ; but I think my attitude and my gestures
made him think that something very serious was
about to happen.

Foot by foot I got a little nearer. Then there
came a noise as though the buffalo had started, and
my heart sank to my boots; yet, listening, it
appeared he had not moved farther away. Then
again we began our slow, painfully slow approach,
all the time dreading that the buffalo might move
off, even if we did not scare him away, because our
catlike approach was consuming time. I prayed
for an open piece of jungle, but it remained as
dense as at first. Almost crawling on my stomach
so as to minimize the cutting and to give me a
better opportunity of seeing in front, I worked
ahead, hearkening for every sound, and reassured
by the noise, such as cattle make, when resting, of
feet stamping and tail switching.

Finally I thought I could catch sight of the tail
as it switched, not over ten yards away. I worked
a little way farther and then reached back and
took my rifle from Wan, determined now to squirm
ahead, if it was humanly possible to do so without
cutting; keeping my rifle at a ready. But it was

110 HUNTING WITH THE KARENS

utterly impossible to go ahead, and I was making
noise. I feared I could get no closer in that
thicket, yet the effort had to be made ; so keeping
the animal's tail in my eye, I forced forward. The
noise was startling: the tail stopped switching; it
seemed to me I could see the outline of the hocks
stiffen as the buffalo prepared to jump. It was a
case of sheer desperation ; making a rough guess as
to where its shoulder might be, I fired, realizing that
only by an extraordinarily lucky chance could I
score. Instantly there was a tremendous racket.
When we got to where the buffalo had stood we
saw a little blood on the bushes— about rump high.

We followed the buffalo for the rest of the day—
for half of the moonlight night— uselessly, for the
tracks grew dim and the shifting clouds and heavy
foliage made it quite impossible to see. It was a
mad chase, and Wan was indulgent enough to
remain with me uncomplainingly.

We lay down in the jungle to rest until daylight
without going to camp, which was far away, and
then again— the tracks ; but we never saw that buf-
falo, and I hope no other hunter ever did; for I
should like now to think that my bullet made only
a flesh wound which never embarrassed the buf-
falo's progress, rather than that the beast wan-
dered, at the mercy of the jungle great cats, to
fall finally an easy victim, or to die the lingering
death of the seriously wounded.

CHAPTER V
HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS

FOR two days, through the jungle tangle of
interior Malay, I had been on fresh rhinoc-
eros tracks. Originally I had found some in
Perak, only to lose them, and now I found myself
on others approaching the limits of the up-country
section. Perak is the most important, as it is the
most northerly, of the four Federated (British
protected) States of the Malay Peninsula. It is
also the most mountainous— and the wettest. They
told me at Telok Anson, where the coasting steamer
dropped me, that Perak has no true rainy season ;
but some months are wetter than others, and I had
chosen the wettest, it seemed.

Approaching from the west coast, Perak offers
an entrancing view— the irregular clearings hacked
for settlement out of the jungle, their dark trop-
ical edging, the hills in the immediate background,
and farther away the Tongkal Range, which helps
to give Malay its mountainous backbone— all
wooded to the very top. The State has half a
dozen peaks over 5,000 feet high, and I had left
one of these, Gunong (Mount) Lalang, on the west,

as I bore northeasterly across the head waters of

112 HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS

the Perak River and over the range, laboriously
journeying toward Kelantan, a native state which
pushes into Patani, which again reaches northward
into Lower Siam.

I had set out, in the first instance, for a rhino
that differs from known Malayan varieties in
having fringes of hair on its ears— the Malayan
itself being the smallest of the single-horned spe-
cies—and which was said, on occasion, to wander
down from Siam into the northern border of
Malay. But my hunting had been unrewarded,
and by now I was not particular whether my rhino
had hair on its ears or on its tail. So I was making
my way toward the Telubin River, which runs
down to the China Sea on the east, and where, I
had been told at Singapore, rhino were reported
to be plentiful. We had left roads, and the pack
elephants, half way down on the other side of the
range, and were pushing forward through the jun-
gle with five Malay packers, a Chinese cook, and
a Tamil— eight of us all told.

It was my first experience packing elephants,
and their agility and handiness, and the intelli-
gence with which they accepted and overcame
unusual conditions in travelling, amazed and inter-
ested me. Without seeing it I would not have be-
lieved that so large and apparently clumsy an
animal could be so nimble, even shifty, on its feet,

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 113

on the trying trails we encountered all through the
valleys and up and down the mountains. I was
greatly interested, often amused, at the extreme
carefulness they exercised. Where the path was
at all uncertain the trunk explored every step
before the huge feet were placed, with almost
mathematical precision. And never for an instant
was their vigilance relaxed; always the trunk felt
the way, sounding the road, the bridge, the depth
of the pool or stream. But perhaps their climbing
up steep ascents, and over ground so slippery that
I, with hobnailed shoes, could scarcely secure foot-
hold, impressed me most. One instance of their
resourcefulness especially surprised me. We
came to a sharp, clayey incline, at the top of which
the bank had broken away, leaving an absolutely
sheer place about eight feet in height. I won-
dered how the elephants would manage this, but
it did not bother them as much as it had me, for
the leader simply put his trunk over the top of
the bank, raised himself up until he got his fore-
feet on top of it, and then with trunk and forelegs
dragged his great body over the edge until his hind
legs were under him.

The elephant is not a fast traveller, though he
is sure and of enormous strength. I never saw
one slip, and they kept going even when sunk belly
deep in the swamp. Three miles the hour was

114 HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS

our average, which fell to two in the hilly country,
and in the mountains I doubt if we made over
one mile an hour. Each elephant carried six to
seven hundred pounds on fair roads, as a good
load, which was reduced to four hundred pounds
when they began climbing.

I was without an interpreter. The one I had
engaged for the trip died of cholera before we got
beyond the settlement, and as the rainy season is
the most unhealthful period for a venture into the
jungle, I was unable to replace him. My Tamil
servant knew a few English words— knew them so
imperfectly as to put to confusion every attempt
at mutual understanding.

After the first couple of days winding into the
hills past tin mines, the most valued deposit in
the State, our trail through Perak led across
swamps, over mountains, and up and down valleys
—and always in mud— sometimes up to knees,
always over ankles. Once we had got deep into
the jungle, a view ahead was never possible, even
on top of the mountains, because of the density of
the great forest. And such a dismal jungle ! Not
even a bird note; not a sound of any kind, save
that made by the squashing of our own feet in the
oozy going.

The interior of Malay is covered with a primeval
forest of upstanding trees, limbless to their very

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 115

tops, where, umbrella-like, they open into great
knobs of foliage, and form a huge canopy so thick
that not a ray of sunlight may break through. Be-
neath is the most luxuriant and wettest vegetation
to be found on earth. Palms, bamboos, ferns, and
plants of rankest and endless variety, hide the
ground and rise to form yet another forest of
smaller though thicker growth ; while rattans and
vines and creeping things stretch from tree to tree,
to make a continuous series of giant festoons.

And the malarial smell everywhere.

It required a heavy rain to come steadily through
that close canopy; but it arrived. Nor was the
rain needed to complete our drenching ; except for
the footing there was little appreciable difference
wading the chin-deep streams, or plowing through
the dripping jungle under that leaky canopy. In-
deed, the stream wading was much to be preferred,
for only at such times we escaped the leeches.

Leeches and lizards and centipedes and number-
less other varieties of crawling unpleasantness
were, in fact, the only living things I had seen thus
far. And of leeches there were literally myriads.
They fastened upon you actually from crown to
foot, as you worked your way through the ferns
and grasses, which reach high above your head.
Notwithstanding carefully adjusted puttees and a
closely tied handkerchief, it was impossible to keep

116 HUMAN TEEE-DWELLEES

leeches from getting in at the ankle and at the
neck. Every now and again, we halted to pick off
those we could reach ; and then you could see them
on all sides making slow but persistent way toward
you, in alternate stretchings and humpings.

This was not ideal country for camping, as may
be imagined. Dry ground, even a dry log to rest
upon, was not to be found; but the shelter the
Malays built each night at least protected us from
the unceasing rain. These were simply made, ser-
viceable little sheds, constructed of the always at
hand bamboo and attap leaves in no longer time
than it takes to pitch a tent. Here was the one
occasion when the mud seemed a blessing, for it
proved a yielding, yet firm setting for the four
sticks which served as corner posts and the two
longer ones placed at each end to support a ridge
pole. Smaller bamboo and, as often as not, rattan,
placed at the sides, and bent and secured across
the ridge pole, completed the frame, over which
were stretched the large and useful leaves of the
attap palm. Inside, again, corner posts with slats
of bamboo laid lengthways made very comfortable
beds; and, with crossway slats, stout benches for
our provisions and general camp impedimenta:
for, of course it was necessary to raise everything
damageable above the mud.

So we travelled on and on, looking for tracks,

THE LARGER AND MORE COMMON TYPE OF SAKAI.

His sole weapon consists of the blow-gun and quiver of poisoned darts, which he shoots with great

accuracy.

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 117

dragging ourselves for hours, ankle-deep in mud,
along stretches of swamp, where the rhino feed
appeared particularly tempting (although rhino
generally feed early in the morning and at dusk) ,
or, crouched until walking was all but impossible,
sneaking into every more than usually dense bit of
cover which suggested a pool or a rhino bed. It
was wet, cheerless work ; and what gets wet in that
jungle stays wet. Except for the water you have
wrung out of them, the soaked clothes you hang
at night on a bamboo stake driven deep into the
mud are equally as soaked when you try to put
them on again in the morning bright-light.

My men did not appear to take much interest
in the search for rhino; indeed, they pursued the
journey with great reluctance, for at best the
Malay is not a hunter; stalking game does not
appeal to him. He never, by choice, hunts in the
rainy season, but takes the more sensible method
of sitting up over an animal's drinking hole in
the dry period, or over a bait. Besides, they stand
much in awe of the rhino, which they rarely hunt,
notwithstanding its blood and horn being worth
almost their weight in gold at the Chinese chem-
ists', who use them in mystical medical concoc-
tions. Once we found plain tracks that in due
course led down the mountain to a rushing, roaring
stream, which we could not cross, although the

118 HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS

tracks showed that the rhino had at least made
the attempt, and nowhere for a mile down stream
could we find signs on our side that he had not
succeeded. This experience came near to stopping
the expedition, for the Malays seemed determined
to turn back, and as I was without even the first
aid to communication which my Tamil servant
(before I sent him back ill with fever) furnished,
I had recourse to looking pleasant and offering
gifts. Finally we did go on, though the Malays
had no liking for it, and were sullen.

There had been days of this kind of experience,
so that when I actually came on fresh tracks, my
thankfulness was both deep and sincere. At first
the tracks were distinct, and I had no difficulty in
following them, particularly where, for a consider-
able distance, they led through what may be called
a jungle runway, which is a passage forced through
the heaviest underbrush by the rhino, and of such
density that, were you standing within a half dozen
feet, the beast might go through unseen, though
not of course unheard. But on this, the second
day, the tracks led up hill from the swampy land
of the valley. The rain was falling unusually
hard, and the water flowed down the hillside almost
in streams, making it, of course, very difficult to

THE SMALLER AND LESS COMMON TYPE OF SAKAI.

A father and his two sons. They carry the poisonous darts in their hair, and very closely resemble
the Negritos of the Philippines.

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 119

follow the tracks— sometimes entirely obliterating
them. Hence I worked forward slowly. I had
ceased to depend upon my men, though I kept two
up with me, leaving the others to come more leis-
urely with the packs, so that at nightfall we camped
where we happened to be— which was about as
good a plan as any other, for there was no choice
of camping ground in that country.

All morning I followed the tracks with extreme
difficulty, but in the early afternoon they led to
drier ground, which as it approached the hilltop
became more open, and, far in advance of my two
men, I pushed my way along more rapidly, with
all attention focussed upon the tracks, and every
hunter's sense tingling in exquisite alertness.
Suddenly and noiselessly, a something seemed to
dodge behind a tree ; then another, and yet another
—and still a fourth— all in front and to right and
left of me. I saw no definite shape— merely
caught the glimpse of a moving object as the eye
will, without actually seeing it. I knew it could
not be a rhino. As I stood, I caught sight of a
black-topped head looking furtively at me from
behind a tree, but it popped back instantly on my
discovery. Then another head from behind
another tree, and again a third, and so on until it
became a game of hide and seek with some times
several heads poked out, turtle fashion, from be-

120 HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS

hind the concealing trees. I could get but the
merest glance, but that told me the heads did not
belong on Malay shoulders, and yet I knew not
what they were, nor was I prepared to see human
beings of any kind in this country, friendly or un-
friendly, although I had heard tales of half -wild
people, Sakais, that roamed the northern section
of Malay. I am a believer in preparedness, how-
ever, especially when the atmosphere is unfriendly,
as my sullen party suggested it might be, so I
backed against a tree, with cocked rifle, and in
addition to the full half -magazine, took four car-
tridges out of my belt that I might have them in
hand did the necessity arise. Thus I stood ready
for whatever emergency might come. There was
no movement on the part of my hidden watchers,
however, other than that the heads continued pop-
ping out and back, and from many new quarters,
keeping me busily watchful. It was the most
acute case of rubber-neck I have ever developed.
Thus I stood waiting for something to happen, and
impatient to exasperation after ten minutes of this
rubbering game that nothing did happen.

At last came my two Malays. The heads now all
popped out and stayed out, but nobody followed
from behind the trees. As he took in the situa-
tion, Pari, my head man, pointed energetically at
the heads and repeated over and again " Sakai "—

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 121

by which I learned I had indeed fallen in with the
tree-dwelling aborigines of Malaya.

Some long-range conversation was now begun
between my Malays and the heads, and finally, with
evident hesitation, a man stepped from behind one
of the trees, and in the course of a few minutes was
joined by others, until there were eight of them
grouped fifty or sixty feet away, regarding us with
very apparent suspicion. Except for a small loin
covering they were naked, and some of them
were painted in fantastic figures. More long range
talk followed, and the strangers' voices sounded
curiously high and nasal. Several minutes more
of jabber, and my men started toward the Sakais,
who immediately darted back in trepidation, and
would have fled had not the Malays stopped, and,
I judge, shouted friendly messages to them. Back
and forth, with long intervals, this shouting con-
tinued for fully an hour. Meantime, as it was im-
possible for me to hold conversation with any one,
I, of course, had no actual knowledge of what they
were saying; but I surmised that the strangers
feared us, and that the Malays were endeavoring
to pacify them.

By this time the remainder of my party had
arrived, and a general babel ensued. Finally, with
one accord, the Sakais disappeared, and one of my
men went forward, carrying rice, which he depos-

122 HUMAN TREE-DWELLEES

ited at the base of a tree where the strangers had
been standing. Then lie returned to us. In ten
or fifteen minutes the Sakais came back, their
numbers greatly augmented, took away the rice,
and replaced it with some roots and other things
which looked like vegetables or fruit.

It was early in the afternoon when I had first
sighted the Sakais, but what with palaver and ex-
change of gifts and long-range conversation, dusk
came upon us while we tarried. I had not for-
gotten the rhino, but I had not quite found myself
in these new surroundings and thought best to
make haste slowly. Moreover, I was sincerely
glad for the opportunity of seeing something of
these Sakais, because they are a people about whom
almost nothing is known, and of whom only one
white man— an Italian— Captain GL B. Cerruti, has
made a study.

They seemed to be very curious, and quite de-
sirous of watching us, but were shy of our ap-
proaching them. They hung on the edge of our
camp, maintaining a constant jabber with my
Malays. With a thought of getting better ac-
quainted, I went toward them, but they fled precip-
itately, and although I walked after them, they
never permitted me to get near. It occurred to
me that my rifle, perhaps, might be a bar to closer
acquaintance, so I went back to camp and laid it

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 123

down— taking the precaution to unload it and keep
on my cartridge belt— the Sakais curiously fol-
lowing like a flock of birds, all reappearing at a
distance of forty or fifty feet, in open sight, so
soon as I reached camp. But I got no nearer
them without the rifle than with it. Always, so
soon as I started toward them, they disappeared,
evidently keeping close watch of me, because as I
retraced my steps they were visible again.

Determined to stop in the vicinity until I should
learn a little more of these people, I moved up the
hill to get out of the mudhole in which we had
camped, and discovered a tree with what at first
sight appeared a strange new growth, but, on close
inspection, developed into a rude tiny house, with
a small head and beady eyes peering at me from its
platform. Farther on was another tree-house, and
near it several others. I motioned my Malays to
stop here, but our camping preparations raised
such a commotion among the Sakais hovering on
our van that in order to mollify them we moved on.

These houses are built in forked trees, from eight
to twelve feet above the ground, and are reached
by bamboo ladders, which are hoisted at will. The
house itself is very much of the kind of shack we
put up for each night's shelter, except that the
flooring is lashed together piece by piece and bound
securely to the tree limbs with rattan— the sides

124 HUMAN TEEE-DWELLEES

and top covered with attap. Unfortunately, the
continuous rain and semi-dusk of the jungle made
it impossible for me to secure photographs of these
houses.

I spent a couple of days in the vicinity, even
climbed the frail bamboo ladder. into one of their
houses, keeping my rifle slung over my shoulder,
however, lest some of the Sakais opposed my in-
trusion with the blow-guns many carried. But I
never got nearer than twenty feet or so of an indi-
vidual, though I had the opportunity of examining
their blow-guns and darts, and their various bam-
boo ornaments, which through signs and gifts, I
got them to deposit on the ground for my inspec-
tion—they always retreating as I drew near.
They grew increasingly generous in their presents
in return for my gifts to them; yet, always the
same method of presentation had to be followed.
I never could get within arm's reach of them.

These men of the woods (Orang-utang) or
Sakais, as more commonly they are known, are the
aborigines of Malaya, and to be found in greatest
numbers in the northern part of Perak, east of the
river of that name— the Sakai population is esti-
mated, I believe, at about five thousand. They are
a smallish people, though not dwarfish or so small
as the Negritos of the Philippine Islands, of
lighter complexion than the Malays, though not

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 125

nearly so pleasing to the eye. Indeed, they are
far from comely. They have no idols, no priests,
no places or things of worship, no written lan-
guage, and their speech is a corrupted form of
Malay. They live in small settlements, invariably
in trees if in the jungle, with no tribal head. But
though an altogether uncivilized people, by no
means are they savage. It is a simple, unwarlike
race, so raided by the Malays, in times mostly gone
now that British influence has spread throughout
the Peninsula, that they are exceedingly shy of
all strangers: and particularly fearful of chance
Malays in the forests. There are, however, groups
of Sakais living on the outskirts of Malayan settle-
ments that have lost a considerable amount of their
timidity, and these have adopted the Malayan
sarong (skirt) ; but in the jungle their full dress
costume consists of a small piece of cloth, pounded
out of tree bark, wrapped about the loins of the
adult men and women, while young men and
women and the children pursue the course of their
untrammelled way clothed only in nose-sticks, ear-
rings, armlets, and hair combs. The women, in
fact, are much given to adorning themselves with
these things, and employ a lighter quality of bark,
which they decorate in black dots and lines, to bind
their hair. I marvelled at the number of combs
one woman would usej but the reason is the very

126 HUMAN TEEE-DWELLERS

unromantic one that many combs they believe to be
disease preventive.

Both men and women decorate their faces, and
sometimes their bodies, mostly in red, yellow or
black, with flower and line or zigzag patterns.
Sometimes they stripe themselves after the manner
of zebra markings ; again in spots like the leopard.
They seek to make their appearance as terrifying
as possible to embolden them on their journeys
against the wind, to which they attribute every ill
that befalls them. Lightning, thunder, rainbows
—all such heavenly phenomena are regarded as the
messengers of the " bad ghost " of the wind, from
whom they tremblingly implore deliverance. They
are excessively superstitious, and on occasions of
fright the women offer lighted coals and bundles
of their children's hair, while the men shoot poi-
soned darts from their blow-guns in the general
endeavor to propitiate the evil gods. As a rule
they are honest in word and deed, and a moral
people in their own way.

Here, deep in the jungle of Malay, did I, at last
in the Far East, find a people for whom the legend
" Made in Germany " had no significance ; all their
articles of ornament (save the necklace, which is
composed of seeds and animals' teeth) and utility
are constructed entirely of the ubiquitous bamboo,
as is the blow-gun, called sumpitan. This " gun "

SAKAIS CUTTING DOWN A TREE.

CAPTAIN CERRUTTI.

The man cutting is about 30 feet from the ground and the tree is 200 feet high and 6 feet in diameter.

They build the scaffolding and fell the tree in one day, using only the small crude axe

such as that seen in the topmost man's hand.

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 127

is a pipe about an inch and one-half in diameter
and six and one-half feet in length; the bore,
drilled most accurately, is quarter inch, and the
darts nine inches in length, about the circumfer-
ence of a heavy darning needle, are sharpened at
one end, and poisoned. With these they secure all
the meat they eat in the jungle: birds, monkeys,
snakes, lizards. They also have knives made of
bamboo, with which they cut roots, herbs, #nd
fruits. I was amazed at the marksmanship of the
Sakais with these blow-guns ; frequently I saw them
hit with precision and repeated accuracy small
targets full sixty feet distant; and they appeared
able to drive a dart into the crawling flesh of
lizard as far as it could be seen. I did not see
them gunning for leeches; from any visible sign
to the contrary, the leeches did not seem to bother
them. At the same time I observed that they were
cautious about drinking the stagnant jungle water,
and that they would go far to fill their buckets,
which were hollow bamboo about three feet long
and four inches in diameter, from the valley
streams. They seemed fond of music, if con-
tinuous effort may be accepted as indication of a
musical soul, and the girls twanged a not unpleas-
antly queer tune on a crude, two-stringed hollow
instrument. Once I saw a man with a kind of
flute, which he blew shrilly with his nose.

128 HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS

The woman, who is very fond of children, has
the entire management of the domestic economy,
and is placed at the head of the man's establish-
ment without other ceremony than climbing the
ladder leading to his castle in the air. But the
preliminary courtship is unique; the girl (she is
usually twelve to fourteen) is decorated in pat-
terns of red, yellow and black flowers, and is then
prepared for the struggle with her wooer, some-
what after the manner of the "Bundlers"— only
the Sakais girl is without the help of raiment to
aid in her defense. I am not familiar with the
details of the Bundlers' custom, but the well-chap-
eroned Sakais maiden is supposed to successfully
resist the "man of the woods" for a good twelve
hours ; after which period she submits, and in due
course climbs his bamboo ladder.

And always, so far as my observations went, men
and women appeared to share toil and fruits of
the chase in common. They are, in truth, the only
genuine socialists that I have yet discovered.
They divide their blessings and share one another's
sorrows. Apropos of which latter I am not likely
soon to forget the funeral I witnessed of a Sakais
who died the morning I broke camp to move from
their midst. Every one belonging to the little
band of twenty gathered around the lamented, who
lay stretched out with bark cloth under him and

HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 129

a variety of lizards chasing one another under and
over him. The mourners, all bepainted in fantas-
tic and grotesque designs, constantly moved around
the dead and the lizards, as though performing a
dance, and yet their movements were without
enough uniformity to suggest dancing. Certainly,
it was a very crude and weird ceremony, weird to a
degree in the gloom and the rain of the jungle,
especially the moaning and wailing. I never
heard such direful sounds from human throat ; and
I have heard some startling exhibitions by Amer-
ican Indians.

The body did not long remain in state. When it
was lashed to a tree limb, together with blow-gun
and fishing tackle, the wailing ceased; and I went
on my way.

CHAPTER VI
THE TROTTING RHINO OF KELANTAN

IT all came about through my quest of that hairy-
eared rhino of Chittagong, which is said to
wander down from lower Siam into upper Malay,
and which already, for one laborious period in
mud and rain, I had chased through eastern Perak.
But a two-horned variety of the Indian species, as
this Chittagong type is claimed to be, was unusual
enough to stir any hunter's blood, and to send me
forth, time after time, into the dense, wet and
leech-filled jungle.

"Writing broadly, the rhinoceros is divided into
the African, which invariably wears a smooth skin
and carries two horns; and the Indian, wilh skin
in heavy folds and one horn.

Among diligent collectors for scientific institu-
tions and uninformed hunters, there appears to be
a tendency to subdivide the rhino with a patronage
as reckless as that visited upon the caribou. F.
C. Selous, who, in my opinion, has more real prac-
tical knowledge about African big game, and espe-
cially about the rhino, than any man living— says
there are but two species of the African rhino : the
squared-lipped one, the " white " so-called (R.

130

THE TKOTTING EHINO 131

simus), averaging over six feet in height, which
feeds on grass, and is therefore seen more in the
open ; and the prehensile-lipped or black (R. bicor-
nis), averaging five feet, which frequents thickets
or brush covered hills, and feeds on twigs, roots
and brush. Except for the varying length of their
horns, the African do not differ among themselves
so much as the Asiatic; nor does wide divergence
in length of horn suggest structural differences
any more in this animal than spread of antlers and
number of points do in moose, wapiti, or other
American deer. Yet the horns of African rhinos
show great variation. The lower or first horn may
be any length from one foot and a half to four feet,
though this extreme is not often seen these days,
three feet being about the limit ; the upper or second
horn may be from three or four inches up to two
feet. At times the two horns are about equal and
then the length is medium ; by some this is declared
a sub-species called " ketloa ": more often, how-
ever, the lower horn is considerably longer than the
upper. As between horns of the African and the
Asiatic, those of the former have, as a rule, more
curve and run quicker to a point ; and in length the
Asiatic are insignificant by comparison— fifteen
inches being unusual, and eight more nearly the
average of the Indian proper, while three or four
inches would be the length of the other Asiatic

132 THE TEOTTING EHINO

species. Occasionally the lower horn of the
African is straight, the white variety usually fur-
nishing the individual; and specimens have been
reported among the black variety in which the
lower horn even curved forwards. And in all
instances these horns may be powerful weapons of
defence; powerful enough to instil unconcealed
dread among elephants.

Opinion among hunters differs as to just the
rank of the rhino as dangerous game ; Selous places
it fourth after lion, elephant, buffalo. I am ex-
pecting this year to have my first lion hunting
experience, but the royal tiger has never given me
so much the feeling of danger as has the elephant;
or the Malayan seladang* (gaur) or the rhino; and
no jungle in this world places the hunter at so
great a disadvantage as in Malaya, where the dense
matted cover necessitates shooting game at close
quarters. I have always fully realized that the
tiger, if he got to me, could and would do me more
damage in less time perhaps than any one of the
others; but also I always felt more confidence in
being able to stop him. The disturbing element
in hunting elephant or seladang or rhino, has been
always, to me at least, the feeling of uncertainty
as to whether or no I could stop the animal if I

* Local name for wild cattle.

OP KELANTAN 133

wounded it and it charged me, as it did on an
average of once in three times. Based on my expe-
rience, therefore, I should place the elephant first
and the rhino third after the seladang, which is
fully as formidable as the Cape buffalo, and is mis-
called the bison all over India.

Each of these animals is dangerous on different
grounds ; the elephant though less likely to charge
than any of the others, is terrifying because of his
enormous strength, which stops at no obstacle, and
the extreme difficulty of reaching a vital spot, espe-
cially if, with trunk tightly coiled, he is coming
your way. I know of no sensation more awesome
than standing ankle deep in clinging mud, in dense
cover, with the jungle crashing around you as
though the entire forest was toppling, as the ele-
phant you have wounded comes smashing his way
in your direction. The seladang is dangerous,
partly because of the thick jungle he seeks when
wounded, but more especially because of his tre-
mendous vitality and his usual, though not invar-
iable, habit of awaiting the hunter on his tracks
and charging suddenly, swiftly, and viciously. It
requires close and hard shooting to bring down one
of these six-foot specimens of Oriental cattle.

The danger of the tiger and of the lion is in their
lightning activity and ferocious strength ; but you
have the shoulder, in addition to the head shot, if

134 THE TROTTING RHINO

broadside; or, if coming on, the chest, all sure to
stop if well placed. The reason the rhino is so
formidable is because its vulnerable spots are so
hard to reach. Its brain is as small in propor-
tion as that of the elephant, and may be reached
through the eye if head on, or about three inches
below and just in front or just behind the base of
the ear, according to your position for a side shot.
Now a charging rhino presents only the eye as the
vulnerable point, and to put a bullet into the small
eye of a rhino is pretty fine shooting; but that is
the only fatal shot to be had from the front : and
if you miss, your only recourse is quick dodging
to one side as the rhino reaches you, and drop-
ping it with a shot at the base of the ear or back
of the shoulder. In the smooth-skinned rhino the
shoulder shot is a possibility, but to strike the
shoulder blade you must aim from six to eight
inches to one foot below the highest middle point
of the hump, the danger being in getting too low
and striking the massive bones of the upper fore-
arm. The junction of a cross line drawn from
the ear to another line at right angles running
down from the highest part of hump is the place
to put your bullet. It is no mark for light rifles.
Directly back of the shoulder is another alterna-
tive; but with the Indian you must shoot for the
fold, which again is fine shooting, and in all of

OF KELANTAN 135

the species you must take the shot when the fore-
leg is forward. In any event, it is difficult to score,
for the rhino's body is powerfully made and closely
ribbed. There is also the neck shot for the spine
—not easy to locate. Of course, every hunter of
real experience has made easy kills of dangerous
game, and it is only the ignorant who draw con-
clusions from half experience by themselves or of
others. Like elephants, rhino sleep during the
heat of the day, hidden in dense cover, and feed
during the cool of the early morning and evening,
and during the night. Their sight is poor, but
their sense of smell and hearing very acute.
Though sullen and vicious, I doubt if a rhino in-
tends charging home every time he starts up wind
on the strange scent which has come to him. Often
it is, I have grown to believe, merely his means of
investigating, in the absence of good eyesight. I
have seen him turn aside on such a " charge "
when not hit, and other hunters report similar
observations. At the same time the rhino's ill
temper makes him an uncertain creature to deal
with and an unsafe one with his swift trot to
allow too close for purely experimental purposes.
The government-protected, square-lipped, Af-
rican rhino, of which very few are remaining, is
the largest— specimens nearly seven feet high at
the shoulders have been reported— and next to this

136 THE TROTTING RHINO

is the single horn Indian proper (R. unicornis),
with its skin in great deep folds behind and
across the shoulders and across the thighs, which
averages about six feet in height at the shoulders.
The Malayan division of the Asiatic includes the
Javanese, with fewer folds than the Indian, and
one horn; and the Sumatran, with no skin folds
and usually two horns, which averages about four
feet and ranges over Sumatra, Burma and the
Malay Peninsula. Besides this is a smaller spe-
cies in the Peninsular, sometimes called the swamp
rhino, with a smooth skin and a single horn. Then
there is also the mythical' (so far as experience
of mine goes) , hairy-eared rhino hailing from Chit-
tagong. The second or upper horn of the Suma-
tran rhino is not very prominent, often it is a mere
knob ; it was nothing more than that on the one I
killed, which measured four feet one inch shoul-
der height— and the swamp one often has no horn
at all.

And so, because of the rarity of the hairy-eared
variety, I went forth again to seek it. None could
give me helpful information; there were only the
vague rumors of its range, drawn mostly from
jungle natives coming occasionally out to the set-
tlements. And I had already made one hard and
fruitless trip in the Peninsula, largely as the result
of mis-direction from local white residents, who

OF KELANTAN 137

meant well enough by me, and talked large and
vaguely of game in the mountains, but knew noth-
ing by experience. One fine sportsman-like chap
liad killed several tigers and had no interest in
anything else. The fact is, the country I sought
to enter was almost entirely a closed book to the
handful of town-living Englishmen; and the na-
tives hunt only by necessity. However, this is all
part of the enjoyment of the great game of wilder-
ness hunting.

Hence, despite several failures that had attended
previous hunting in the Peninsula, I found myself
preparing for another try at Kuala Muda, a little
kampong (settlement) on the upper waters of the
Perak, which I had reached from Penang via
Taiping by gharry* and bridle path and canoe.
Like most kampongs, Kuala Muda was substan-
tially a collection of attap-covered bamboo houses
of one room each with wide covered veranda,
standing about six feet above ground, on or near
the water, and supporting a mingled population
of Malays, Tamils, Klingsf and Chinese, living
together in the peaceful pursuit of their vocations
without interference ; for the divisions of labor in
the Peninsula appear to be thoroughly understood
and accepted.

*A one-horse two-wheel cart commonly used for road travel
in the Peninsula.

t Tamils and KLings, natives of India.

138 THE TROTTING RHINO

As in Siam, so also in Malay, John Chinaman is
the industrial backbone of his adopted home. Ixi
the country, he controls the farms; in town, he
owns all the pawn shops (which outnumber those
of any other one kind), monopolizes the opium
and the kerosene trade, is the sampan and jin-
rikisha coolie, and supplies the labor for the tin
mines and the coffee plantations. Of Singapore's
about 200,000 inhabitants, two-thirds are China-
men ; and in that two-thirds is owned local steam-
ship lines, a considerable share of the wholesale
trade, over half the retail trade : it also furnishes
the city with practically all its carpenters, brick-
layers, tailors, shoemakers, market gardeners, fish-
ermen, and many of its clerks, for banks, offices
and shops. In fact, Singapore could not exist
prosperously, nor the Peninsula either, for that
matter, without the Chinamen.

The Tamils and the Klings are boatmen and
general day laborers; especially trainmen and
railway employes; the Sikhs, England's fine and
dependable native Indian soldiers, are always rail-
way gate keepers; also they are the policemen of
Malay. And how they do bullyrag the natives,
especially poor John! The Malays supply the
boys about the clubs, houses, stables and boats,
where no constant hard work is required. They
are the syces (drivers) and canoemen of the
country.

OP KELANTAN 139

For me the Malay has an attractive personality.
Wherever I found him, from Singapore to Keda,
on my several trips at intervals into the Peninsula,
he was very rarely the bloodthirsty, sullen, silent
creature of which we have had so often the pen
picture. He is, to be sure, thriftless, indolent,
unambitious; but he is polite, good-natured, con-
tented ; and I am not so sure that those last thr^e
qualities do not make the more human and lovable
fellow being. Above all else, and the quality
which appealed most strongly to me— the Malay is
intensely self-respecting; he is absolutely sure of
himself and at ease always whatever the company.
He is reserved, self-contained, and never by any
chance falls a victim to the contempt bred of
familiarity. He resents insult so strongly that
bloodshed may result; but between themselves
much serious trouble usually is due to jealousy,
though for Mohammedans they allow their women
much liberty.

Like our American Redman, the Malay is delib-
erate of speech and circuitous in introducing the
subjects which perhaps may be uppermost in his
mind; and he is not demonstrative. He walks
erect, and he looks you in the eye— a very pleasing
quality when you have had to deal with the cring-
ing inhabitants of Par Eastern countries. Though
he offers no obstacle, yet the Malay holds in con-

140 THE TROTTING BHINO

tempt his compatriot who falls into the ways of
the white man or becomes a convert to the white
man's doctrines; the comparatively rare Malay
policeman, for instance, becomes a thing apart to
be treated with elaborate and chilling courtesy.
He is a fatalist, and views imprisonment as a mis-
fortune to be classed with the catching of fever;
purely a matter of caprice, which, together with
the jail where he may lodge with comparative com-
fort, he accepts with composure.

Nor is the Malay strong intellectually; they have
practically no literature and are without apparent
desire to acquire knowledge. Yet despite the in-
significant part taken in the industrial develop-
ment of the Peninsula, his speech is the lingua of
the country— the Italian of the East. The nature
of the Malay is poetical; to him the sun is mata-
Jiari—eje of day; the brook is anak sungei— son
of a river. Midnight is the noon of the night in
his tongue; and when he wishes to tell you that
he is sorrowful or angry, he says he is sakit hati—
sick at heart. He likens a pretty young bride unto
" a sarong not yet unfolded." And, as may be
supposed, he is very superstitious with good and
bad luck signs of many kinds, one of which pro-
claims it ill luck to start on a journey in the rain,
because rain signifies tears, a superstition more
honored in the breach than in the observance, how-

OF KELANTAN 141

ever, for if rain prevented trips in the Malay Pe-
ninsula, there would not be much travelling.
Another curious superstition I came across at the
very edge of the jungle warns a talking visitor
from leaning against the steps of a dwelling lest
a funeral come to that house.

Of the Malay social life much of good could
be said ; it is enough here to say that there are no
old maids in the Malay Peninsula and fewer public
women proportionately than, I dare say, in any
other country in the world. The Malay is allowed
four wives, but he is too wise to take the limit
simultaneously or to be on with the new before he
is off with the old ; and though he may divorce and
replace without very much difficulty, the women
also have privileges, which, in the better classes,
means settlements, division of property and the
children provided for by law. Families are small.
The girls marry young, and marriage in the Pe-
ninsula apparently is a success, for little is heard
of drunken husbands or mischief -making women.
It is true that the Malay is sometimes a law unto
himself, that when he wants a thing it is difficult
for him, in the jungle, to recognize other tenets
than the one that might makes right; yet he is
amenable at the last. The present peaceful, pros-
perous and happy condition of the Malay Penin-
sula, which in 1873 was astir with rebellion, is

142 THE TROTTING RHINO

notable testimony to the eminent success of British
rule. There are lessons here for American Con-
gressmen if they but have sense to take them, that
will serve us well in the Philippines.

My few days in the little kampong were inter-
esting and peaceful. No mangy intrusive dogs
sniffed at my heels, and nearby mothers kept sooth-
ing care of their babies. Eoom was made for me
in one of the largest and newest appearing houses
and every possible attention shown. Particularly
the absence of curiosity on the part of my host and
family and their consideration and respect for my
solitary position impressed me. It was in strik-
ing contrast to experiences elsewhere, in my own
country as well as in other foreign lands. They
studiously avoided intruding and allowed no
crowds of wide-eyed and open-mouthed stragglers
to stand gaping at me or fingering my belongings.
I was not, in other words, a subject of idle curiosity
for either the residents or the native travellers that
were passing by. I was not on exhibition, as I
had often been when placed in similar positions in
my wilderness wanderings. Really I was having
a very comfortable time. During the day I ex-
plored nearby streams and wandered in the jungle
trying to get a look at some of the birds; and at
night I was always abundantly entertained by the
delightful native music, which tuned up after the

OF KELANTAN 143

evening meal had been finished and the people
gathered at an open shed-like building under some
large trees.

Before I left the kampong there came a feast
day with festivities lasting from late in the after-
noon until near dawn of the following morning,
and comprising almost continuous music— without,
by the way, a single change in any of the musicians
—and several dances in which both women and
men performed, some of the latter having their
faces made up grotesquely. One dance engaged
three young girls, whose performance consisted of
gracefully slow movements accompanied by the
familiar Malayan posturing, in which arms and
hands and shoulders figure prominently. They
were quite as skilled as any I had ever seen, and
in addition were more attractively costumed.
They wore short little jackets of red and yellow silk
falling just below the breasts, while fastened upon
their sarongs at the waist were the old Malayan
silver buckles of exquisite workmanship, now so
rare. Some of the men and women among the
spectators had jackets and scarfs, but mostly they
wore simply the skirt-like sarong of the country,
which on the men is held at the waist and on the
women is carried up to the breast.

I had come unheralded into the settlement,
passed from an English-speaking Kling gharry

144 THE TROTTING RHINO

driver to the Malay who on horse and by canoe had
brought me finally to the kampong. In a general
way the kampong knew what I wanted, but it
was not easy to organize a party for the trip I
wished to make toward the eastern coast, as the
Malays care little for hunting and rarely go of
their own volition, except where a tiger has per-
haps become a menace to a settlement, in which
case they set up a spring gun or wait for him at his
drinking hole or set boys up the trees to drop
spears on him. Yet this spirit of indifference is
a question of distaste for vigorous bodily effort
and not one of cowardice, for really the Malay
regards life lightly, as his history proves. But he
does not care for sport that requires hard work,
though he is very fond of horse racing and occa-
sionally organizes animal fights. He does a little
fencing with that favorite and somewhat famous
weapon of his, the kris, though it was always a
crude art and rarely is seen nowadays. There was
also another fencing game in which the tumbuk
lada— the Malayan dagger, with narrow eight-inch
blade and much decorated handle— plays a part;
but neither showed much skill and the fencers *
energy was spent chiefly in jumping about and in
posturing. Nothing of this kind of play would be
relied upon, I fancy, for serious work with either
weapon. The Malay also does little canoe racing.

OP KELANTAN 145

Tet where his heart is in it, he does not hesitate
at any amount of physical exertion; the energy
expended in the all-night dancing and playing
during the few days I spent at the kampong would
have lasted out an ordinary hunting trip.

I was lucky enough on my first day to fall in
with a smart young Malay named Nagh Awang,
who in addition to being very good looking, could
also speak a few broken words of English, and
within two days he had agreed to come with me as
general factotum. It took time and patience and
much sign talk for us to get on common ground,
but when we had attained to a thorough under-
standing, Nagh was of great service, and after a
few days I succeeded in getting together my party,
which consisted of five Malays beside Nagh, a
Chinese cook and two Tamils. None had guns but
myself, but all had parangs— the long bladed
jungle knife which every Malay carries. Three
of my Malays were from Sumatra, and the China-
man, who proved one of the most faithful of the
lot before the long trip was at an end, was known
by the rather mirth-provoking name of Bun Bin
Sum. Nagh, though born on the Peninsula, was
also of Sumatra, his people being, in fact, of the
war-like Achinese, which in earlier years had
raided the Peninsula ; and after we became better

acquainted he told me, with amusing gusto, that
10

146 THE TROTTING RHINO

his brother had been killed a few months before
while in the sanguinary midst of a spectacular
period of amok* which had extended over two days
and resulted in the death of two men, three women
and two children.

Nagh held to the Sumatran style of Malayan
costume, wearing trousers with a sarong wound
about his waist and a handkerchief bound about
his head. He never went forth without a hand-
somely carved ivory handled tumbuk lada stuck
in his sarong at the waist, and a Chinese oiled-
paper red parasol, with which he protected his
head from the sun. He was something of a swell
in his own circle and quite one of the prominent
young men of the kampong, if not of the district.
He lived with his old and rather distinguished
looking father, who was the Datoh— as the head
man of the settlement is called— and indulged in
the luxury of a personal servant— who, by the way,
he took along on the trip, and who, also by the way,
really became my servant as well, for Nagh did no
work for me that he could pass over to his own
servant.

* Amuck is a corruption of the Malay word amok, as is also
rattan a corruption of the Malay word rotan. Amok is a species
of temporary insanity, which takes form in a homicidal mania.
The development and attack are sudden and simultaneous, the
deranged at once assaults with whatever weapon may be in reach
whoever is in sight, regardless of age or sex, friends or strangers,
and keeps up the attack until overpowered.

OF KELANTAN 147

It is somewhat indicative of the primitive needs
and exigencies of the unattended traveller in an
unknown land with whose speech he is not famil-
iar, to reprint from my note book the stock of
Malay words with which I set out from this kam-
pong. These were: jalan, go on; nanti dahula,
wait a little; banyak chukup, too much; pidang,
get away; berapa batu, how far? berhenti, stop;
lekas, fast; perlahan, perldhan, slow; balle, go
back; charrie, look for. Association with Nagh
improved both his English and my Malay.

My plan included going up the river a little dis-
tance to another small settlement— where we could
secure packing baskets and two or three Sakais
carriers, who knew the jungle trails— and then to
work our way through the jungle across into
Trengganu to one of the head-water branches of
the Kelantan River. If we chanced on a worth
while trail we intended to cross into the top of
Pahang, and finally follow down the valley between
the Kelantan and the mountains to the west, and
so to the river's mouth on the east coast of the
Peninsula, where dense forest, mostly uninhabited,
and a sandy shore bordering the China Sea made
it very different and easier going than on the
muddy fore shore and tangled jungle of the west
coast. Kelantan and Trengganu, together with
Keda and Patani are the " unprotected " or native

148 THE TROTTING RHINO

States and form the upper part of the Malay Pe-
ninsula between lower Siam and the protected
States. There were no roads for us to follow, and
off the rivers no other way of penetrating the
Malayan jungle, the densest on earth, than over
the narrow footpaths used by the natives. And
it must be a great saving of distance when the
Malay takes to the jungle, for he much prefers to
paddle.

We made pretty fair time along the rivers, but
in the jungle we averaged not much more than two
miles an hour. The footing was muddy and slip-
pery, though the carriers had not more than about
sixty pounds each in the long packing basket
which, strapped on their backs, extended from
above their heads quite to their hips. I took no
tent, and our supplies consisted chiefly of rice and
maize and roasted leaves of the coffee bush, from
which a kind of tea is made that the Malayans use
often in preference to the berry ; and we lived on
yams, maize, rice, and a very toothsome curry
made from the tender shoots of the bamboo. The
Malays also ate several kinds of roots and leaves
which they gathered in the jungle ; some of which
I must say were really palatable. Now and then
we had fish. In trying to get one trophy with good
tusks, I shot several wild pigs, and you should
have seen the eyes of Bun Bin Sum moisten in

OF KELANTAN 149

anticipation of the feast he and I were to have—
for of course my Islam party would have none of
it, would not in fact stay in its presence. Antici-
pation really constituted the feast, however, for
the pig was rather stringy and without the usual
delicate porcine flavor. Bun relished the heads
which he roasted and devoured amid gurgles of
supreme content. "Whenever we came to a settle-
ment, as we did several times along the rivers, we
stopped for sociability sake and to learn of rhino
or seladang, or gather any information that might
be serviceable. But we heard only of deer and
pigs and the only things we saw while on the rivers
that might be considered in the light of game were
several crocodiles and a large water lizard. We
heard no tales of villages raided or men carried
off or knocked out of their canoes by crocodiles,
and though they are dangerous and will carry off
a small child or a dog if caught unawares, or will
attack a woman on occasion, yet many of the
stories told of this hideous amphibian are greatly
overdrawn. I noted that the Malays were always
cautious in approaching the densely covered edges
of the stream, but they appeared to have no fear
of sitting in their canoes or of their camp being
invaded.

Making our way across the country we often
came upon comparatively open stretches, where

150 THE TROTTING KHINO

wild flowers in reds and yellows grew in profusion.
It seems more than a coincidence that, so far as
my experience goes, very generally throughout the
Far East the wild flowers run mostly to reds and
yellows ; that the brilliant bird plumage is chiefly
yellowy and reds and blues ; and that in the colors
of their sarongs, in their ornaments and in their
wearing apparel, the natives affect almost exclu-
sively blues and yellows and reds. It is a fitting
harmony.

Very often we heard the little deer (C. muntjac),
plentiful throughout the Far East, which when
started barks much like a small dog and skulks
along with hind quarters higher than its shoulders.
I already had a head, so did not shoot on any of
the many opportunities offered. But I did bring
down a sambar, the common deer of all India and
the Malay Peninsula, which measured three feet
eight inches at the shoulders and had a nice head
with six long points. Three times we found sela-
dang tracks, and as many times followed them
without success. And whenever we returned from
a hunt, successful or otherwise, Nagh had a rather
pleasing habit of placing a wild flower over one
ear, the flower facing frontr where he wore it
until he sought his bed. He told me it was an old
custom of Sumatra.

One day when we had halted at a small river

THE MALAYAN WOMAN OF THE COUNTRY.
Who wears the same skirt-like garment, called sarong, as the men, only she folds it above her breasts.

OF KELANTAN 151

kampong Nagh brought into my presence an oldish.
Malay, who he said had marked down a rhino
— 'twas not specified whether its ears were tas-
selated or no— which, the old Malay assured
me, I could certainly get if I would sit up on a
platform near by a drinking hole where the rhino
visited every night. I took no stock in the scheme,
because, as hardly a day passed without rain, my
hunter's, if not my common, sense told me that
water must be too plentiful in the country to neces-
sitate regular or even occasional visits to a water
hole by a rhino or any other animal. Also I fan-
cied Nagh perhaps wanted a holiday at the little
settlement of a few houses where I had observed
a couple of good-looking Malay girls. But as the
plan offered a new experience in rhino hunting,
and as I am always seeking to acquire experience
—and knowledge— I went off with the old man
some five miles into the jungle, where about twenty
feet from a mud hole, which obviously was a rhino
wallow and drinking pool in dry weather, we
erected a bamboo structure with its platform eight
feet above the ground.

I have put in more uncomfortable nights than
that one ; but not many. I had not brought a mos-
quito netting, of course, and without it the pests
were almost unendurable. And they seemed to
like the citronella oil with which I smeared every

152 THE TKOTTING RHINO

inch of exposed skin in the delusion that it would
drive them away. The night was as dark as pitch ;
I could not see the end of my rifle— could scarcely
see my hand before my face. Had a herd of
rhinos visited the hole I could only have shot at
the noise. And there we sat, stiff and silent, with
ears alert and eyes staring into the surrounding
blackness until they ached. The only real excite-
ment of the night came when the corner of my
end of the platform gave way and dumped me
on my back in the mud below somewhat to my
amazement, and to the terror of the old man, whom
I could hear in the darkness above muttering
Malay, of which I only understood the anguished
tone. Perhaps, really, he was cursing me; which
was wasted effort, too, for I had left little undone
in that direction myself.

No rhino came, of course; equally, of course,
no sitting up on platforms should ever be done on
a starless night. However, it was an experience,
and an interesting one, for unless you have sat
with awakened ears all night in the jungle you
can never know of the myriads of creeping, crawl-
ing things the earth supports. Returning in the
morning to the kampong I saw and killed a reddish
snake, about the size of my finger and nearly four
feet long, as it ran on the top of the coarse grass
at a level . with my shoulder. It is a rather

OF KELANTAN 153

curious fact, by the way, that although there are
nine varieties of poisonous and about twelve va-
rieties of non-poisonous snakes in Malaya, I saw
but two during months of hunting— the red one
just mentioned and a python I killed in Sumatra,
which measured over twelve feet in length.
Snakes are abundant enough, only they get out
of your way in the thick, dank jungle-cover;
where the undergrowth is dry and less dense, as in
some parts of India, the snake may not so readily
escape unnoticed; and the danger of being struck
is correspondingly greater, for the attack of a ser-
pent is more frequently defensive than offensive.
I should advise the wearing of heavy leather leg-
gins in dry, snake-infested countries ; and remem-
ber that always a snake strikes downwards, and
therefore only a very large one, which would be
seen, could land on you above the knee. If ever
you are struck the force of the blow will surprise
you; at least that was my sensation when for the
first time a rattler hit me just above the ankle ; it
was like the sharp, quick blow of the hand.

In the hilly country encountered crossing into
Trengganu we made even slower travel, on account
of the mud and rain, but barring leeches and mos-
quitoes the nights were comfortable enough, for
the camps we built of bamboo and attap leaves and
palms were rain proof and comparatively dry.

154 THE TROTTING RHINO

Such are the sole materials of which most Malay
houses are inexpensively and durably constructed.
One kind of attap lasts only three or four years,
but there is another good for ten, and a kind of
palm is frequently used which has a stalk of two
or three feet in height and a leaf from six to ten
feet in length, and three to four feet wide at its
broadest. All of it is to be had everywhere for the
cutting. Often I have seen native huts made
almost entirely of three or four of these leaves,
and they are very largely used by the Sakais and
the Semangs, who, living on the south and north
of the Perak River, respectively, are all that re-
main of the aborigines of the Malay Peninsula.
One tree in the jungle of unfailing interest to me
had its but standing high above the ground, some-
times as much as six feet, more frequently half
that, supported by its roots, which formed a kind
of fantastic pedestal before touching the earth,
where they stretched in all directions over and into
the surrounding soil. It was as though a giant
hand had pulled up the tree and stood it upon its
roots; at times the roots near the tree base grew
into great flat buttresses. A very doleful sound
in this hill country was the monotonous cry of a
bird, called, at Singapore, the night jar, which
began at dusk and lasted almost without cessation
until dawn, when the insect buzz opened. The

OF KELANTAN 155

awakening of beetle and general insect life in the
hill country of the tropics is a startling first expe-
rience. It begins with one particularly loose
jointed, crackling beetle, followed by the creaking
tree and the squeaking bush and ground insects
until there arises a buzzing, and a humming, and
a vibrant, confusing whole, not unlike the song of
the looms and the shuttles of a cotton mill.

Yet this was altogether the most pleasing coun-
try I had seen in Malaya up to that time. Here
and there the forest was comparatively free of
the progress-checking thorn-covered bushes, and
stretches of more or less open country accentuated
the jungle edges, where one tree sent its umbrella-
like top far above its surrounding neighbors.
Always and everywhere was a rank growth of
grass, called lalang, at its coarsest. And in such
places animal and bird life abounded, compara-
tively speaking, of course, for nothing living really
" abounds " in the Malayan jungle except leeches.
There were no birds of especially brilliant plumage
or a song note which impressed me ; I did have the
luck to see a white-winged jay and several oppor-
tunities of which I did not avail myself of again
shooting the larger sambar deer; and scarcely a
day passed that we did not hear the barking deer.

One noon after we had crossed the mountains
and were skirting the jungle hills which make

156 THE TROTTING RHINO

through southern Trenggana toward Pahang,
Nagh sighted three seladangs in the lalang of a
little gully that ran into the hill range along which
we were travelling, and brought the news half a
mile back to where I sat among our camp para-
phernalia mending a shirt, that had been torn
almost completely off my back by an encounter
with a thorn bush. Following Nagh's back track
we came to .where I could see the cattle in the
lalang, but the grass was so high that it left only
a few inches of the top shoulder of the one nearest
me as a very indifferent target. There was no way
of improving my position, however ; in. fact, I had
the best one possible, and being happy to have any
view of these animals whose trails I had so often
followed without success, I placed two lead-pointed
balls from my 50 calibre, the only rifle I had with
me, as rapidly as I could fire— though the sela-
dangs were off with the first shot and my second
was at the scarcely visible shoulder going from me
in the swaying grass.

I was not sure if I had wounded one, or, if so,
whether it had gone with the others ; so I took care
to discover that none lurked in the lalang, for I
knew its reputation and its trick, like that of the
Cape (African) buffalo, of lying in wait for the
hunter, and I had no thought of being added to
the list of Malay sportsmen killed by a charging

OP KELANTAN 157

and wounded seladang. Eeconnoitring the grass,
therefore, with caution and thoroughness, I found
the tracks, where they led up the hillside into the
jungle, and took up the single one which I assumed
to be that of the bull's that I proposed to follow
whether I had hit him or another. I moved for-
ward cautiously, for the seladang is as uncertain
as he is dangerous ; sometimes he will go straight
away from the man-scent or when wounded ; again
he will await the hunter within a mile of where he
has winded him. When I had gained the hilltop
where the tracks took me, I stopped and listened
long and attentively; then following along the
ridge on the seladang spoor, I thoroughly surveyed
every piece of thick cover in front and at the sides,
meanwhile taking up a position not far from a
good-sized tree. For a couple of hours I followed
up the tracks without hearing a sound, and then
a barking deer, which jumped up within a few
yards on my right, sent the rifle to shoulder in a
hurry— but it came down as instantly as the yelp
of a muntjac revealed the disturber.

Another hour and the tracks took down hill, over
another and finally into a glade of lalang and
cane and brush. Approaching the glade I made a
painstaking stalk entirely around it. The sela-
dang was within. I did not dare to follow straight
up his tracks, because .there were no trees in the

158 THE TROTTING RHINO

glade, and my rifle was too light to be depended on
in case lie charged, and I had no time or oppor-
tunity to pick my shot as one must in order, in these
close quarters, to score on such formidable game
with any weapon less than a double ten or eight
bore. While I maintained my vigil at the lalang
edge, I sent Nagh up a tree to locate, if possible, the
quarry; but as he signed me a "no," I signalled
him with my hands to remain up the tree to watch
and listen. Then I completed another slow circle
of the glade, at about the gait and much after the
manner of a cat approaching a mouse. The sela-
dang was still there. And by this time the after-
noon was more than half spent. Then I heard a
movement among the canes in the glade ; it sounded
to me about in the middle jf the place, and Nagh's
signal indorsed my thought; but it lasted only a
few seconds. Evidently the beast had no imme-
diate intention of coming out ; and I was beginning
to want that seladang very badly. So as a prelim-
inary to venturing into the glade, I went up a tree
to learn the direction of the wind, if there was any,
and to discover what I could about the character
and shape of the glade. I found almost no air,
and that little blowing in my face; also I saw a
thick clump of cane standing up around a small
tree about fifty feet from my edge of the glade,
which altogether did not appear to be over a couple

OF KELANTAN 159

of hundred feet across. On the ground again I
prepared for a stalk into the glade toward the cane
clump, by stripping off cartridge belt, knife, field
glasses, brandy flask, chocolate and quinine pouch
—which together with compass, watch and water-
tight match box, each attached to thongs, consti-
tutes my usual and entire personal field equipment
compactly arranged in leather accoutrements.

Then I removed my shoes; and with four car-
tridges in my rifle and as many more in my trouser
pocket, began my stalk. I never made one so
noiselessly ; and I did not allow myself to think of
my chances if the seladang broke towards me
before I reached the cane clump. It seemed a
fearful distance to that clump, but finally its out-
line was discernible ; and soon I was behind it with
head close to the mud— the better to see through
the brush— looking for the seladang. He was
about forty or fifty feet beyond in a somewhat thin-
nish part of the glade ; at first I could only make
out his bulk, but shortly I could see, fairly dis-
tinctly, him standing, facing obliquely, his head
lowered, ears moving forward and back, his atti-
tude that of the sullen, alert and determined fugi-
tive. Obviously he had neither heard nor scented
me. I could not shoot from behind the cane clump,
so I crawled to the side, and then I looked long over
the barrel to discover if any cane chanced in the

160 THE TROTTING RHINO

range to deflect my bullets. I did not quite know
what was going to happen when I pulled trigger,
but I intended to shoot as close as I knew how, and
to keep on shooting. The shoulder shot was my
best one, for his position rather protected the
heart. I took the cartridges out of my pocket and
placed them carefully at my side to have them
within instant reach. With my first shot he
jumped, which gave me opportunity to get one in
behind the shoulder and to put in another in the
same place before he disappeared in the glade and
went smashing his way up the hill opposite.

As Nagh had no gun I directed him to go back
to the noon camp and bring up the party, and then
follow on my tracks, as I intended to go after the
seladang and camp on its trail if I did not get it
before. Nagh returned and I went on cautiously
—even more so than before, because now there was
blood spoor— up one hill and down another, some-
times around a hill, when I redoubled my caution,
if possible, for a circling trail usually means rest
or fight. Thus I went on, without again hearing
the seladang, until it became too dark to track,
when I camped. Nagh and my party did not turn
up, so I made an attap and cane lean-to, a cane
couch to raise me off the mud, ate some chocolate
and turned in. Nor did any of the party put in
appearance in the morning, but I heard a faint hail

OF KELANTAN 161

and answered it, and then took up the seladang
tracks, knowing Nagh would come up with me, for
they could trail me as fast as I was going. It was
well into the forenoon, however, before they caught
up ; they had been delayed by two of the carriers
having dysentery, which necessitated stopping, re-
packing and final camping as night set in; they
had shouted they said, but had probably been shut
in between hills and did not know enough to get
up on high ground.

It was not an hour after Nagh joined me on the
wounded seladang tracks that, as I wormed my
way through the jungle on the hillside, I suddenly
discovered the beast standing stern on not more
than sixty feet ahead of me. Working from tree
to tree I had come finally almost ahead of him and
little over thirty feet away, when on a sudden he
seemed aware of my presence and direction and
made a rush at me. My bullet struck just at the
top of his high frontal bone, between the horns,
tearing the skull without reaching the brain; but
he swung off, giving me a near side-head shot ; and
this time I reached the brain. He was a good,
though not a big, specimen, measuring five feet ten
and one-half inches shoulder height. It had taken
seven bullets to bring him down ; one had pierced
the lungs and two the shoulder blade, one went

through the shoulder muscles, and one ranged
11

162 THE TROTTING RHINO

alongside the heart. And altogether fortune
favored me, for no one has license to venture after
seladang with a comparatively light weapon. The
head made a burdensome trophy, so we cached it
in a tree, a few days later, to send back for when
we had reached the Kelantan.

Luck seemed to be coming my way with this, for
three days after I had bagged the seladang we
came into the country leading down to the Kelan-
tan and upon rhino tracks, apparently very fresh,
though in the mud and heat it was impossible to tell
to an hour. We camped on these the first night
and picked them up at daylight on the second day,
determined to follow faster, as the rhino was trot-
ting; always trotting, apparently.

I told Nagh to let the camp outfit follow on leis-
urely, but I wanted him and another to come with
me, as I intended to move more rapidly in an en-
deavor to get near the rhino. So we kept at as
fast a gait as we could under the circumstances,
which was about twice the pace we had pursued
at any other time on our journey. But the tracks
appeared to grow no fresher, nor the rhino to
slacken or increase its pace ; always it trotted.

Early in the afternoon Nagh told me that we
were not very far from the Kelantan and were
moving in the direction of that river, and not an
hour later, still on the rhino tracks, we came out

OP KELANTAN 163

on the river bank itself. What was my dismay to
see our rhino swimming the river, and nearly
across. The top of its head, including its ear,
showed, and I made the base of the latter my mark
for three shots. Whether I scored or not I can not
say, for the rhino was going almost straightaway—
a little quartering— which gave me as good as no
mark, for of course it was waste of lead to shoot
into its big back. As the rhino got out on the bank
it quartered a bit more as it trotted into the jungle,
and before it disappeared I put two more 50-cal-
ibre hardened bullets behind the shoulder, ranging
forward. But the rhino kept on trotting ; and, for
all my rain of lead did to stop him, he is trotting
yet.

I did not note if his ears were fringed.

CHAPTER VII
IN THE SWAMPS

IT is full seventy miles from Tanjong Rambah
to Tanjong Tor facing the Strait of Malacca,
and every coastwise mile of it is mangrove swamp
with the tide in and mud flat with the tide out.
Long-necked, long-legged birds perch solemnly,
grotesquely expectant, upon the scarcely sub-
merged mangrove roots during high water, and
range industriously for stranded fish and other
smelling garbage things so generously exhibited at
low water as to make profitable hunting for thou-
sands upon thousands of winged scavengers. Be-
hind this shimmering, bird-dotted mess, noisome
banks of clinging mire run flatly away for one
hundred yards or so until lost in the densely over-
grown swamp of the jungle. Little creeks, little
rivers, come winding out from the jungle through
the swamps and the mud flats, making their way
to the sea along shallow channels that are as one
with the surroundings at high tide, but show bare
and ugly when the tide is low. It is not a pleasing
spectacle at best; but when the glistening, shivering
muck stands revealed in all its nakedness, it is the
most uninspiring bit of landscape eye ever rested

164

IN THE SWAMPS 165

upon. Yet one creature finds this foul place con-
genial. Back from tidewater, along streams with
low, closely covered mud banks, breeds the hideous
crocodile in numbers perhaps not excelled else-
where in the Far East. And in the sea-washed
bottom between the haunts of the crocodile and the
last mangroves, the Malay fisherman, knee deep,
explores for mussels daily ; and nightly as well, for
it is in the " noon of the night," as the Malays
poetically call midnight, when the tide is high and
the moon is full, that he likes best to venture upon
his coast waters. It is then, too, that as he paddles
his canoe to the sea, he must keep a sharp lookout,
for crocodiles lurk in dark turnings under the low
banks.

Malay coast villages offer little architectural
variation, but a divergence in human types such as
may not be seen elsewhere on earth. Kuala Maur,
where I disembarked, bears no especial distinction
in this respect ; but as I started from the town with
Cheeta, my Tamil servant, on a ten-mile drive to
Aboo Din, it seemed as if never outside of Singa-
pore had I beheld so many nationalities in a single
community. It was kaleidoscopic; it is the daily
scene. Here lumbers a great, complaining two-
wheeled cart drawn by sluggish-moving, humped-
shouldered bullocks; there goes a narrow, high-
bodied wagon pulled by a single water buffalo that

166 IN THE SWAMPS

moons along, switching flies from its flanks and
chewing its cud with equal unemotion. High on
the cart seat, perhaps on the buffalo's back, rides
the all but unclothed Kling driver; or perhaps a
group of them lounge under wayside shade trees,
smoking or dozing or gambling. A Tamil woman
carrying erect her well-formed partially draped
figure passes silently, gracefully, laden with the
ornaments of her class. In the side of her nose is
fixed a silver stud as large as a nickel five-cent
piece, from which swings a two-inch loop bearing
several small ornaments, while from the top of
her ear hangs another ring, twice two inches in
diameter, weighted with dangling pendants. On
one ankle jangle a collection of large, hollow silver
bangles, and on one toe is a silver ring. Strad-
dling her hip at the side, and held there by the
mother's arm, sits a babe wearing only a necklace
of tiny stone beads. Amid much shouting and
good-humored confusion among the wayfarers,
here comes a Malay syce, now whipping his gharry
pony, now lashing out at some unoffending passing
Chinese coolie who, under load big enough for two,
has perhaps staggered in the way. Ever and anon
groups of half-breed Chinese-Malay women hurry
by in all the colors of the rainbow, chattering,
laughing, or stand before an open shop discussing
in high key some bit of silk or jewelry with the Ar-

IN THE SWAMPS 167

menian tradesman. Here are a party of Klings,
half of them digging dirt which the other half
gather in baskets that they carry twenty or thirty
feet to a waiting cart. There is a jungle Malay,
bearing a packing basket that reaches from the top
of his head to below his waist line, who has come
to town with cocoanuts to exchange at the Chinese
shops for silver trinkets for his women kind, or
maybe a sarong of finer weave than his home loom
can make. Always the Chinese shops; and occa-
sionally the travelling restaurant made up of one
small box carrying charcoal fire, a second whose
half dozen drawers contain the menu, and both
borne on the Chinaman's shoulder, hanging from
the ends of a bamboo pole. Dressed in European
clothes, idly gossiping, lounges the Eurasian, son
of a white father and an Asiatic mother, who,
somewhat raised out of his mother's sphere, is
rarely qualified by temperament or character to
fit into that of his father, and thus, as a rule, lan-
guishes unhealthily,— a hybrid of discontented
mind and vitiated blood.

Next to the Chinaman the most conspicuous ele-
ment of the cosmopolitan gathering is the Indian
chitty, or money-lender. He seems always to be
thin and tall, his height accentuated by the caste
costume of whitish gauze wound around his body
and hanging somewhere between belt and knee line.

168 IN THE SWAMPS

The standing of these men is nothing less than
remarkable. Their word is literally as good as
their bond. They borrow from banking institu-
tions without security; and if they fail honestly
the chitty caste make good to their creditors; if
their affairs are irregular they are driven from
the caste and disgraced for life.

It was while I was studying the chitties that
I engaged Cheeta, altogether the most remark-
able and the most useful servant I ever employed.
Apparently there was no office, from body ser-
vant to dhobi (washerman), which he had not
filled, and filled creditably, regardless of caste
traditions and restrictions. He was really in dis-
repute among his own people for having pro-
fessed Christianity ; but this, he informed me, did
not disturb him, as his dearest ambition was to
save his earnings and finally become a money-
lender himself. I had originally picked him up
in front of the Chitty Temple on Tank Eoad, Sing-
apore—there is a temple for every trade or caste
in the town— which Cheeta haunted with a view to
picking up jobs from visiting foreigners, and, no
doubt, in the thought of fraternizing with the caste
to which he aspired ; though how Cheeta proposed
breaking all the traditions of his people by going
from one caste to another I can not say: the work-
ings of the Oriental mind are much too intricate

CHEETA, MY FAITHFUL TAMIL, A SERVITOR OF ONE CASTE BUT MANY FIELDS

OF USEFULNESS.,

IN THE SWAMPS 169

to be fathomed by the simple Occidental student.
Whatever Cheeta 's ambitions, however, they by
no means unfavorably influenced the discharge of
present duty, or loyalty to his master. Indeed,
too faithful attention to my interests was the only
complaint I had ever to lodge against him.

In the Far East servants are carried free on
steamers, and for a very small fare on the rail-
road; so it is customary on a journey to take your
own servants, who guard your luggage and serve
you on shipboard or at the hotel. Now Oriental
servants as a rule are notorious thieves, and in no
way can one show his efficiency so well as by suc-
cessfully guarding his master's belongings against
the predatory assaults of fellow-servants, that sleep
always with one eye open for loot. On the first
trip Cheeta made he served me so signally as to
put me in dread of arrest for harboring stolen
property. We had disembarked at Kuala Selan-
gor, and after the night camp was made Cheeta,
with an obvious air of complacence, led me to
where our belongings were stored, pointing pride-
fully to the ensemble. As an old campaigner, my
kit is invariably reduced to a simple and practical
working basis, without auxiliary pots or pans, or
fancy culinary accessories. I was, therefore,
somewhat surprised to view several strange, lux-
urious appearing camp things, not to mention a

170 IN THE SWAMPS

small collection of common or garden parapher-
nalia, which considerably enlarged my equipment.
My first thought considered accidental mixing of
dunnage during the voyage, my next, that Cheeta
had been making purchases; but there was a too
self-satisfied air about Cheeta to be explained by
aggrandizement of such conventional character.
To my direct question, " Are they ours?" he re-
plied " Yes," and then " No " to my further in-
quiries of " Did you buy them? were they given
us?" Finally, nonplussed, I asked point blank
where he did get them ; and then he let me under-
stand, in his subtle way, that he had outwitted the
other master's servants, who had tried to steal
from my kit all the way from Singapore.

The dressing down I gave him appeared abso-
lutely incomprehensible to Cheeta, the only im-
pression remaining with him being of my ingrat-
itude in return for his ever alert efforts on my
behalf. This was the beginning of a faithful ser-
vice that kept me in almost constant terror lest
he steal something and not tell me. He was the
most inveterate and most successful thief I ever
encountered, yet never stole from me ; though con-
tinuously bringing me things he had stolen from
other masters, under the very eyes of their ser-
vants, which he exhibited with unmistakable pride
in his cleverness, calling my attention at the same

IN THE SWAMPS 171

time to our own full equipment, from which none
of the other servants had been or ever were shrewd
enough to steal while he was on guard. Invar-
iably he presented a most aggrieved picture when,
after he had brought a stolen article to me, I
threatened him with a whipping unless he told
from whom he had stolen it, and set up a doleful
wail always when I made him put it back. I never
cured him, though I must say I punished him se-
verely at times : he did not appear to care to keep
the things he stole ; his pleasure was in outwitting
the other servants, and having done so could not
resist showing me the evidence, even though it
entailed a thrashing. But I never had so compe-
tent a servant, and it was with genuine regret I
had eventually to leave him in a hospital ill of a
fever he had contracted with me in the swamps,
and from which he never recovered.

The road we travelled upon was an excellent one,
as all roads in English Protected Malay are, and
led us in three hours to a little fishing village where
lived Aboo Din, to whom I had been recommended,
and who extended to me the hospitality of his roof,
much to my surprise ; for the Malay is a Moham-
medan, and a Mohammedan is not usually pleased
to have a stranger within his gates. But the sur-
prise was an agreeable one to me, for although the
Malay presents the not always comforting anom-

172 IN THE SWAMPS

aly of dirty houses and clean persons, yet the invi-
tation offered an exceptional opportunity for
nearby study of the native, and I rejoiced to
have it.

Din was good-looking, short and stocky, well put
together, with thick nose and lips, and straight
black hair. He had been to Singapore a number
of times, counted white men among his friends,
spoke English fairly well, and was altogether an
enlightened Malay. His menage was a very sim-
ple yet a very interesting one, and though there
were only four rooms I heard scarcely a sound,
and never saw anyone but Din and two children—
a son of seven or eight and a daughter of fifteen or
sixteen. I question if there is a more attractive
human thing on earth than a handsome Malay boy.
And they remain so through their boyhood, or
until their young manhood, at which time for a
few lively years of pleasure-seeking they consti-
tute the local jeunesse doree. The Malay species
of this engaging genus of adolescence is about the
swiftest of which I know. The little girls are not
so handsome as the boys; but Aboo's young miss
was almost pretty with her lighter complexion,
small hands and feet, and an ill-concealed ever-
present wish, constantly suppressed, to laugh and
be gay. Her eyes were those of her brother, only
not so luminous, but the arch of her eyebrow was

IN THE SWAMPS 173

patrician. I came to be good friends with these
children before I left them; and they brought
others until my group of little acquaintances grew
to half a dozen; and never, I declare, have I met
such lovable children, not even in South America.

The girl, by the way, was instrumental in letting
me into the secrets of sarong-making ; for one day
she took me to an aged relative, who was weaving
one of silk, with threads of gold and silver running
through it, that was to be the child's gala garment
at a festival soon coming. The old woman said
it took a month to complete such a garment, and
about twenty days to make the less elaborate ones.
They are all woven of cotton or silk, or cotton and
silk mixed, invariably a check of gay colors, and
there is almost no house outside of the towns that
has not its hand loom. Over the sarong the well-
to-do women wear a looser garment, extending
below the knees and not so low as the sarong, that
is fastened at the front with an oval-shaped silver
buckle four inches deep by six long. Although all
of the same style— an oblong cloth from two to
four feet in width and about six feet in length,
sewn together at the ends like a bag with the bot-
tom out— yet an ingenious twist at the waist, or
other touch of the eternal feminine gives the
sarong individual distinction.

Aboo Din seemed thoroughly to enjoy the frank

174 IN THE SWAMPS

pleasure I took in his children and told me much
of child life, of folklore, and of the many Malay
superstitions. He was a good talker, as most
Malays are, and in common with his countrymen
loved to gossip ; there was not much of the social
history of that little settlement I did not hear
before we set out for the swamps in the jungle.
Being well-to-do he indulged himself in fads,
two— cock-fighting and highly ornamented krises.
Also he had some fine pieces— betel-nut boxes
chiefly— of old Malay silver exquisitely carved,
and now so hard to get. He organized several
cock fights while I was with him, and although his
collection was small it was not lacking in quality.
He had also just bought a race pony, which he was
training with a view to entering the holiday races
at Singapore; for, next to his betel-nut and his
women, the Malay dearly loves the speculative op-
portunities of a horse race.

But the up-country Malay of the old school
cherishes most his kris, as the dagger with wavy
or straight twelve-inch blade is called. There was
a day, not so long gone, when the kris bore no value
until baptism in human blood made it worthy to
pass on to succeeding generations with its story
enshrined in family tradition. To-day, with all
Malay at peace, it has lost such significance, though
remaining a much prized possession and heirloom,

IN THE SWAMPS 175

according to its intrinsic value. It may have a
wood or buffalo horn handle, plain, or carved in
the fanciful designs of which Malay workmen are
past masters; or the handle may be of ivory, of
silver, or even of gold, chased and studded with
jewels. Etiquette prescribes that the kris be worn
at the left side, unobtrusively sheathed in the
sarong, with the handle pointing in to the body;
the turning out of the handle and the exposure of
the kris indicates unfriendliness. Whatever the
composition of its handle, however, the blade of
the first-class kris is only of one and the best qual-
ity, fashioned of splendid Celebes iron, tempered
ceremoniously and decorated punctiliously with
water lines. These lines, which give the impres-
sion of inlaid silver, are the result of a process
said to be secret ; but Din told me they were made
by leaving the blade, covered by a thin coating of
wax, for several days in a mixture of sulphur and
salt, and then cleaning it with arsenic and lime-
juice. How near this is to the truth I know not;
I give it only as Aboo Din gave it to me.

The sheath of the kris is frequently as elaborate
as the handle, made of a native mottled wood that
takes a very h*igh polish, and is often additionally
mounted in highly ornamented brass. Sometimes
the sheath is also decorated with gold and silver
trimmings. In the old days the famous maker of

176 IN THE SWAMPS

blades attained to wide celebrity; now he is pass-
ing, almost passed indeed, and his art, like all the
splendid native arts the world over, is being re-
placed by unpleasing, if practical, articles of civili-
zation—civilization, destroyer of the picturesque
and of the natural art instinct in the individual.

When Din learned that the real object of my
coming into his country was to hunt wild pig, all
his good humor vanished, for, to the Mohammedan,
pig is an animal abhorrent. We had already made
several successful deer hunts, for which purpose
he kept an assortment of dogs and enjoyed quite
a local reputation; but he would have nothing
whatever to do with my proposed hunt for boar;
he would not even hire me his dogs. At least such
was his attitude at first, but after a day or so his
natural good humor and the lessons of Singapore
asserted themselves, and he showed a more recep-
tive mind to my proposition. At just this psycho-
logical moment word came from a neighboring
kampong of crocodiles terrorizing the people ; and
it was not very long before I had closed a bargain
with Aboo Din that, if I would go with him into
the swamps and help slaughter crocodiles for his
people, he, in return, would organize my pig hunt.
So with that mutual understanding we started off
next morning with twenty men and a dozen dogs.

Curiously, the Malay is no hunter of the croco-

IN THE SWAMPS 177

dile, and it is only when one has carried off a
child or a dog, or takes up its abode too near a vil-
lage for the comfort of the inhabitants, that he
organizes to kill. 'Twas on such an occasion that
I happened now. For six or seven miles we
skirted the jungle, across the mangrove swamps
and the mud flats, before we came to a small collec-
tion of houses elevated upon piles along the banks
of a sluggish stream. Here we pitched camp.

Shooting crocodiles is no sport; you sit in the
bow of a canoe, rifle at hand, while two men paddle
silently forward until you sight a dark, olive green,
loglike thing on the mud. The " thing " is not
so inanimate as it looks. Perhaps you have mo-
mentary sight of a yellowish patch, the under side
of its throat, as it moves off ; and then you fire and
paddle with all speed to where the creature was;
was, I repeat, for nine times out of ten past tense
is the proper one. You may see a few spots of
blood to indicate you have scored, but rarely is a
crocodile killed instantly, and otherwise it is not
secured. No matter how severely wounded, it
finds its way into the river to die and sink, or to
fall prey to other crocodiles. Of about a dozen I
wounded to the death, I secured only one, and that
because I was able to approach within ten yards,
and, with my lead-pointed ball mushrooming,
drilled the disgusting reptile through and through.
12

178 IN THE SWAMPS

The Malays had a more certain way of securing
the quarry. Their means was a bamboo raft, two
and a half feet square which carried an upright
two-foot pole flying a small bit of rag. To the
under side of the raft was attached about fifteen to
twenty yards of stout line, ending in three feet
of chain, a couple of feet of wire, and a stout
barbed hook, to which was made fast a live fowl
and a small section of hollow bamboo to counter-
balance the weight of the chain and float the bait.
Set adrift in the river, it was not long, as a rule,
before a squawk and a splash announced the bait
taken. Violent agitation of the raft followed
upon the disappearance of the fowl ; sometimes it
momentarily disappeared from view as the hooked
amphibian went ahead full steam, but always the
little flag came bedraggled to the surface, and after
a while remained stationary as the crocodile stayed
his progress in an effort to disentangle himself
from the bait. By this time the hook had taken
firm hold, and it became simply a question of put-
ting a boy on the bank or on a canoe to watch the
flag on the raft. By and by at their leisure the
Malays would haul the crocodile ashore and mur-
der it. Aboo Din seemed an artist in this method
of catching crocodile, and always two or three of
his flags fluttered on the river. Except for the
satisfaction of killing the dangerous things, I can

IN THE SWAMPS 179

not say I enjoyed the game; there is no sport in
shooting lead into something you do not get, and
when you do get it the reptile is so repulsive as
to destroy all the joy of its pursuit. Therefore I
was well content when Aboo Din announced that
crocodiles had been butchered in sufficient num-
bers to quiet the fears of the residents and he was
ready to take me inland for wild pig.

Per contra, no sport in the world is more thor-
oughly enjoyable than boar-hunting, or pig-stick-
ing as it is done in India ; for this is the pluckiest
brute on earth. No beast has more courage than
he; in fact, an old wild boar knows no fear; not
even of a tiger. The wild boar never loses his
head— or his heart; such bravery I have never
beheld in any four-footed creature. He has all the
cunning commonly accredited to the devil, and in
his rage is a demon that will charge anything of
any size. I have seen a small boar work his way
through a pack of dogs ; and his smaller brother,
the peccary, in Brazil, send a man up a tree and
keep him there. The boar looks ungainly, but the
Indian species is fleet as a horse for about three
quarters of a mile. He begins with flight, shifts
to cunning, and finally stands to the fight with
magnificent valor, facing any odds. As, riding
upon him, you are about to plant your spear, he
will dart— " jink," as they call it in India— to one

180 IN THE SWAMPS

side, repeating the performance several times,
until he finds he can not shake you, when, turning
suddenly with ears cocked and eyes glittering, he
will charge furiously. If not squarely met with a
well aimed and firmly held spear, he will upset
both horse and rider. Hurling himself again and
again against the surrounding spears, he will keep
up his charge until killed, when he dies without a
groan. There is no animal like him; and truly is
he entitled to the honors of the chase in Indian
and in European countries where he abounds.
The true home of the wild boar (Sus cristatus and
S. scrofa) is India and Europe— France, Ger-
many, Russia, Spain, Austria. Smaller and less
formidable species of him are found in Hawaii, in
the South Sea and in the East Indian Islands ; and
in South America, Mexico and Texas, where he
is much smaller and known as the peccary. The
average shoulder height of a good specimen of In-
dian boar is twenty-nine to thirty-two inches, the
tusk length four to six inches, and the weight two
hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds;
although in the Tent Club I heard of boars killed
that had tipped the scales at six hundred— but that
story came late in the evening. The other East
Indian varieties, the babirusa excepted, will not
average within one hundred pounds of the Indian,
and the peccaries are even smaller, probably fifty

IN THE SWAMPS 181

pounds lighter. Boar-hunting as sport attains to
its highest excellence in India, where it is as bad
form to shoot a boar as, in England, it is to shoot
a fox; in fact it is the law of the land that none
may be shot within forty miles of ridable ground.
Elsewhere, because of unridable country, or from
tradition, the boar is shot, and, having expe-
rience of both, I can say that boar-shooting is to
pig-sticking as pot is to flight bird shooting.
The peccaries differ little; the Mexican, called
" javalinas," have the more pig-like head; the
Texan are the smallest. Some sport is to be had
chasing peccaries in Texas, where, in small herds,
they keep ahead of the horses and dogs for a short
exhilarating burst of a couple of hundred yards,
when they tire and come to bay. But Texas pec-
cary hunting is not more serious than good fun,
although the pig is pugnacious and valiant. A
strong fighting dog can alone kill a peccary; and
there never was a dog which, single-handed, could
live through a finish fight with an Indian boar.
The Brazilian peccaries are the heaviest, travel in
herds of considerable numbers, and have more en-
durance and more fighting blood.

Beating pigs up on foot to shoot them as they
rush from one patch of jungle into another has
its exciting moments, and its risks are of no trivial
order if you are called on to sustain a charge. I

182 IN THE SWAMPS

found this method in Brazil more sport than riding
after them behind dogs in Mexico or in Texas, but
it was much better still in Malay, where the pigs
are larger and the cover dense and variously occu-
pied. Indeed a fascinating feature of pig-hunting
in Malay entirely peculiar to the Peninsula is the
uncertainty of what kind of animal may burst
from the jungle ahead of the beaters. It may be
anything from a mouse deer to a tiger.

Pig-sticking would be impossible in Malay.
Primeval forest of great, smooth tree trunks rise
straight into the air fifty or sixty feet before
sending out their canopy tops that scarcely permit
sunlight to sift through. Far below grows a tan-
gled mass of palms, ferns and small trees bound
together by rattan, cane and climbing vines of such
strength and profusion that the adventurer may
advance only by frequent use of the knife. Water-
soaked by the shoulder-high, dripping, coarse
grass and torn by multitudinous thorn-armed
bushes, he cuts his way slowly, even painfully.
Needless to say such country is not ridable.
Where agriculture has made its demand this jun-
gle has been cleared, and tapioca, coffee, rice, pine-
apples and every tropical thing flourishes in luxu-
riant abundance ; and when, as happens, land has
been abandoned, a secondary growth of shrubs and
small trees, and high coarse grass, lalang, speedily

THE WILD BOAR AND HIS PUGNACIOUS COUSINS.

i. Texas Peccary. 4. Indian pig, Malay, Sus cristatus.

2. Babarussa. ' 5. Mexican Peccary.

3. Wild pig of Borneo, Sus barbatus. 6. Collared Peccary.

7. Wild boar, Sus scrofa.

IN THE SWAMPS 183

covers all signs of attempted reclamation. On the
edges of such country are favorite ranges for wild
pig, which, after feeding at night, find here the thick
scrub near soft ground, where they can wallow
and lie up during the day. Thus in Malay hunting
boar becomes a matter of beating them out of these
thick jungle patches, and the native dogs, though
serviceable after deer for which the Malays train
them, lack the courage needed to dislodge a stub-
born or pugnacious boar. English residents have
experimented quite a bit in breeding for a good
dog; but nothing very notable has evolved, and
the most dependable one seems to be got by cross-
ing a pariah (mongrel) bitch with an imported
harrier.

As a collection of mongrels, the dogs Aboo Din
got together for our pig hunt were unbeatable ; as
a pig pack they were untrained and fickle, though
not useless— for running deer, however, they had
quite a reputation.

For a greater part of four days' travel inland
from the coast we moved through ankle-deep
swamp and multitudes of sago and cocoanut palmsy
seeing now and then on higher, dryer ground the
traveller, most beautiful of all the smaller palms.
Insects were troublesome, not to mention the omni-
present leech, and the heat very oppressive, espe-
cially in the close-growing lalang; yet the sur-

184 IN THE SWAMPS

roundings of the swamp land were different from
any I had seen elsewhere on the Peninsula, and
therefore extremely interesting. We were wring-
ing wet most of the time, for nearly always, as we
made way through the swamp to reach higher
ground beyond, we walked through the densest of
dripping jungle. Once and again we passed a de-
serted plantation, the last signs of agricultural ac-
tivity fast disappearing under the engulfing jungle
growth ; and on the sixth day, at noon, we came to
a large tapioca farm, where I lunched deliciously
on the refreshing milk of a freshly gathered cocoa-
nut and the roasted sweet-potato-like roots of the
tapioca, with bananas and papayas plucked near
by. Here was our pig-hunting ground and here
we remained a week, averaging about two drives
a day.

Although it was bunglingly done, I enjoyed no
hunting experience in Malay more than this. We
were always ready for our first drive about six
O'clock in the morning. The beaters and the dogs,
making a wide detour around a patch of jungle pre-
viously agreed upon, would enter it from the far
side, while I took position on the opposite side in the
open places where the pigs were likely to come out
—though they did not always perform as expected,
sometimes running around and around within the
jungle patch, in defiance of both dogs and men.

IN THE SWAMPS 185

The jungle patches were never of great size, so I
could hear the beaters almost from their first shout
on entering the cover. Such a racket and such a
crew! for the beaters were as motley as the dogs.
They included Chinamen, Klings, Tamils, Japa-
nese, a few Malays, all of them naked except for
a small breech-clout. Every man had a parang
(jungle knife) swung at his waist; half of them
had empty, five-gallon kerosene cans, with which
Aboo Din had provided them on the coast. From
the moment they entered the far side of the cover
until they emerged on my side they hammered
these cans incessantly, shouting and yelling and at
the same time threshing the jungle on all sides with
bamboo sticks. Such a confusion of shrieking
man and crashing cans and yelping dogs I never
heard. As they came closer the noise became an
indescribable babel. There was never a day that
did not result in pigs ; they had to flee before that
bedlam, though none had tusks longer than a
couple of inches. It was a question of snap shoot-
ing as they popped out of one patch of jungle into
another; and was, I must say, rather good fun,
especially when the charge of two wounded ones
rather stirred things up a bit.

But Aboo Din all the time maintained a dignified
aloofness.

CHAPTER VIII
IN THE EYE OP DAY

The Lost Seladang of Noa Anak.

NOT in many places on the globe is early
morning so entrancing as in up-country
Malay. The coolish, faintly stirring air, the dark,
fragrant forests, the rakishly topped cocoanut
palm, and the gracefully disheveled bamboo sil-
houetted against a grayish sky, compose a picture
of beauty and of inspiration as rare to the tropics
as it is fleeting— for with sunup comes sultry heat,
enervating everywhere, but on the plains intol-
erable. Always there is the eternal green of the
hills and the shifting, moisture-laden clouds that
pour daily benefaction upon the respondent, luxu-
riant growth below. And in all Malay nowhere
are the mornings so attractive as in Jelebu town,
with its natural setting choice as that of an Orien-
tal gem. Jelebu district is jungle and primeval
forest running up hill and down dale over to the
higher ground, locally called " mountains," which
divide the State of Negri Sembilan from Selangor.
But Jelebu town is valleys of heavily laden, bril-
liantly colored, padi fields, and isolated hillocks,

186

IN THE EYE OF DAY 187

thickly timbered to their very tops, that make the
settlement a checker-board of mounts and vales,
and blues and greens. On top one of these hills,
its foundation hacked out of the enveloping jungle,
was the bungalow of Walter Scott, overlooking the
valleys and the little group of town houses, and
the firm reddish road connecting Jelebu with the
outside world. Scott was the British Resident, as
the local governing official is called, at the time of
my visit, and a fine specimen of that clear-eyed,
upstanding, intelligent class of young men whose
common sense and uncorrupted rule have been the
upbuilding of British Malaya. It is worth a jour-
ney around the Peninsula, if only to see the type
of young men whom England calls out to help her
solve Malay problems; and to see the type is to
understand why England's colonial government is
so eminently successful. Scattered throughout the
British protected States of the Peninsula, a few
to each State, in residence widely separated, these
young Englishmen stand for the best interests of
their country and the fair treatment of the natives.
I had met Scott at Seramban, just at the foot
of the hill from the range which runs north
through the State, after a journey from the coast
through coffee and tapioca plantations; and we
joined forces for the gharry drive to Jelebu. The
gharry is the travelling cart of Malay. It is a

188 IN THE EYE OF DAY

nondescript, two-wheeled, uncomfortable kind of
vehicle, with scarcely room enough for two, and a
seat placed so low as to cramp one's legs most un-
comfortably. The ponies are small but tough, and
for the greater number are brought from Java,
whence also comes the professional syce, as the
driver is called ; the best of these syces come from
Boyan, an island off Java, where, curiously
enough, there are no horses. In action the syce
sits on the gharry floor with legs dangling over the
shaft, from which point of vantage he maintains
a constant drubbing of the pony. For the larger
share of the day's hours the pony merits vigorous
attention; for the rest he accepts the driver's devo-
tion to strenuous duty with indifference. Like the
cayuse that has become accustomed to the drum-
ming heels of its Mexican rider, the Malay pony
views the unflagging lash as a settled habit of his
syce, to be humored or ignored according to the
quality of the road. Yet it is surprising what
loads these little beasts will drag and the miles
they will cover in a day, because of their own
sturdy legs and, to no inconsiderable extent, on
account of the fine, hard, well kept, terra cotta col-
ored road which winds through the jungle, up hill
and down, connecting the chief settlements of the
protected States of Malay. The roadways are not
numerous, but their quality is unexcelled.

IN THE EYE OF DAY 189

For two days Scott and I travelled over such a
road, winding around hills, through vistas of trop-
ical scenery soft and indescribably beautiful;
along avenues of palms (most impressive being
the travellers' palm with its eighteen inch wide
blade) ; under the full power of the sun, whose
blazing glory awoke to iridescence the multitude
of varying green which reached to the horizon on
every hand. We were travelling in the open eye
of day, and the natural beauty of Malay, so often
shrouded in rain, stood revealed to me as never
before. It was a scene to enrapture the most blase
traveller. Only occasionally are the wonderful
and ravishing mysteries of the jungle exposed by
Nature's search light, and the human eye must be
swift and retentive, for a glimpse of such tropical
beauty is rare and evanescent.

Amid this tropical gorgeousness and with three
relays of ponies, for the grade of the road was
severe and our load heavy, we came in the night
of the second day to Jelebu— typical of the smaller
British residencies. Besides Scott, there were
exactly two other white men within a day's jour-
ney of his bungalow, yet Jelebu had its club, and
its bulletin board on which every day was posted
the most important cable news of the world. Here
at the very jungle's edge might one keep pace with
the fluctuations of the stock market or learn the

190 IN THE EYE OF DAY

most recent rumor concerning Russia's Indian
ambitions.

Jelebu is 'the governmental centre for all that
part of Negri Sembilan lying above north latitude
3° where it touches the States of Pahang and Se-
langor on the west. In common with all the Pe-
ninsular federated or protected States, it has a
native sultan acting under the advice and sugges-
tion of the British Resident, who, in Jelebu, is
paid five hundred silver dollars a month ; which is
a good bit more than the Resident receives. What
the Sultan is given by the government and what
the Sultan saves for his own personal net income,
however, are two different and widely separated
amounts. The dependents of a Malay chieftain
are many, and he must maintain himself and his
household of women in liberal style as to retinue
and entertainment; to do this in accordance with
native tradition leaves the Sultan no over boun-
tiful remainder of his seemingly large honorarium.
Were his income, however, twice the really liberal
fee now given him by the government for serving
as figure head, the net result would be no greater ;
the Malay is no economist. The Resident is a kind
of paternal chief justice, magistrate and legal ad-
viser combined; he is well taken care of by his

7 «/

government, and thoroughly respected, sometimes
even liked, by the natives. Ordinarily his official

IN THE EYE OF DAY 191

life runs smoothly day by day along its monoto-
nous course ; for Malay is at peace and industrious.
But as the durian ripens his days grow strenuous
with throbbing life; the padi field is neglected,
peace is broken, and the Resident becomes a peri-
patetic Lord High Chancellor, whose waking hours
are filled with civil suits, and whose nights are
made sleepless by the howlings of quarrelling men.
For be it known that the durian is the wondrous
fruit that brings great joy or the madness of con-
flict upon those that taste of its passion-stirring
flavor. Had the original apple been a durian, Eve
never would have saved a bite for Adam— and
man been spared the time-honored and sneering
accusation of laying the blame for his fall upon
tempting woman.

My introduction to the durian was character-
istic. It came early in the morning after my ar-
rival at Jelebu. Strolling contentedly around
Scott's hilltop, enjoying the view and the fra-
grance of foliage under the first sun rays, I was
startled by hair raising shrieks as though the
victim were being boiled in oil or undergoing tor-
ture equally agonizing. Hastening to the scene of
commotion I came upon an enlivening fight that
had been waged all over a padi field but, at the
moment of my approach, was being finished at a
corner fence, through which the vanquished com-

192 IN THE EYE OF DAY

batant, uttering his blood-curdling yells, sought to
escape the fury of blows that the other rained upon
him with a club of male bamboo big enough and
stout enough to fell a bullock. Pieces of durian
scattered over the battle-ground told the cause of
the fight; the clubbed had stolen the fruit from
the clubbee and been caught, and, in the terms of
local popular approval, been " reprimanded "-—so
thoroughly reprimanded, in fact, that he was car-
ried home and did not emerge again from his house
for several weeks. Meanwhile the victor who had
come out of the affray pretty severely marked
also, received the congratulations of his friends
and an increased sale for his durians.

It was at the height of the durian season, when
all animal kind in Malay, two-legged and four-
legged, is animated by an insatiable lust for the
fruit itself, and quick to fill with savage anger
against whatever stands in the way of satisfying
its appetite; for not the least remarkable quality
of this remarkable fruit is the amatory effect it
has upon those who consume it. All durian-eating
Malays— man and beast— are aflame with erotic
fire. The jungle resounds with the fighting of
love-lorn brutes, and the towns awaken to court-
ship and indulgence.

The durian is about the size of a pineapple, with
a similarly rough, outside covering armed with

IN THE EYE OF DAY 193

half -inch spikes which are tough and sharp. It
grows on trees fully sixty feet in height whose
trunks are bare of limbs except at the very top, and
when the fruit ripens it drops to the ground. So,
as the season approaches, natives erect small huts
under the tree or nearby, from which they watch
for the falling fruit. Those who are fortunate
enough to have such trees growing on their own
land, practically live on the income derived from
the sale of the durian, for in the Peninsular mar-
ket it brings the highest price of any Eastern fruit.
In the jungle edge, where these trees have no own-
ership, the race to build the first hut, and thus
establish proprietary interest in the falling fruit,
is equal in intensity to an Oklahoma land rush;
and in the jungle the natives must compete also
with the wild beasts that share man's fondness for
this extraordinary fruit. Once, in the jungle, as
I sat smoking, puzzling out some lost seladang
tracks, a falling durian attracted my attention ; the
nearby trees seemed alive with monkeys racing to
reach the ground first. One monkey, that had
been left at the post, so to say, deliberately dove
from the top of the tree where he sat, fully forty
feet into the top of a smaller tree below, whence
he swung to the ground; but, though he beat out
the others the durian had disappeared. A small
leopard-like creature had sneaked off the fruit,

194 IN THE EYE OF DAY

and I was too much absorbed in watching the
aerial flight of the monkey to get more than a
glimpse of the thief. The troop of monkeys that
instantly foregathered discussed the situation
loudly and in very obvious anger.

In order to keep away the birds and the beasts
which search out this intoxicating fruit, the na-
tives, in the jungle near the durian trees, erect
large wooden clappers and other noise-making
instruments, which they operate by rope from
their watch-houses, sometimes elevated on high
poles. This rope is also a jungle product and
amazingly strong and durable. Braided into
varying sizes, from string to hawser, it is made of
a black fibre which grows around the trunk of a
certain kind of plentiful palm that blossoms once
in a lifetime and then dies. I have seen this fibre
rope serving as anchor cables on small Malayan
coastwise steamers.

No world fruit is coveted so inordinately, or
consumed with such greed as this durian; nor is
there any to compare with its extraordinary flavor
and odor. A small cartload of durians will an-
nounce themselves long before seen, and, in hand,
its odor, at least to white nostrils, at first is pecu-
liarly offensive. I have never heard or read an
adequate description of either flavor or odor.

IN THE EYE OF DAY 195

As in the case of the rattle of the rattlesnake, it is
impossible to find fitting words for it.

Although the shell is very tough, yet the fruit
opens easily from the stem to disclose its centre
divided into orange-like sections or pods, each
having several seeds about the size of a marble.
Around these seeds is the fruit, a cream-colored,
cream-like substance, of a flavor which simply
baffles description. If the meat of a banana were
squashed and mixed with an equal quantity of rich
cream, a smaller quantity of chocolate, and enough
garlic to stamp strongly the whole, the result
would be, it seems to me, about the nearest ap-
proach to the consistency and combination of tastes
afforded by the durian. At the same time its flavor
is extremely delicate and rich, and its odor power-
ful. They say the durian is an acquired taste-
certainly so for the European ; but after overcom-
ing your repugnance to the odor, which is so strong
you can literally taste it, you become very fond of
the fruit. I survived the odor long enough to eat
a portion and tasted it for three days afterwards.
Somehow I never tried another.

To me the attraction of Jelebu was not as a cen-
tre of durian activity, but its reported nearness to
seladang and elephant, and particularly to the sela-
dang, that most formidable member of the great
Bos family. From the nearly extinct American

196 IN THE EYE OF DAY

bison to the passing Chillingham wild cattle of Eu-
rope, on to the buffalo of India and of Africa, and
the anoa of Celebes— smallest of buffaloes— the ox
family ranges wide and populous. And of this
very large family, certainly the Far Eastern mem-
bers are the most interesting. The gaur, gayal
and banting form a group showing common dis-
tinctive features of horns more or less flattened,
tail reaching only a little below the hock, and a dis-
tinct ridge running from shoulders to the middle
of the back, where it ends in a sharp drop. In
mature males, the color of the short, fine hair is
dark brown or blackish, but the young of both
sexes, and the female banting of all ages, are red-
dish brown. The gaur is distinguished by the high
arched frontal bone between the borns, which in
the gayal is straight and flat; the banting is the
smallest, its horns more rounded and the ridge on
its back less developed. Of the three, of all Orien-
tal wild cattle in fact, the gaur is the largest and
by far the most formidable; is in fact one of the
most formidable beasts of the earth which the hun-
ter can stalk, and one that will on occasion supply
all the excitement the most intrepid sportsman
might desire. They stand higher than any other
of the oxen family, and are of heavier bone, though
the shoulder blade is small for an animal of such
size— another disadvantage for the hunter. The

THE LARGE AXD FORMIDABLE ORIKNTAL WILD CATTLE FAMILY

i. The Seladang, Bos gaurus.

2. The Anoa of Celebes, Bos depressicomis. Con-

necting link between the ox and the antelope.
Height, 3 ft. 3 in.

3. The Yak, Bos grunnieus. Tibet and Kashmir.

5 ft. 6 in. high.

4. I'anting, Bos sondaicus. Sumatra, Java, Borneo,

Burma. 5 ft. to 5 ft. 9 in.

5. Indian Buffalo, Bos bubalus. 5 ft. to 6 ft. at

shoulder.

6. Small Buffalo peculiar to the island of Mindoro

of the Philippine group, Bos mittdorensis.
Height at shoulder, 3 ft. 6 in.

7. African (Cape) Buffalo, Bos caffer. 4 ft. 10 to 5

ft. at shoulder.

8. Gayal, Bos frontalis. Burma, Assam. Smaller

model of Gaur.

9. Chillingham Bull, half wild cattle of Europe.

10. Gaur, Bos gaurus, or Indian Bison, known in

Malay as the Seladang. Miscalled Bison —
Oriental wild cattle.

11. European Wild Cattle. Extinct aurochs.

12. The Congo Buffalo, Bos pumilus.

IN THE EYE OF DAY 197

blade goes well up into the shoulder, its top being
within about four inches of the highest point of
the back ridge. Therefore a shot should be sent
home just over the leg, a little forward rather
than back, and within six to eight inches from the
top of the shoulder ridge.

Called bison (incorrectly) in India, seladang in
Malaya, siang in Burma, and gnudang in Siam,
the gaur (Bos gaurus) is the largest and fiercest
of all the wild cattle, with hoofs small in propor-
tion to its height, and of deer-like, rather than ox-
like, character. Its sense of smell is as acute as
that of the elephant and its vision much keener.
When you seek one of these cattle you need all
your hunter's skill and your nerve; for, next to
the elephant and bracketed with the Cape buffalo
of Africa, I believe its natural temperament and
the character of country in which it is found make
the seladang in the Malay Peninsula the most for-
midable quarry* on earth. In India, where the
range of the gaur is the hilly, wooded districts,
they are more apt to be found in herds of some size,
and, because of the more open sections, less difficult
of approach; less dangerous to the hunter than
in the Malay Peninsula, where the jungle is the
densest that grows, and almost invariably the
quarry has the man at a disadvantage. In Malay
it is snap shooting, where the game, on being

198 IN THE EYE OF DAY

wounded, turns hunter, and, concealed, awaits the
sportsman, who must approach with infinite cau-
tion, with senses always alert and hand ever ready,
if he would stop or turn aside the vicious charge.
You may never in this jungle survey the field of
operations from some vantage point; but in the
close growing tangle of vines, and canes, and thorn
bushes, and heavy coarse weed or grass-like mass
—through which you can never get even dim sight
for over twenty yards and most of the time can
scarcely see that many feet ahead— you must fol-
low the tracks of the seladang you have wounded,
never knowing at what instant the maddened beast
may burst from the jungle practically right on top
of you. One seladang I was fortunate enough
finally to get, was only just the other side of a
bamboo clump when he started his charge full at
me. This is the dangerous and the unavoidable
feature of hunting the beast in Malay. Luckily
for the hunter, the seladang, if unsuccessful in its
charge, passes on to await him at another point.
Never have I heard of one turning instantly to
a second charge after missing the hunter on the
first rush. But, on the other hand, if the seladang
charges home, it remains to gore its victim.

So it is, because of the temper of the seladang
and of the kind of the country he roams, that in
Malay the heavy rifle is the only safe one. Sela-

IN THE EYE OF DAY 199

dang have been killed with comparative small bore
weapons— I was fortunate enough to kill one with
a 50 calibre— but it is also true that the late Cap-
tain Syres, one of the most experienced sportsmen
among English residents of Malay, was killed by
the charge of a seladang, after he and his com-
panion had put six .577 balls into the beast. As
he lay wounded to the death Captain Syres charged
his companion never to go into the Malayan jungle
for seladang with any weapon lighter than an
8 bore; and though perhaps that is erring on the
safe side, certainly if error is to be made the safe
side is the one which wisdom would choose. In a
sense this is true of all shooting in the dense jun-
gles of the Par East, which do not afford the more
or less open stretches of India or the plains of
Africa. Dangerous game is apt to come at you
from such near points, and the kind of shooting
demanded is so much of the snap work variety, that
picking your shot, as a rule, is impossible. You
must have a gun that will stop, or at least turn
aside, the infuriated charging animal; and in the
case of seladang it is your life or his. Therefore
you must have smashing, sickening power in your
cartridge, not merely penetration. And when you
are tracking a wounded seladang, look well that
you do not become entangled in the vines and the
clinging growths of many descriptions that en-

200 IN THE EYE OF DAY

compass your way. Keep your feet clear, ready
for instant movement, and have always a tree in
your path and in your eye, for lightning quick
shelter in case there is not the time or the oppor-
tunity for a shot when the charge comes.

There is record of a seladang killed that stood
six feet seven and a half inches at its shoulders;
but the average would be from about five feet ten
or eleven inches, to six feet. Of four I personally
measured the tallest was five feet eleven inches,
the smallest five feet eight inches ; and the biggest
head of which I found any record had horns with
a twenty and three-quarter inch base circumfer-
ence, with a spread of eighteen and three-quarter
inches from tip to tip, and forty-three inches as
the outside length of horn, and thirty-five and a
half inches as the inside length from base to tip.
Yet these are unusual and extreme measurements ;
and sixteen to eighteen inches is more nearly the
average base circumference, with a corresponding
fewer number of inches on the other measurements.

Before we set out from Jelebu for our hunt, we
tried very hard to get Prang Doloh, who lived at
the edge of the jungle, and was commonly reported
to have, for a Malay, unusual hunting qualifica-
tions; but we were obliged to content ourselves
with Noa Anak, another native of higher social
degree but, as we discovered, less jungle craft.

IN THE EYE OP DAY 201

None the less we set off with considerable enthu-
siasm, because reports of elephants which I did not
want, and of seladang, which I did desire, were
arriving plentifully. Every day one or more na-
tives would come in to the official residence with a
woful tale of padi destroyed by mischievous ele-
phants ; and Noa declared he knew where a small
herd of seladang ranged which so often he had seen
that now, he assured us, he could find them with his
eyes shut for the " eminent Resident and his dis-
tinguished friend."

One wants the happy unreasoning confidence of
childhood to thoroughly enjoy Malay.

When we set out to find Noa's seladang, our
outfit of provisions was sent ahead in the pictur-
esque Malay draught cart, with our party of
eight under Noa leading the way, and Scott and I
following in a comfortless gharry, which we dis-
missed at the jungle edge in favor of shank's mare.

As to nationalities, our party was something of
a mixture, including Malays, Tamils and China-
men ; but as to quality it was, with a single excep-
tion, uniform and useless to an exasperating degree.
Indeed it was notable in its very uselessness; to
have got together seven men so bootless on a hunt-
ing expedition, was in itself an achievement worthy
of record. The exception was Lum Yet, a Hok-
kien Chinaman, who had been engaged as cook, but

202 IN THE EYE OP DAY

who in truth was a jack of all useful trades in
camp, and a porter on the road, that trudged pa-
tiently and good naturedly under a heavy load
whenever we moved camp, as we did frequently.
The only thing Linn and I clashed over was the
simplicity of his cooking kit. I am myself some-
thing of a Spartan as to camp dunnage ; my equip-
ment is never luxurious, being always reduced to
a strictly practical working basis,; yet mine was an
elaborate culinary outfit compared to that which
served Lum. So far as ever I could see, it con-
sisted of two pots and a fry pan. He would not
use separate pots, making the coffee or a curry in
the same one with equal facility, and I must hon-
estly add without any apparent tainting of either
dish ; but I had to draw the line when I found him
one day boiling a kind of a pudding concoction
in one end of his loin cloth. And he was the most
devout individual of any color I ever knew. There
was never an undertaking for which he did not
bespeak assistance from his gods; and we never
made a camp that he did not raise a crude little
altar, nearby in the jungle, as merit making. Lum
Yet had a brother whose pig had been carried off
by a tiger, and Lum never lost an opportunity,
during the entire trip to supplicate the mysterious
one of the jungle that his own pig, in a shanty near
his brother's, might not suffer a similar fate. He

IN THE EYE OP DAY 203

was always up pottering over his duties when
Scott and I turned in at night ; and I never opened
my eyes in the morning that I did not see Lum
already at work, seemingly just where he had been
when I closed my eyes the night before. Many
and many a morning I lay watching the swift dex-
terity, the economical use of every trifle, the infi-
nite industry, the mysterious mannerisms and
devout supplications.

How little the white man, especially the major-
ity of those of us who go forth as missionaries to
" convert the heathen," comprehend the Chinese
character ! To the student of Chinese institutions
and the Chinese themselves, it seems outrageous
presumption, for the truth is that the Chinese are
without doubt the most religious people on the
globe. Their religion is a very part of themselves,
accepted without discussion from birth. The
veriest pauper, from a worldly point of view, who
lives on one of the hundreds of sampans floating
before Canton, will deny himself in order that he
may perform a particular religious duty. There
are no people save the Mohammedans that so com-
pletely live up to the faith they profess. China has
no divergent churches, no wrangling apostles ; there
is the one creed, of thousands of years' standing,
to which all yield allegiance, and to which all pin
a faith that continues unto death incontrovertible.

204 IN THE EYE OP DAY

Now and again we hear of a " converted " China-
man; but I never saw one that had really broken
from the faith of his fathers who was not the less
trustworthy. In a considerable experience with
many kinds of natives in the wilderness of their
own country, I have invariably found the ones
farthest from " civilization " and the " convert-
ing " influence of conflicting white man creeds, to
be the most honorable and dependable. I mean
this as no unkindly reflection upon the Christian
faith or upon the zeal, often so ignorantly directed,
of many good people.

Nao Anak's spirits underwent a decided change
so soon as we had penetrated the edge and got into
the real jungle. Up to this he had been blithe and
gay— the strutting leader of the party and ob-
viously glad of it; now he grew less talkative and
appeared depressed. Neither Scott nor I gave
him much thought; we presumed he was taking
us to the place where so often he had seen the sela-
dang, and meanwhile, I, at least, was greatly inter-
ested in the country through which we were pass-
ing. It was much more open jungle than any I
had yet travelled, with many hills and small val-
leys or swales in which grew big patches of very
coarse lalang as high as our heads, and bearing
blades an inch wide. Hence for the first days we
were more in the open under the sun, " eye of

IN THE EYE OF DAY 205

day "— as the Malays poetically call it— than had
been usual in my previous hunting and, though it
was oppressively hot, yet I enjoyed the chance of
the closer observation it gave of bird and insect
life. Neither, however, on more intimate ac-
quaintance, proved a sufficient reward for the dis-
comforts and heat. Bird life in the Peninsula
is not brilliant as to plumage nor entertaining as
to song; indeed, it is sombre and curiously silent.
Flying insect life also is entirely without the won-
derful colorings seen in some tropical countries—
Brazil, for example— but it is plentiful, and
though it fails to attract the eye at least it salutes
the ear, even if not pleasingly. It is vibrant with
noise; there is a continuous hum, somewhat les-
sened during the rain, but swelling into a roar
when the sun bursts forth between shifting clouds.
Monkeys almost rivalled the insects in number and
variety, and one, the wa wa, or singing gibbon,
common to most of the East Indies, made noise
even more insistent, his wail of a cry reaching high
and doleful above all other jungle sounds. About
the only bird note of which I seem to have made
record is the familiar one of our old friend the poot-
poot bird, heard so often in Sumatra and particu-
larly in Siam. But the most interesting sight in
the bird line was a black jungle fowl with red mark-
ings, though just how marked I can not particu-

206 IN THE EYE OP DAY

larize, for it was but a flash of a glimpse I had,
and counted myself fortunate indeed for that
much, as the jungle fowl are rarely seen.

By and by when we passed through the more
open zone with its life, and had come into the dark
and dank interior with only leeches visible, I began
to take some account of Noa. There was no doubt
of his depression, but to our inquiries concerning
the seladang he always replied confidently that we
were making towards them and would see " plenty
in a few days." To be sure we did see tracks, not
so fresh as to suggest quarry at the next rise, but
sufficiently so to at least indicate their presence in
the neighborhood. Thus we went on day by day,
getting wetter and wetter if possible— for once
wet in the jungle interior you stay so— but with no
fresher signs of the game we sought. One noon
we came unexpectedly upon a little open flat, com-
paratively dry, where we stopped with mutual
congratulations on stumbling over a place to dry
our clothes. Here during this process we sat
nearby, unclothed amidst the torments of myriads
of sand flies. We both remarked upon the unusual
experience of sand flies in such an environment;
but our remarks would scarcely do for publication.
Malay holds many surprises for the wilderness
hunter.

With an occasional camp from which to scour

9 I

IN THE EYE OP DAY 207

the surrounding country for tracks, we headed for
the mountains across the border in Selangor;
climbing most of the time, coming every now and
then to little flats of lalang, winding around high
hills and across small streams, of which there were
a number with excellent water. The jungle was
thick, yet without the multiplicity of briars and
thorned things I had found elsewhere in the Penin-
sula. We saw plenty of fresh deer and pig tracks,
and one day, as we sat on the bank of a stream
eating luncheon, a large sambar buck, carrying a
fine head, came out at our very side, and, after
looking us over an instant, plunged across stream
directly in front of us. Our guns were stacked
some feet away— but we did not want the deer;
meat we carried and each of us had long before
secured a head.

There were also elephant tracks; but thus far
no seladang tracks fresher than the ones first seen,
and even these were becoming fewer. As the
country itself grew to interest me less I came to
take closer note of Noa Anak, and it was not long
before I became convinced that not only was he
without knowledge of a seladang range, but he was
entirely without bearings as to our own precise
location— plainly lost, in other words. Scott
doubted this at first, but finally agreed with me,
and we then took Noa aside, so the others might

208 IN THE EYE OP DAY

not know and his pride suffer humiliation, and
had a heart-to-heart talk with him. He would not
acknowledge himself lost, but he did confess that
he seemed unable to find the range where he had
" heard " of seladang in plenty; thus we learned
out in the jungle that he had only heard of the
seladang which so definitely and so often he had
said in Jelebu that he had " seen."

It was a situation to which mere words would
not do justice— days of tramping under the direc-
tion of a man who did not know where he was
going. Only the purest accident would have
brought us to seladang, and such accidents do not
often happen. Travelling by the sun, to see which
we had at times to climb a tall tree standing above
the jungle growth, we turned our steps towards
Jelebu— always keeping an eye out for the quarry
we sought, but losing no time in reaching a place
where our conscience would permit us to point Noa
for his home.

We had scarcely a hope now of seeing seladang
—and we were not disappointed, for very soon we
ran out even of their tracks. Diligent searching
brought us no results, and we had finally to return
to Scott's bungalow after a fruitless, but inter-
esting, search for Noa's lost seladang.

CHAPTER IX
JIN ABU FINDS AN ELEPHANT

AS the crow flies, it is about two hundred and
jfX, fifty miles from the mouth of the Siak River,
on the east coast of Sumatra, to the low mountain
range which runs along the extreme western shore
from northwest to southeast. But in Sumatra you
do not journey as the crow flies. Until you reach
the foothills trans-inland travel is impossible;
therefore you follow the rivers, of which there are
many, and tortuous. By the time I got to the
higher ground where I hunted, I had gone over
four hundred miles, and just about boxed the com-
pass en route.

Inland fifty miles on the river of the same name
is Siak, metropolis of the middle east coast and
military headquarters of the Dutch, in whose
hands rests the future of this potentially rich,
though untravelled and undeveloped East India
island. Officially, Siak for one mile covers both
banks of the river, but literally there are no more
residents than could find easy elbow room in a
few acres. Politically, the left bank is Holland,
the right Sumatra. On one side are the house of

14 209

210 JIN ABU FINDS

the Dutch Governor, or Controller, the jail, the
barracks for the Dutch local army, which consist
largely of native soldiers, and the quarters of the
Dutch officers ; on the opposite side are the Sultan,
the native host, and a few Chinese shops.

Here I disembarked from the Hong Wan, a
Chinese tramp steamer of low speed and high
stench, to be greeted, in bare feet and sarong, by
the Controller, who was most hospitable and ac-
commodating. He insisted on taking me to his
own house, where his pleasant-faced, good-
humored wife made the most toothsome curry I
have ever tasted, and promised that on the day fol-
lowing I should be presented to the Sultan, of
whom, he assured me, it was necessary to get per-
mission for my visit to the interior. The day of
my audience fell also upon the one chosen to cele-
brate the opening of the palace which the Dutch
Government had recently completed for him, and
was made the occasion of a public reception and
much hilarity through the insinuating influence of
a Dutch cordial called " pint "—whatever that may
be. The Controller and his staff came in full uni-
form, but the Sultan received us in the European
clothes he always affects on gala occasions, sup-
ported by his full standing army (of twenty,
officers and men), and a semicircle of brass-tray-
bearing natives among whom were distributed the

AN ELEPHANT 211

royal betel-nut box, spittoon, cigarettes, tumbuk
lada,* kris and spear. The Sultan was a rotund,
pop-eyed little man of about thirty-five, with a
mania for bestowing royal favors or orders and
a penchant for hanging brass chains upon his
waistcoat, and binding diamond-studded decora-
tions about his instep. At his feet, on the floor,
sat two coffee-colored sons of eight and ten years
—one of whom must have been by a favorite wife,
for he was dazzling in purple velvet trimmed with
gold braid ; and each lad wore bracelets and anklets
and was loaded with brass chains and covered by
shining medals, which, for the most part suggested
dismembered tin cups, teapots, and soda-water
bottle stoppers. The photographs I made of the
Sultan in all his glory, together with other expo-
sure and hunting trophies, were subsequently lost
on one of the several occasions my skilled water-
men upset our canoes in descending the up-country
rivers.

I was detained in an antechamber while this im-
posing spectacle arranged itself in the audience
hall for my particular amazement; and if I was
not amazed— at least I was amused. His August
Majesty received me most graciously, as befitted a
potentate of his quality; and after offering me a
very bad cigarette, generously granted permission

* Small kris, corresponding to dagger.

212 JIN ABU FINDS

for me to hunt the interior country, which he in-
fluenced not at all, and of which he knew nothing,
provided I presented him one tusk of every ele-
phant I shot. Sovereignty over the interior,
where none venture, not even the Dutch, is a little
pleasantry with which the Controller tickles the
amour propre of the Sultan and that of the com-
manding general of his standing army. But the
Dutch pay well for their little joke; they give the
Sultan $16,000 (silver) a month, which enables
his Royal Highness periodically to enrich Singa-
pore shopkeepers ; and to hang more brass chains
on his waistcoats than he ever dreamed could be
found in all the world— before the Dutch came to
Siak.

A bundle of red tape enveloped my preparations
for the trip. The Dutch do not hunt; no other
white man had visited that section ; and the natives
have neither liking nor skill for the game. So
there was a great how-to-do before I got away.
First, the pow-wow with the Sultan; then, at his
instigation, consultations with many old natives,
who had never strayed from the waterway thor-
oughfares; and finally a formal dinner given by
the Controller, that his staff en masse might give
me the benefit of their advice, which, considering
that the most daring among them had never gone
fifty miles from the fort towards the interior, was

AN ELEPHANT 213

of course very valuable. The Controller meant
well and during my stay treated me with the utmost
kindness and consideration— for which he shall
always hold a warm spot in my heart— but the sum
and substance of the rare information which this
two weeks of dining and " pinting " and pow-
wowing developed, was that, at the foot of the
range over towards the eastern coast, elephants
were said to be plentiful, and if I " just followed
the rivers " branch by branch in that direction,
etc., etc., " until I could get no farther," I should
be well on towards the elephant country; simple
directions surely.

And so we set out.

My outfit, gathered after days of persuasion and
hours of consultation with the Sultan, consisted of
a sampan, a beamy type of rowboat common to the
Asiatic coast from Yokohama to Calcutta, a six-
paddle dug-out, two Chinamen, and four Malays.
I had no interpreter— not even the Sultan could
lay hands upon one. The provisions (rice, coffee,
flour, salt and fish) and the Chinamen were in the
sampan; and the four Malays and I were in the
dug-out. When it was impossible to camp on the
river banks, as most usually it was, four of us
slept in the sampan, the other three in the dug-out ;
and when it rained, as it did for a great share of
the time, I rigged a palm-leaf covering over the

214 JIN ABU FINDS

sampan and there spent my days as well as my
nights.

The Chinamen were of just the ordinary patient,
stolid, plodding John type; but the Malays, so I
was given to understand, were distinguished gen-
tlemen, chosen by the Sultan, he informed me, as
fitted to serve so " distinguished a traveller-hun-
ter.'' His Majesty possessed the true Oriental
tongue. Certainly the Malays looked the part, for
they came to me on the morning of departure each
attended by a bearer carrying the paraphernalia
which goes with betel-nut chewing. Every man
of them had at least one kris stuck inside of his
sarong at the waist, two in addition had tumbuk
ladas, and one carried a spear which bore an elab-
orately chased six-inch broad silver band bound
around the business end of the four-foot shaft.
I had no objection to the armory, but drew the
line on the servitors; so after an argument which
involved us all morning, and dragged the Sultan
from across the river, and the Controller from his
noon nap— we headed up river with the betel-nut
bearers of my high-born servants standing on
the bank.

For two weeks, always up stream, we worked
our way from river to river, each precisely like
the other in its garnet-colored water and palm-
studded sides; each narrower and of swifter cur-

AN ELEPHANT 215

rent than the preceding one. The water we boiled,
of course, so that it lost some of its blackness,
though very little of its unpleasant odor and taste.
The stronger current reduced our rate of progress
from four to three miles an hour— but we kept at
it from sunrise to sunset, much to the disgust of
my aristocratic company, and so made good day's
travelling of it. At Pakam, where we left the
Siak, the river was fully a quarter of a mile in
width, but the stream we turned into narrowed to
one hundred feet within a few miles, and to sev-
enty-five feet after a couple of days ; the next river
was not half that width at its mouth, and much less
where we abandoned it for another. These rivers
were all really wider than they seemed; a species
of palm growing a stalk two inches in diameter,
and lifting its broad unserrated leaves six to ten
feet above the water, flanked the river sides in
dense growth and extended from ten to twenty
feet in impenetrable array out from the banks. If
you wished to get to the river bank you cut your
way to it, but being at the bank, you found no foot-
ing, for the ground reached back, with creepers
and vines and trees and gigantic bushes, coming
together in one tangled swamp land. Several
times where I found footing I made difficult ex-
cursions to the back country. Once I saw and
heard the barking deer so common to all this East

216 JIN ABU FINDS

Indian land ; and again I saw a tiny and perfectly
formed miniature of a deer, standing not over
twelve to fourteen inches high at the shoulder ; the
smallest of all the known deer species. Twice I saw
and once killed what they call a fish tiger, which is
of a grayish brown with black stripes, rather good-
looking, and about the size of a small leopard ; once
too I shot but did not get a villainous-looking croc-
odile ; and on the day following I shot and did get a
thirteen-foot python which unblinkingly, and stu-
pidly, it seemed, stared at me from a low limb on
which its head and about three feet of body rested.
I also at the same time got the shivers with thought
of the cold, ugly-looking, baneful thing's caress,
had I missed the shot— for in that wilderness of
undergrowth, running away was all but impossible.
But for the most part I did not leave the boats-
could not in fact— and the only human beings we
saw were an occasional glimpse of a native in a
dug-out, swiftly, silently stealing out from the lane
he had hewn into the palms to reach a fish trap or
perhaps some bit of high ground back from the
river, where he gathered rattan to sell to the Chi-
nese traders. Usually at every junction of rivers
we found a little settlement of three or four houses,
either floating at the water's edge or set full six feet
high above the ground on stakes driven deep into
the mud bank.

AN ELEPHANT 217

The natives we encountered along the rivers were
not friendly ; nor were they unfriendly to the state
of being offensive: they were simply indifferent
and left us severely alone; churlish is the more
apt adjective, and it so affected my Malays that
they grew morose and paddled with little spirit
and not much more strength, until by cigarettes and
a judiciously small libation of that insinuating
" pint " I lifted them above their uncongenial sur-
roundings. So it was, day after day, I kept heart
in them by bribery and amusement; one day my
camera afforded entertainment ; another, my rifles
and cartridges served ; again my shoes, or my note-
book and pencils ; my pigskin case of toilet articles
was a veritable wonder-box, and served unfailingly
when the situation was unusually vexatious. The
only members of my company who really found
life satisfying were the two Chinamen; they took
turns in smoking, and in rowing the sampan ; and
when we stopped for any cause or for any period
however brief, they curled up in the stern and slept
peacefully, unconcernedly, while Malay aristoc-
racy jabbered and gesticulated and tottered upon
its foundation over failure to trade rice for the
rotted fish which scented the air whenever we
halted at a settlement.

Always, as we worked our way up stream, mon-
keys and birds of several varieties were to be seen

218 JIN ABU FINDS

and heard; and innumerable butterflies fluttered
around the boats when we stopped near the banks.
But it was not a cheerful chorus ; even the butter-
flies were sombrely painted. Ever there came to
our ears the ascending and descending cry of the
monkey, which our scientific friends call the
" singing gibbon," but which in its home is known
as the wa wa. When this quaint-faced, long-
armed creature ceased its plaintive wail, there
came always at dusk a single mournful bird note,
repeated continually from deep in the jungle,
where you felt you must seek it out to stop its
madding monotone. Even the hoarse croaking of
the herons was a relief. Frequently by day the
poot-poot bird, with its chestnut body, wings and
tail, and black head and neck, gave voice to joy of
being, and now and again I heard the bird of two
notes, a high and a low one, which so often I had
met while hunting in Siam, and which is commonly
credited with warning the jungle Free People of
man's approach.

And thus we went along.

One afternoon, as in the gathering dusk I tried
to shoot, for examination, one of the great fruit-
bats* passing overhead in swiftly moving flocks,
we came to the tiny branch river we had been seek-

* Pteropus medius; locally called flying fox and common to the
East Indies. The adult's body is about twelve inches long.

AN ELEPHANT 219

ing these two days ; and about one hundred yards
from its mouth found quite a little fleet of canoes
tied up in front of several houses and a dozen or
more natives with spears and krises in hand gath-
ered on the bank in an obvious " state of mind."
Paddling toward them, it really looked as if we had
a fight on our hands; and I must say I did not
much care, for, if the truth be told, I was exas-
perated by the surly reception we had received all
along from the river natives, whom I found the
most uncivil of any I ever encountered in any fron-
tier section. We slowed, but kept moving toward
the land, and while yet in midstream my Malays
sent out a hail to which those on the bank re-
sponded; and forthwith followed much and ani-
mated conversation between them, which seemed
to please my Malays increasingly as it continued.
I could not understand what information my
Malays imparted to the natives, but I seemed to
be the object of increasing curiosity, and, when I
went ashore, of marked attention. My guns ap-
peared to create great wonder, and I gathered
from my Malays' sign talk that it was the shooting
which had caused so much alarm in the settlement,
and that the natives wished to see the rifle work.
So I brought down a flying fox from out of a
nearby tree, and then shot it dead as it lay on the
ground with a .38 pocket revolver w7hich I took the

220 JIN ABU FINDS

precaution to always carry on my East Indian
hunting trips.

The amazement of that community, particu-
larly over the revolver, and the discussion around
the dead bat, lasted late into the night; and the
more they talked and smoked, the more firmly es-
tablished became the reputation of the white hun-
ter in that simple community. They cleared out
an end in one of the houses, to which I was es-
corted ; and here they brought me fruit and sago ;
and fish that once upon a time, long past, had been
fresh. Evidently I had made a hit, for some rea-
son or other. But I was not to be taken off my
guard by blandishments, so I kept my guns in
sight and my revolver in my belt; and I did not
sleep in the house as my hosts insisted, because I
remembered the pleasingly quiet and effective
method Malays have of putting out of the way
those whom they cease to love. At such a time, in
the still of night, they visit the abode of the erst-
while beloved, and, standing beneath his open
rattan floor, they prod inquiringly— and strenu-
ously—upward (after the manner of testing a
roasting fowl), until the warm blood-trickle down
the spear shaft signals that their dear enemy has
been found— and stuck.

I had no apprehension of trouble— my attitude
was simply the cautious one I always take when

AN ELEPHANT 221

among unknown and not dependably friendly
people of untravelled countries. If I am to make
mistakes, I much prefer them to be on the side of
safety; and then, too, I do not believe in putting
temptation in another 's way. So I had my belong-
ings in sight, and slept where there was but one
avenue of approach, for I never lost sight of the
pretty box I should be in if my disgruntled fol-
lowers together with some of the settlement natives
found it easy to desert me and carry off my guns.
But though I would not sleep in the house of
my host, I spent the evening under his roof with
much interest in the entertainment he offered me,
and some amusement at the airs given themselves
by my Malays, whose hearts I now made joyous
by handing over to them all the " too, too old "
fish, and much of the fruit. While I smoked the
villainous cigarettes my host offered me, and
which out of respect to his feelings I did not re-
fuse, the room filled with gaping natives— men
and women. They came silently, squatting in-
stantly and staring intently, the while chewing
betel-nut industriously. By and by, as the evening
wore on and curiosity wore off, some not unpleas-
ant, weird chant-like singing arose outside, accom-
panied by drums (two feet long by eight inches
in diameter) played upon with the fingers. Now
and again there came the long-sounding, not un-

222 JIN ABU FINDS

musical boom of the village drum— a hollowed
tree trunk, vigorously pounded by an aged person
whose office was considered an honored one. Later
there came metal gongs and liquid-noted wooden
affairs, patterned somewhat after the xylophone.
Here, as elsewhere, I always found Malayan music
soft, carrying to my ear melodious tones rather
than any tune, and always pleasing.

The house of my host, which may answer as a
type, was built square of bamboo, raised about eight
feet above the ground, and reached by a ladder,
pulled up at night. The floor of the single room was
made of rattan strung from side to side, leaving
open spaces, through which domestic refuse was
thrown, and housekeeping thus made easy. In
one corner sat a woman making baskets, of which
in a few simple patterns they are industrious
weavers ; in another corner was a kind of box upon
which the cooking was done in a brass pot of simple
yet most artistic form. Around the room hung
the crude, few belongings of the family, with com-
pleted baskets and the everlasting and ever-smell-
ing fish swinging from the rafters overhead. In
appearance the Sumatra Malays differ but very
little from those of the Malay Peninsula; what
difference there is, is in their favor. Some of
them affect a trouser sarong of pronounced peg-
top variety, and others wear rimless hats that ad-

AN ELEPHANT 223

vertise religious pilgrimages, but for the greater
part the natives of mainland and island are sim-
ilar in habit, dress and looks. The food of the
Sumatra Malay is rice, half or fully rotted fish,
and tapioca, which with gutta percha and rattan
constitute the native industries and articles of
export— though the business of it is practically in
the hands of the Chinese traders. As habitual
among uncivilized people, the women do all the
work. The men fish, using traps almost entirely,
and hunt small game with strategy and desultori-
ness; chiefly they smoke cigarettes of native to-
bacco rolled in leaf. The men also chew tobacco
and have the unprepossessing habit of pushing
the large cud under their upper lip, where it hangs
partially exposed as they talk. Both sexes of all
ages chew the betel-nut and a few blacken their
teeth, although the custom is not prevalent as in
Siam, where black teeth are the rule, not to say
the f ashioji. Another trait these peoples share in
common is their lack of hospitality to the wayfar-
ing stranger; time and again in both Siam and
Sumatra I rested at a native's house without being
offered even fruit, of which there was abundance—
an experience differing from any had with unciv-
ilized tribes among which I have elsewhere trav-
elled, especially the American Indians, who have
always divided their last shred of meat with me.

224 JIN ABU FINDS

There were, however, two features of Sumatran
life which more than made amends for other short-
comings—(1) absence of vermin on the human
kind; and (2) scarcity of dogs at the settlements;
and it is difficult to decide which brought the trav-
eller the greater relief. The Sumatrans are rather
modest, for Malays, and in some respects well man-
nered; for example, I observed that my men in
nearing a house invariably gave a loud and re-
peated ahem as a signal of some one approaching.

We had now come to the little river having its
source in the higher country we sought, and which,
though less than ten feet separated the up-standing
palms guarding its two banks, was fairly deep as
is characteristic of these Sumatran streams. Even
had it been wide enough, the current was so strong
as to make it impracticable to take on our sampan
farther, so here, with its philosophic Chinese crew,
we left it; while the four Malays and I and the
outfit loaded into the dug-out, which, under the
added weight, set so low as to leave only a couple
inches of freeboard.

They told us it was about forty miles to the head
waters, but our five paddles plied a full ten hours
each day of two, and must have sent the easy mov-
ing canoe through the water four miles the hour
for every one of the twenty, despite the current.
Gradually, as we advanced, the palms in the river

AN ELEPHANT 225

grew thinner until they finally disappeared, and
the banks, now more or less defined, and heavily
laden with undergrowth, drew nearer us. Even-
tually there seemed to be little or no current as
we made our way silently, and swiftly now, through
a dense, narrow lane, stretching crooked and dark
before us, with arching jungle overhead. Where
the lane opened out a bit and the stream's banks
grew higher, we came finally to its source ; and here
we cached the dug-out and distributed its contents
among us; for from now we were to be our own
pack animals, none but two-legged ones being
known to this section.

We had understood from the people at the mouth
of this little river that a day's travel from its head
waters would bring us to the house of a Malay who
was quite a tapioca farmer and to whom, in pass-
ing, came frequently other natives from the moun-
tain side of Sumatra. It really proved to be a
two and a half days' tramp, but the tiller of the
soil was so much more good-natured than those
we had been meeting, and gave me such an idea
of elephants galore, that it seemed like " getting
money from home." While we camped on his
place for a half day, journeying natives also told
of elephants towards the mountains. So I grew
to feel that elephants were to be had for the mere
going after them at any hour of the day, and found

226 JIN ABU FINDS

myself calculating how I could get all the ivory
into that already over- weighted canoe. I had been
told at Siak that the interior natives were un-
friendly to the coast natives as well as to for-
eigners, but I never saw evidence of it. True, my
Malays and those they met did not fall upon one
another's necks, but they were civil to each other;
while I personally found the interior natives more
approachable and decidedly better mannered than
those of the rivers. They did not strew my path
with roses, nor put themselves to any especial
pains to aid my search for elephant ; on the other
hand, they added no obstacles to those already
gathered. They had not before seen a white man,
but they did not stand staring at me for all time ;
they had lost no elephants, but were willing to
enter my employ if I made it worth while— as I
did, you may be sure ; as I had to, in order to get
packers.

Notwithstanding the reports— and reports are
one thing and game quite another, in the Far East
—as elsewhere— we searched the jungle four days,
with the brother of the tapioca farmer as guide,
for elephant signs, and found none sufficiently
fresh to give encouragement. Except for being
not quite so wet, the jungle here is something like
that of the Malay Peninsula. In the interior and
densest jungles of the Peninsula nearly every tree

AN ELEPHANT 227

is a trunk with limbs and foliage at the top only,
while in Sumatra one finds more trees in the jungle
with limbs below the very top, though that of the
Peninsula is the prevailing type. One rather pe-
culiar jungle freak I observed in Sumatra was a
tree supporting midway down its trunk a great
clump of earth from which were growing small
ferns and palms— a kind of aerial swinging gar-
den. Every tree trunk is loaded, sometimes liter-
ally hidden, with creepers and vines, cane and
rattan, hanging in great and manifold festoons
from tree to tree, so that the entire forest is linked
together. There is much less bamboo than in
Siam. Under foot is a network of smaller cane,
rattan and every kind of tough bush, springing
from earth covered with decaying vegetation and
sending out its dank fever-making odor; underly-
ing this, a muck into which I often sank to my
knees.

Finally, however, there came a day toward the
end of a week's travel when we fell on fresh
tracks and for six hours followed them into the
densest jungle yet encountered. Through a forest
of huge fern-like undergrowth, standing fully
eight feet high and so thick as to be impenetrable
to the eye, we squirmed and twisted; and now
there were no bird notes or monkey cries ; no sound
of any kind save the squashing of our feet in the

228 JIN ABU FINDS

thick mud, which appeared to grow deeper and
more yielding as we advanced. Nowhere were
delicate or beautiful ferns— coarseness on all sides.
Our common fern which grows to one and a half
feet in height, here I saw attaining to six feet,
with a stem over one inch thick. Now and again
we came upon thickets of bamboo and cane torn
up and broken down and scattered by the ele-
phants, that are prone in sheer wantonness to ex-
tensive destruction of this kind. Even when not
seeking the tender shoots at the bamboo tree-tops,
they will rip them up or ride them down, appar-
ently for pure joy of tearing things. I have seen
clumps of bamboo, having individual trees two to
four inches in diameter, pulled to pieces, and
broken and hurled all over the place, as though
they had been straws.

After hours of wilderness tracking such as this,
the apparently impossible happened, and the un-
dergrowth got denser and so difficult to get
through that knives were in frequent use to cut a
path. Darkness overtook us with elephant tracks
in view, but without sight or sound of the ele-
phants. There was a disposition in my party to
turn back, but I insisted on camping on the tracks ;
so camp we did.

In the night I was startled from sleep by a
crashing in the nearby jungle, which sounded as

AN ELEPHANT 229

if all the trees in Sumatra were being torn up and
simultaneously smashed to earth. In the midnight
jungle the noise seemed tremendous, as indeed it
was, and right at our very ears. I must confess
it was nerve-trying to lie quiet with that crashing
all around and no surety that the elephants making
it might not take a fancy to stalk in upon us, or
what minute the fancy might possess them. Nor
did it lend peace to the anxiety of the moment to
realize that one elephant, much less a herd, is only
now and again providentially stopped in his tracks
by powder and ball; for at the base of the trunk
and through the ear are the only places instantly
vulnerable to your rifle bullet; the elephant's brain
occupies a cavity not larger than ten by eleven
inches. To have an elephant break cover imme-
diately beside you is not so serious a matter on
hard open ground, where you may have a good
footing, trees, and a possibility of escape by
dodging ; but in a jungle where you can not make
your way except by constant use of knife, and sink
over your ankles in muck at every step, it is quite
another story, and one full of trouble on occasion.

No charge is more dangerous than that of the
wounded or infuriated elephant.

Needless to say, sleep was impossible while the
elephants ripped the jungle into pieces, and it was
too black to attempt hunting ; so we lay nervously,

230 JIN ABU FINDS

not to say fearfully, awaiting developments, given
now and then an extra start by shrill trumpeting
of the elephants, which, shortly before daybreak,
suddenly moved away— to leave all quiet once
again. If anything is more disconcerting than the
bugling of elephants in the still of the jungle night,
as they inclose you in a crashing circle, I have yet
to experience it.

We were astir at the first streak of dawn, you
may be sure, and within two hundred yards of our
camp a herd had practically surrounded us. There
was evidence in plenty of their visitation, in fact
the jungle in their wake looked as if a Kansas hur-
ricane had passed that way; canes were torn up,
rattan torn down, clumps of bamboo broken and
scattered.

Whether the elephants had got our wind in the
still jungle where no moving air was perceptible
to me, or whether it was habit, a great broad path
led through the jungle, making straight away from
where they had been feeding.

On these broad fresh tracks— which marked an
easy road, to the hunter's delight, for no under-
growth stays the elephant's huge bulk, and where
they go no jungle knife need follow after— we fol-
lowed for five hours before coming to any sign of
cessation in the elephants' travel. Then it seemed
that they had stopped for a while and scattered,

AN ELEPHANT 231

but careful hunting failed to disclose their where-
abouts ; and then again we came to a many-tracked
path where they appeared to have moved on. For
two hours more we plodded as hurriedly as our
packs would permit— for of course we always car-
ried our outfit with us, that we might camp where
we found ourselves. Even I had begun to feel, as
we followed on doggedly, that the elephants had
gone out of the country— for on occasion they
travel far and rapidly when disturbed— when I
caught sound as of a branch breaking. Stopping
on the instant, we listened intently. There was
the stifled breathing of wind-blown men, the suck-
ing mud as one sought to get firmer foothold, and
then above all came the sound of tearing branches
we had learned to know so well the night before.
It is almost impossible to closely estimate distance
in the jungle ; you can not see, and in the prevailing
hush sharp sounds come very near and loud.

There was a slight air stirring and I now moved
out from the tracks I had been following, that I
might work towards the elephants up wind. But
now we needed the jungle knife ; from tree to tree
we slowly advanced, cutting a way with utmost
care, even absurdly holding our breath, lest we
warn the huge creatures of our approach. By and
by it seemed as though the elephants must be
within stone's throw, for the noise was at hand

232 JIN ABU FINDS

and had so increased that it was hard to believe
fewer than a regiment were at work; but it was
impossible to see twenty feet ahead. Going for-
ward now with the care of a cat approaching a
mouse I came onto tracks, and taking these
crawled on my stomach, that I might move the
more cautiously, and at the same time by getting
low obtain something of a view ahead, however
short. Thus drawing nearer and nearer the ele-
phants, with every nerve alert for the experience
of this, to me, new game, I caught my breath as I
saw the end of an elephant trunk reach for and
then twist off a branch. I could see no more, only
about a foot of that trunk; I lay absolutely quiet-
not daring to move nearer— as I was at the time
not over fifteen to twenty feet away. Pretty soon
I made out the middle top of its back; but I lost
the trunk and had not yet found the head. With
absolute precision and in perfect silence I sought
a position which would disclose the head, for that
was the shot I wanted. Minutes were consumed
in these shifts, for I was making no sound what-
ever. There came an instant when I glimpsed the
bottom of an elephant's ear, and determined at
once to make a chance shot at where I might cal-
culate his head to be— for there was no knowing
what second they might be off— and with the
thought came a crash and a rush as of big bodies

AN ELEPHANT 233

hurtling through brush— and the elephants were
gone.

Consternation seized upon my party and they
showed inclination to give it up ; but although ele-
phants were new to me, hunting game was not, and
I knew perseverance to be the power to which
finally even ill-luck succumbs. So I started on
and the rest followed me. The tracks now
were scattered and led through the thickest kind
of jungle; most of the time I wallowed in mud
nearly up to my knees, unable to get any view
ahead. There were no leeches, but the mosquitoes
and sand flies and red ants made life miserable
enough. Nets were of no avail against the on-
slaught of the mosquitoes and the flies; while I
crawled over the muck, they buzzed about my head
in distracting chorus. And the steamy dank heat
made travel all but unendurable. It was no
child's play; I believe it seemed less endurable
than the privations of Arctic hunting. But it is
all in the game ; and I wanted an elephant.

At last, after interminable wallowing, again I
heard the elephants. It was impossible to work
to leeward, as no perceptible wind was stirring for
guidance. I was carrying my 50-calibre half mag-
azine and had given my double 12-bore to one of
my Malays whom I now motioned to follow me.
We were still in the densest jungle, sinking over

234 JIN ABU FINDS

our ankles in mud at every step. Crawling on
hands and knees for several hundred yards, I came
finally to where I could dimly distinguish the dark
legs of several elephants, which seemed to be stand-
ing on higher ground than we ; but it was impos-
sible to see clearly enough through the jungle to
definitely locate them. My only course was to
close in, so I continued crawling, in the hope of
getting in position for a shot ; but again they moved
off. Whether they had got our wind I can not say,
though the sense of smell in the elephant is very
highly developed. Lying there on my stomach,
with head on the mud in an effort to peer
through the bushes and ferns, I could hear them
moving in the determined, persistent manner
which means they are leaving and not feeding;
then I saw the bushes give and sway, and the
shadow of huge dark objects crossing directly
ahead of me. I could distinguish absolutely
nothing ; only I could see the place where agitated
undergrowth told of great bodies pushing a way
through the jungle not over twenty feet from
me. There wasn't one chance in a hundred of my
scoring on the invisible target, but in sheer des-
peration I determined to take that one, and without
looking around I motioned my Malay— whom in
my earnest stalk I had not thought of and supposed
to be behind me, following— to give me the 12-

AN ELEPHANT 235

bore; on getting no response, I turned my head
and found I was quite alone. Then, with a hasty
fervent wish that Providence might guide the soft-
nose bullets, I shot twice rapidly into the bulging,
snapping bushes— the first and only time in my
hunting career that I ever pulled trigger without
seeing my mark. With the reports of my rifle
there came such a smashing of things as made that
of the night performance sound like the faintest
echo. The entire jungle appeared to be toppling
on me; on apparently all sides were the swaying
and crashing of bushes and the squashing of the
great feet as they rushed along through the muck.
As I crouched with my feet mired it was no com-
forting thought that should the elephants come
my way my chances of being trampled into the
mud were most excellent. But they went on with-
out my getting a view of them, and when they had
passed I extricated myself from the mud to find
the jungle round me literally plowed up, and in
one place a little splotch of blood to show that at
least luck had favored me in the direction of my
shot.

Returning on my back tracks, I found my
party several hundred yards from the scene of
action, each beside a tree. Of course expostulation
was useless. I could not talk to them in their own
tongue, and they did not understand mine. Ma-

236 JIN ABU FINDS

lays do not care for this kind of hunting. I in-
duced them, however, to go forward to where I had
shot, and for a while we tried to track the blood.
But the elephants were going straight and fast,
and the blood trail lasted only a short time; and
then we camped. That night I was given to under-
stand that our guide would turn back the next
morning, and that my Malays would not go without
him. It is rather hopeless to attempt persuasion
in a language of which you know only a few words ;
and all the sign talk I could bring to bear upon the
situation was unequal to the emergency. Threats,
cajolery, promises of presents— nothing availed;
and the next morning we turned our faces toward
the place from which we had set forth about a week
before.

On the second day of our return journey we
found fresh tracks of two old elephants and a
young one, and these we trailed for four hours,
seeing plenty of old signs and plenty of new ones.
But when the tracks indicated that the elephants
had increased their pace, my party would go no
farther, and again we turned back. Two days
later we met a journeying native who had a house
near by, and who said he knew of elephants, to
which he promised to take me if I would give him
as a present my rifle (the 50) in addition to wages.
My own Malays bore an attitude of distinct disap-

AN ELEPHANT 237

proval, but I rather liked the looks of the new-
comer and decided to take a chance with him. So
leaving my party, which was to meet me at the
tapioca farmer's house, I shouldered my pack and
two guns and set out with the stranger, who carried
a somewhat antique muzzle loader. It was a walk
of a few hours before we reached a little hut on
stilts, where we camped for the night with what I
assumed to be his son and his son's wife and chil-
dren. My new guide, who made me know his name
was Jin Abu, seemed to be a good-natured old chap,
with a deal of pride in his gun, and a multicolored
turban, twisted into a horn, which set on one side
of his head and gave a rakish suggestion incon-
gruous with the remainder of his scant costume.
He appeared to be really concerned in my hunt-
ing, and we held long conversations, during which
neither of us understood a word the other said. But
I think we each got the other's spirit; it is remark-
able how, under conditions where primal instinct
rules, one senses what one can not learn through
speech. All the family made a great effort to ad-
minister to my material wants, and when I gave
Jin a pocket knife and the son's wife a silver tical
which I had used as a button on my coat, unmis-
takable delight reigned in that Malay household.
I made out during the course of the evening's
confab that elephants were in the vicinity, and

238 JIN ABU FINDS

starting at sunrise the next morning Jin and I
hunted two days, early and late, seeing abundant
tracks, and once or twice hearing elephant, but on
each occasion being unsuccessful in our attempt
to approach them. All the time, though very hard
going in heavy rain, and under disappointing
stalks, Jin Abu maintained his good humor and
his running conversation. He was something of a
hunter, too, and I enjoyed my days with him as I
did no others in Sumatra. There were evidently
elephants in the country, for every day we saw
signs. Once, too, I saw a tiger cat, beautifully
marked, somewhat like that majestic cat, the great
" stripes," and perhaps of twenty pounds weight.
In this higher country were deer, of which I also
saw several, but of course I did not shoot; we
were after bigger game. We heard no more of the
wa wa with its pitiful plaint, but saw a good-sized
bird of a grouse species, and a racket-tailed magpie
of attractive appearance.

We had been following some rather fresh tracks
all the morning of the fourth day, when we came
up with a herd of elephants, though as usual the
thick, high jungle prevented our viewing them.
We crawled for quite a distance through the under-
growth, seeking to close up, when, each of us intent
upon his own stalk, we became separated, at just
what point I know not, for I had gone a long way

AN ELEPHANT 239

before I discovered myself alone. Sneaking for-
ward as swiftly as possible, anc). as cautiously, I
wormed my way towards where I could hear the
breaking branches. I had just reached the edge
of a comparatively open piece of jungle, on the
other side of which I could see indistinctly several
elephants, when there came a report followed by a
tremendous crashing, and then suddenly from out
this space, and well to my left front, came Jin
scrambling through the mud, minus that prideful
turban, minus gun, and running for very dear life
straight for the trees at the right of this oasis.
After him, not over twenty-five feet away, at a
gait that resembled pacing, charged an elephant
with head held high and trunk tightly curled (not
stretched aloft like a broom handle as often I have
seen written), and brushing aside the jungle
growth as though it were so much grass. As the
elephant broke from the jungle on my left, I gave
it both barrels of the 12-bore in back of the shoulder
just as its foreleg came forward, which decidedly
staggered me, but seemed to have little effect on
the elephant, except that it trumpeted shrilly.
Dropping the 12-bore, as there was no time to load
it, especially with one of the ejectors out of shape,
and swinging my 50 from my shoulder, where on a
strap I had carried it since the day when my Malay
deserted me, I sent a ball into the elephant's ear

240 JIN ABU FINDS

as he crossed in front of me, and dropped him dead.

Meantime Jin had disappeared in the jungle,
but shortly afterwards turned up very much
winded and very grateful.

I found a very slight wound over the temple
where Jin's ball had hit. Both of my 12-bore bul-
lets had gone home, and my 50 went clean through
the elephant's head, in one ear and out the other
side of the temple. The elephant measured nine
feet four inches at the shoulder, with tusks eighteen
inches in length.

It was not a record trophy, but I was made
happy by getting it ; and so was Jin Abu.

CHAPTER X
UDA PRANG-JUNGLE HUNTER

UDA PRANG said I should not get a rhino
up Kampar River way; and he came uncom-
fortably close to telling the truth— for the rhino
nearly got me.

Uda always told the truth. How that came to
be is a story by itself; and worth the telling, as you
shall judge. It seems that Uda was really an
Achenese, as those natives in the extreme north-
western end of Sumatra are called, and during one
of the conflicts which the Dutch troops and the
Achenese have been having with more or less fre-
quency now for a generation or so, Uda's father
was killed, his little house destroyed, and Uda and
his mother just escaped into the jungle with their
lives. Here they remained in hiding for some
days, living on roots and wild fruit, secure in the
knowledge that no Dutchmen would follow into the
untracked tropical wilderness. Gradually they
worked south and toward the east shore, and one
day, skirting the jungle edge, Uda spied an English
coast-wise steamer lying at anchor and discharg-
ing her cargo into a small fleet of sampans which

16 241

242 UDA PRANG

the natives and some Chinamen pulled ashore, and
then, after unloading, pulled back again for
another load. It was an easy matter for Uda and
his mother to be taken on a sampan out to the little
steamer, and once there to make friends with the
crew of Peninsular Malays, as well as with the Eu-
ropean petty officers that had no fear of the Dutch
in their hearts. The mother was dropped a few
days after at a port down the coast, where kin
folks of her late husband resided; but Uda,
who was having his first experience aboard ship,
had become rather fascinated by the alternative
periods of hardest toil and uttermost ease, which
make up the life of the East Indian coast-wise
sailorman. The excitement of discharging cargo,
although accompanied by such yelling; especially
the fun of swimming cattle ashore; the complete
indolence between ports, when they stretched out
on deck in luxurious ease, to smoke or to play or
to gamble— all invited him irresistibly. So he
asked for and received a berth.

It so happened that this little British steamer
had a very religious Liverpool first-mate, who,
when not busy with the cargo at port, or lambast-
ing Uda for galley pilfering, or for lying— a qual-
ity Uda shared in common with the average un-
tutored Sumatra native— was singing hymns
through his nose over the rail, or solemnly and stol-

UDA PRANG.
Who served successfully both his God and Mammon.

JUNGLE HUNTER 243

idly laboring to win Uda over from the faith of
Mohammed. Now Uda was only a boy in his
teens, but he was a clever youngster, and it was not
long before it dawned upon him that he always fed
better on the days when the Church of England
prevailed than on the days when rope-ending occu-
pied the otherwise unemployed time of the severe
sailor-missionary. So it followed naturally in due
course that Uda " professed Christianity," accept-
ing the faith in exchange for an extra portion of
rice and currie, a brass-backed comb and two un-
dershirts of doubtful ancestry, which the pious,
and now much elated first-mate gave him. The
articles of the new faith provided, that in addition
to feeling the strong right arm of the first-mate,
Uda's share of rice and currie was to be greatly
reduced every time he broke the eighth and ninth
Commandments. As currie and rice are meat and
drink to the Malayan, it came about that Uda grew
gradually out of the habit of lying and into the
habit of truthfulness; and by the time he had
reached manhood, the habit had become fixed.

I fell across Uda through the good offices of Jin
Abu, on returning from our successful elephant
hunt. With a naked kiddie prattling around, he
was clearing up a piece of rattan, and I camped
nearby for a few days, while Jin Abu told him of
our hunting experience after elephant, and of my

244 UDA PRANG

disappointment in not having found rhinoceros
as well as elephant. Uda was quite a linguist, evi-
dently the result of his several years' service on the
coasting steamers. He spoke half English in de-
liberate fashion, and some Dutch, when he was
feeling particularly joyous— though he confessed
to me one day on the Indragiri River that he was
not so proud of his Dutch. His English was not
always to be relied on— but at least it was under-
standable and proved a great boon to me, who had
been confined to sign language for weeks. If Uda
was not a fluent talker, he was at all events an eco-
nomical one, for a single story usually lasted the
night; not that the tale was intricate— but Uda
enjoyed the telling. He seemed to have quite an
opinion of himself as a hunter, and later, whenever
he and I together encountered natives, he was good
enough to bracket us with much flourishing of
hands and an ornate preamble in the soft, tuneful
Malay. He informed me that he had hunted at
various times in Java and Borneo, and that if I
would wait until he had harvested his little crop
he would go with me on my proposed trip for rhino.
Uda was for ascending some of the rivers which
bear to the south and westward from the Siak ; but
I had seen all that part of Sumatra I cared to, and
was rather set on making my way to the sections
divided by the Kampar and the Indragiri rivers,

JUNGLE HUNTER 245

which are south of the Siak, and have their source
well over toward the western coast of the island,
whence they make their way not quite so deviously
as the Siak, east into the China Sea. This was a
section outside of Uda's ken, and, like all the Far
Eastern coast and river-living people, he saw
nothing but failure in an attempt to penetrate a
country which was without beaten path. I had no
definite information about the district, nor could I
find native or Dutchman who had visited it; but
there seemed to be a tradition that so far as rhinoc-
eros were concerned, it was a land of plenty. So
I determined to go despite the fact that Uda
thought little of it and prophesied failure.

This was all talked out, over and over, labor-
iously between Uda and me, and translated by him
to Jin Abu, who still lingered with us, and took
great interest in the discussion. It occupied sev-
eral nights to talk it out, for in the day time we
paddled, Uda sticking to his single dug-out, which
he was taking down the river to cache ; and when
we stopped paddling, the mosquitoes demanded a
good share of our time and attention. Finally the
plan settled upon was that we should make our
way down the river— discharging my present party
at the point where I had engaged them— to the
mouth of the Siak, where Uda was well acquainted,
and where we should hire boats and outfit for the

246 UDA PEANG

trip down the coast to the Kampar River, which
we were first to try. Jin Abu wanted very much
to go with us, but said he could not remain as long
away from his rattan and fishing ; so we took leave
of him a little way below where we had first found
Uda— I with genuine regret— for Jin had been
faithful and companionable, despite our inter-
course being restricted largely to sign talk, and I
had grown to esteem and to like him, as I did no
other native in the Far East.

We made rather rough weather of it coasting
from the mouth of the Siak to the Kampar in the
prau engaged for the trip. The honest truth is
that there were times when I wondered if we
should get anywhere beyond the China Sea; for,
though the boat proved surprisingly seaworthy,
the rag we had for a sail, with its foot standing six
feet above the bottom of the boat, was blown into
ribbons ; and the long, narrow blade of the Malay
paddle is not a useful implement on the open sea.
But it was all we had; and so when the sail went
by the board, as it soon did after we got under way,
the crew of three and Uda and I lay our backs to
the work of paddling for most of the two nights
and a day of the over-long time it took us to reach
the mouth of the river.

The prau is a distinctly Malayan craft, with
high, sharp bow, and stern so finely drawn as to

JUNGLE HUNTER 247

leave barely more than sitting room for the helms-
men, in a total boat length of twenty feet. It has
by far the best lines of Malayan boats, and is as
graceful and speedy as any of the very graceful
and speedy boats in Far Eastern waters. It is the
craft in which Malay pirates, of a time not so long
gone, were accustomed to steal out, from the many
indentations of their shore-line, upon the unsus-
pecting and sluggish-moving coaster; it was the
troop ship of the old days when feuds carried a
Malay chief and his fighting crew from one river
to another. It is fast under its square sail, and
will come safely through pretty roughish going.
A few of these boats are used at Singapore as
passenger carriers from wharf to steamer, and
here they are pulled (or rather pushed) by oars
and manned by Tamils ; but on the rivers of Malay
and of Sumatra the prau, when not under sail, is
invariably paddled.

The crew of our prau knew slightly more about
the Kampar River than did Uda and I. They
were to land us at a little settlement near its
mouth, beyond which they knew nothing ; and here
we were to organize our party for a rhino hunt in
the up-river country.

The limited knowledge of natives concerning the
country immediately surrounding them I have
always noted on my various ventures into wilder-

248 UDA PRANG

ness lands, of the Par North as well as of the Far
East. Beyond the paths they have made or which
their fathers trod, they know nothing ; though they
do not confess it. Native imagination, however,
is as active as their knowledge is limited, and em-
barrassment and confusion await the visiting ad-
venturer who has not learned by experience how
little dependence may be placed on the alleged in-
formation given under such conditions.

We found no Dutch at this little river settle-
ment, Polloe Lawan by name, I think, though I find
myself uncertain about names on these rivers, and
having lost my notebook in an upset on the river
(along with some trophies and many films), I am
unable to reinforce my memory.

The Dutch, in fact, have not made much of their
opportunities along the Sumatra coast and prac-
tically nothing in the interior; quite a different
story from Java, which is a veritable and flourish-
ing garden. Apparently they are satisfied with
scattered posts near the coast, on a few of the main
rivers, where paternal interest chiefly manifests
itself to the natives in taxation upon outgoing
rattan and incoming sarong stuffs. As a result
there has been but slight development of Sumatra.
The natives gather a little rattan and grow a little
of the plant from which tapioca is made. These
constitute their total of industries. Beyond this,

JUNGLE HUNTER 249

they fish, mostly by means of large bamboo traps
set along the river banks; but there is no fishing
for export, and often not enough to supply the
local wants— though this is more from lack of
fishing than lack of fish. Not every native has
the right or the affluence to own such a trap,
therefore in some districts chosen individuals at
intervals along the river are given exclusive
rights— a permission that entails the obligation to
sell as much of the fish caught as the natives of
that particular locality may require. Except for
the tapioca-producing root, which tastes somewhat
like sweet potato, though not nearly so sweet, there
is no cultivation of soil by the native ; and there is
no meat eating. Rice and fish are the staple sup-
plies ; and there is fruit growing wild for whoever
will come and take it. The few Chinese traders
do rather handsomely, for they pay the native
about half what he could get if he opened direct
trade with the outside world. Some day a future
may open for industrial Sumatra, but it will not
be by any effort of the Malays, or because of the
present policy of the Dutch. And when develop-
ment does come to this East India island, it will be
through the work of plodding John Chinaman,
who, though damned at every hand, yet— patient,
stolid, dependable— remains the industrial back-
bone of Siam and of the Malay Archipelago. Eng-

250 UDA PRANG

land could have made no headway in the Malay
Peninsula without him, and the United States will
find him equally essential to the development of
the Philippines— Congress to the contrary not-
withstanding.

There was no sultan at the settlement on the
Kampar to use up my time in vanity-satisfying au-
diences, or delay my preparation by official red
tape; but I did find a picturesque, fine-looking
native old gentleman, who, though somewhat pom-
pous, and by way of having an exalted idea of his
importance on the river, was the essence of good
humor, and exceedingly kind to me. His appear-
ance, I must confess, did not harmonize with his
dignified demeanor. He was not more than com-
fortably rounded, yet had a most pronounced bay-
window of a stomach, in which he appeared to take
satisfaction. Whenever he stood to receive me, he
leaned back at such an angle as to leave little vis-
ible save this ornament thrust on high, so that,
approaching head on, you beheld bare legs and feet
apparently growing directly out of the stomach,
over the far horizon of which peeped the little
round crown of the rimless hat he wore. It was
an irresistible combination of intended dignity of
mien and actual comicality of appearance ; so irre-
sistible, in fact, that I begged Uda to ask him to
remain seated when he received me, because I felt

JUNGLE HUNTER 251

abashed in the presence of a standing potentate so
distinguished. Thereafter my portly host oblig-
ingly, though, I felt sure, regretfully sat down,
thus somewhat concealing the prideful feature of
his anatomy, which had come so near to disturbing
the entente cordiale between us. It must take
quite a lot of rice and fish and a number of years
to develop a bay-window in Sumatra ; that is why,
I suppose, my good-natured native friend had such
frank pleasure in the completed product.

The old gentleman had also quite a retinue of
kris and spear and betel-nut bearers ; but, next to
the bay-window, the joy of the old gentleman's
heart was his son, who had made a trip to Singa-
pore several years before my arrival, and had ever
since shone preeminently in the country there-
abouts on the glory of that visit. He was about
twenty or a few years older, with excellent fea-
tures, and a white jacket bearing silver buttons
which he had ingeniously manufactured from
pieces of coin acquired on that memorable trip.
But what he valued most, and invariably wore on
special occasions, was a pair of patent leather
shoes from which he had cut all the leather save
just the toe, thus making a pair of slipper-like
shoes whose rat-tat-tat of heel, as he slapped along,
sounded strangely aggressive among the bare-
footed, noiseless steps of all the others. The son
proved to be as kind to me as the father.

252 UDA PRANG

In the three days I stayed at the settlement out-
fitting, I found little to differentiate these from
other natives of the Malayan islands. They look
more or less alike; affect about the same kind of
costume, sarongs chiefly, though trousers of local
cut and jackets are also worn largely, except on
the Peninsula, where they are used only by gov-
ernment servants, or by hunting natives in the jun-
gle, to protect their bodies from the thorns. So
far as Sumatra is concerned, individual tastes are
revealed in the headgear, which may be simply the
rimless cap, a turban covering the head com-
pletely, or binding the head to leave the top ex-
posed, or fashioned into projecting horns at front
or side of head ; or they may have no head cover-
ing whatever. When they have been to Mecca,
the rimless cap is white, and ever after invariably
worn; for the pilgrim to that holy shrine is the
envy of all beholders less travelled, and he misses
no opportunity to advertise his fortunes, as the
little white caps are very conspicuous. Uda
Prang owned such a cap; but, professing Chris-
tianity, I never saw him* wear it except deep in
the jungle— and there it never left his head, day
or night. Those who have not been to Mecca wear
caps of a somewhat similar shape, but of dark col-
ored stuffs; but the strongest desire to earn the
right to wear the white cap rules in every Malay,

JUNGLE HUKTBE 253

and many literally sell themselves into bondage,
willing to spend remaining years of their lives pay-
ing back the cost, that they may get the money to
make this pilgrimage. Should the pilgrim die en
route, he is saved, according to the belief ; for the
faithful one who loaned the money— I find no pro-
vision, material or spiritual.

The little white cap always comes high.

All the natives with whom I came in contact, I
found most earnest in their devotions and punctil-
ious in living up to the demands of their religion.
They drink no liquor, eat no meat of which they
have not cut the throat, and abhor bacon and dogs.
They will not carry a basket in which there is
bacon, nor permit a dog to touch them. This rids
the country of the mongrel curs, the pariahs, with
which Siam is overrun, because Buddha forbids
the killing of any animal. I f ound it a distinctly
pleasant change.

When they live on the river banks, in their
houses built on stilts, the natives are clean; the
houses are all of the same pattern, as are the pots
for boiling rice, and the bamboo baskets, but here
and there a crude earthenware bowl shows lines
that suggest India. In the settlements practically
all Malays carry the kris; in town it becomes a
timbuk lada, and in the jungle they add the parang,
which is a knife with a short handle and an eight-

254 UDA PEANG

een-inch blade, fashioned at the point and deco-
rated according to the whim of the maker.

I had not nearly the difficulty in organizing a
party here as elsewhere in Sumatra, and none
whatever in securing a sampan and a four-paddle
dug-out. Two Chinamen manned the sampan
and carried the bulk of provisions, which consisted
chiefly of rice, dried fish and coffee, while three
natives and Uda comprised the crew of the canoe.
Two of my natives brought along some kind of
rifle, not known to me, which they had picked up
in trade from a coaster ; Uda had an old Martini,
and my armory included a .50 half magazine and
a double 12-bore. No one at the settlement could
give us specific information concerning the up-
country rhinoceros. We could find no one who
had hunted the country, or seen tracks, or talked
with any man that had. It seemed to be entirely
a matter of tradition that rhinoceros lived in that
country, yet all the natives, even my well meaning
old friend, glibly assured us that up the river three
or four days we should find plenty of rhino. Na-
tives have a casual way of misinforming the
adventurer, and the Europeans I found in the Far
East appear to have acquired a somewhat similar
habit. It's one of those things the hunter should
accept along with fever and leeches, as of the
handicaps indigenous to the country.

JUNGLE HUNTER 255

In a week's trip up the Kampar we passed sev-
eral little settlements, usually huddled at the mouth
of a small river, of which there were a great many ;
and here and there we saw paths extending back
into the jungle to other little settlements from
three to five miles inland ; and now and again came
upon a partial clearing where had been planted a
small patch of padi. Other than these threads of
trails hacked out of the jungle, nowhere are there
roads leading inland, for the country is swamp-
like for the greater part, and mostly the people
catch fish, which, with the fruit, serves as their
main sustenance. Lining the rivers, whether they
narrow or broaden, are great stiff spears, standing
out of the water from six to seven feet, with palm-
like leaves, which maintain a width of two inches
except at the end, where they become a sharp,
strong point. Other palms along the banks bear
a poisonous fruit as large as a small watermelon,
and are shunned alike by men and birds.

As we paddled along, every now and again one
of my men broke out in a most doleful, dirgelike
wail, which rather disturbed my peace until Uda
assured me he was singing his prayers. Later we
passed canoes with several paddlers singing
prayers together; and once, at one of the settle-
ments, two men sang prayers and six others joined
them to an accompaniment of heavy drums. We

256 UDA PRANG

happened to camp at this place and the devotions
kept up until late into the night.

It was our scheme to go up the Kampar for some
distance, eventually following to its source one of
the branch streams, and from there to start inland.
It was possible quite frequently to land and hunt.
Often we heard of elephants, sometimes we saw
their tracks; and, as we got farther up river we
heard also of rhinoceros. Frequently we saw deer,
which were fairly plentiful in the higher reaches
of country, but I never shot, because I did not
require the meat, and I could not spare space for
such trophies in my boats. At practically every
settlement, especially where deer abounded, we
heard of tiger and leopard. But as a whole, it did
not seem to me much of a game country. Certainly
I should never make another trip to that island
only for hunting.

The Kampar and the Indragiri rivers are typical
of Sumatra— low, sometimes indistinguishable
banks, covered with heavy jungle, dense palm-
spear growth reaching ten to fifteen feet out
towards the middle of the stream. As we prog-
ressed toward headwaters and on to the smaller
rivers, the growth continued as dense, though not
extending so far from the banks. Here, as on the
Siak, and its tributaries, we heard the mournful
scale of the wa wa monkey, the loud single note of

TIED UP IN THE JUNGLE STREAM FOR NOON MEAL.

ALONG THE KAMPAR, TYPICAL OF SUMATRA RIVERS.

JUNGLE HUNTER 257

the poot-poot bird, and the hoarse croaking of the
herons in the evening. There was no twilight.
The sun set at six, and half an hour later it was
dark. The water was of a deep garnet color,
sometimes in the larger river so deep as to be
almost black, and a mirror that reflected the palms
and our paddles as we moved over its surface.
Occasionally as we paddled along, usually at about
three miles an hour, we met a low native canoe, with
paddlers crouching bow and stern, using the nar-
row, long-pointed blade of the Malay paddle with
silent powerful stroke ; but these were few and far
between. There was little travel on the river, and
even at the settlements were sometimes not more
than three or four, never to exceed a dozen, men.
Thus working our way toward the interior, natives
became scarcer, and after a couple of weeks disap-
peared entirely.

Meantime I had found Uda a source unfailing
of entertainment and interest. I wish I could re-
count the marvellous tales he unwound for my
benefit. I rather encouraged him, for he was pic-
turesque, and it suited my purpose to size him up
before we got upon the more serious business of
hunting in the jungle. Perhaps the most fre-
quently recurring theme of Uda's life story was his
intrepid conduct in the face of wounded and
fiercely charging wild beasts, and his contempt for

258 UDA PRANG

the natives, whom he characterized as goats.
Uda's nerve was to be tested sooner than he im-
agined, and with results not to his credit.

We had branched into two or three different
rivers, always bearing to the south by west, and
finally got on one about fifteen feet in width, some-
what more crooked than the rule, but rather clearer
of the usual spearlike palm growth extending from
the banks. I had been on the outlook for tapir
since we left the last settlement, for, though no
native had spoken of them, I felt convinced they
must be in such country. All along, it had been
my habit to take position in the bow of the canoe
with rifle whenever we came to a section which, in
my eyes, appeared particularly gamy, or upon a
stretch of tortuous river. Some days we would
go along thus for hours, with me sitting in the
bow, rifle across my knees, while back of me the
men bent to their silent paddling and singing their
prayers. It struck me as curious, not to say
amusing, that whenever I took my place in the bow
with rifle, the men broke out in prayer singing.
Early in the experience I stopped them singing
aloud, but I could never still them entirely. And
so we moved swiftly and quietly along, the paddles
keeping silent rhythm to the persistent prayerful
humming. Day after day passed thus, with
scarcely a word spoken, for I impressed upon Uda

JUNGLE HUNTER 259

my desire to make fast headway, and promised
good presents to the men if they worked diligently ;
so there was little conversation during the paddling
hours, which were from daylight to sunset, except
on the more or less frequent occasions when we had
to stop and clear the stream of fallen trees, or cut
a way through the entangling roots of a great stump
that barred our passage. At such times I was
much taken with the skill of the Malays in handling
the parang and with the speed and accuracy and
force of their strokes.

Thus one afternoon late we were paddling up
stream, with me in the bow, rifle in hand, as usual,
when, as we rounded a bend in the river, I sighted
a tapir about fifty yards ahead. It was just disap-
pearing into the palms at the river bank as I took
a snap shot at its hind quarter— all that was to be
seen when I got my rifle to shoulder. On the re-
port, the canoe stopped so suddenly that I, sitting
loosely, went over backwards on top of one of the
natives, who shunted against another, and a sudden
panic resulted which came very near upsetting the
craft. Eighting myself, I was a bit surprised to
notice that my men, including the intrepid Uda,
were obviously in a greatly perturbed state of
mind. And I was at a loss to know why, until I
urged Uda to send the canoe on so I could land
and track the tapir. It appears that, having seen

260 UDA PRANG

nothing, the sudden report of my rifle, breaking
in upon their prayer crooning, had startled them,
and at the same time aroused that dread of the in-
tangible which I have found to possess all simple
peoples, from the arctics to the tropics, to a fear-
some degree. They refused to paddle on ; in fact,
there was a movement to swing the canoe back,
which I stopped peremptorily; and then I up-
braided Uda, who much annoyed me by rather
leaning with the natives than with me, in language
with which he had no doubt become familiar on
board the coasting steamer. Every man of my
crew had picked up his parang, and it did look for
a few moments a bit more like a war than a pad-
dling party; meantime the canoe drifted back, held
head on, however, by Uda, who kept to his paddle
in the stern. Finally Uda pulled himself together,
and began talking to the crew, and after a few mo-
ments they put down their knives and took up pad-
dles again. It is remarkable how craven-hearted
the deep-seated dread of the unknown will make
natives of the wilds; and yet again how desper-
ately brave they will be where the conditions are
usual and the surroundings familiar.

Wallowing through mud knee deep, I found the
tapir inland several hundred yards on three legs,
and succeeded, after about an hour's stalking, in
bringing it down. It is an ugly, pig-like looking

JUNGLE HUNTER 261

thing of no sport-giving qualities, and I only shot
because, being somewhat nocturnal in its habits, it
is not frequently seen, and I wanted to make a
near study of its differentiation from the South
American type. In a few words this may be
summed up; the Malay type has a whitish back,
longer snout and flat head crown, as compared with
the Brazilian tapir, which is all black, has almost
no snout, and the head crown elevated. I took the
forefeet of my tapir, but subsequently lost them,
with other more valuable trophies, when we upset,
as we did several times. I had much difficulty in
working my way out to the river point where I had
landed, and when I did, the canoe was not in sight ;
and in the muck and mud of the jungle— for I had
got into a very swampy piece of it— it took me
nearly three hours to wallow around to a bend
lower on the river, by which time it was dark.
Finally, however, I raised an answer to my shouts
from the sampan, which the Chinamen, indifferent
to wild beasts of the jungle as to the cares of the
world, and with no dread of the mysterious, had
brought in close to the bank and tied to a palm.
The canoe I finally discovered a little farther down
stream, the men still apparently uneasy. They
were a full mile below where I had got out, and I
might have walked all night but for the Chinamen.
Before turning in that night, on the sampan,

262 UDA PRANG

where I slept when we did not camp ashore, I con-
gratulated Uda Prang on the courage he had shown
that afternoon, and told him of my delight in
having a jungle hunter of such prowess in my
party.

Next morning we took up our course again. I
must say the river travel had become very monot-
onous—really oppressive. All the time there was
the same scene— palms and a dense jungle lining
the banks, with trees here and there showing their
tops in the background. Now and again we saw
some monkeys with long and short tails, and heard
the rasping screech of a hornbill, or the croak of a
heron ; now and again a crocodile with baleful eye
sunk from sight as we neared. At rare intervals
a lonely bird sent out a few notes. Otherwise there
was only the squeak of the sampan oars following
us, and the men in the canoe now humming, now
softly singing, as they drew their paddles through
the water. Overhead, just about sunset, passed
every afternoon great flocks of fruit bats, which
seemed always to be going west. The stream here
narrowed considerably, and after three days tow-
ing the sampan, because there was not width
enough to use the oars, we came at length one after-
noon to the headwaters.

As there was no interior settlement of which we
knew in the direction we were going, we made a

JUNGLE HUNTER 263

camp inland about ten miles, where I stationed the
Chinamen, one of the Malays* and the provisions,
while Uda, two of the natives and I went after
rhino. My scheme was to use this camp as a sup-
ply station, making from it trips of three to four
days' duration, until I had worked over all the sur-
rounding territory, and then to reestablish the sup-
ply camp, again and again, until I got what I
sought. I found here the most attractive country
I had hunted in Sumatra, though that is not saying
a great deal, for, speaking generally, it was the
same dense jungle as elsewhere, only here were
upland stretches of comparative openness and dry-
ness. It was a delight to come out of the dark,
cheerless jungle into the sunshine, hot as it was,
where the birds were calling. There was the
mynah bird, rather effectively marked in black and
yellow, which I was told can be taught to talk if
taken when young; and there was another bird
about the size of a pigeon, with black plumage and
forked tail, which, in fairly plentiful numbers, zig-
zagged across the heavens, uttering one or two not
unmusical notes.

One of the most attractive birds I saw was a bril-
liant kingfisher; and one of those I did not see
was the jungle fowl, of which I had heard, but
which, I understand from good authority, is not
to be found in Sumatra. Once in a while I saw

264 UDA PRANG

a few green doves of the variety so common and
plentiful in Siam. There were many birds, in-
deed, of varying though not brilliant plumage ; and
monkeys of all sizes, and of all hues of countenance.
Of the barking deer there were also many, and now
and then I saw the tiny mouse deer, with its ex-
quisitely dainty lines, the entire animal less than
eighteen inches in height. Of wild pig tracks
there were many. It was a great relief from
tramping through the mud and wet clinging un-
dergrowth of the dismal jungle.

Jungle hunting is so different from that of the
uplands or of the mountains ; it is so monotonous,
so uneventful. Only at the finish, when you are
immediately before your game, and not always
then, is there any stalking. There is no woodcraft.
You simply wallow in mud, cutting a way through
dense undergrowth impenetrable to the eye, some-
times crawling through mud holes up to your knees.
Never is there opportunity of a view ahead, as to
the lie of the land or the probable course of the
game. You may only plod on, following the
tracks, hopeful that the next mud hole may show
fresh spoor. And the gloom of the interior prim-
eval soundless jungle is most depressing.

Moving our main camp farther into the interior
several times, thus to give us wider range from our
base of supplies, we had covered quite an area and

JUNGLE HUNTER 265

hunted diligently every day of eight before we found
a section which gave indication of rhinoceros. Most
of those eight days it had rained, and the 8x12
canvas fly I carried came in very handy to save
provisions and protect our heads at night from the
almost incessant downpour. Several times I saw
the pugs of leopard, and one day, as, under a gen-
erous shade-giving bush, I sat writing in my note
book, while the main camp was being moved, I
had the unusual good fortune to see the end of a
stalk by a black leopard upon a barking deer. I
could easily have got a snap shot had my camera
been at hand instead of in its tin box, journeying
toward the new camp site, about ten miles away.
While I wrote I heard several barking deer with-
out looking up ; in fact they were so common that
I never did pay attention, except where there was
hope of getting near to study them ; but, as I wrote,
a strange and, it seemed, distressful yelp, caused
me to look up in time to see a deer just bounding
out from the jungle edge, with a black leopard not
two dozen feet behind. In two leaps the leopard
had reached the deer and sprung, seizing its neck
just back of the head with its jaws. The two
turned almost a somersault— and then the deer lay
quite still— its neck evidently broken. It hap-
pened in the open not fifty feet from me, and I
sat for a full ten minutes watching the first one

266 TTDA PRANG

of the cat family I had ever seen mauling its prey.
The leopard's actions were precisely those of the
cat with a mouse after a kill; it put out a fore
paw, pushing the deer, then pulling, and once
or twice leaped lightly from one side to the other.
It was some minutes before the leopard satisfied
itself of the deer's death, if that was the object
of the mauling ; and then, fastening its fangs in the
deer's throat, though without tearing the flesh-
that is, without ripping it— it seemed to suck the
blood. Thus far its actions had been rather delib-
erate, and not ravenous. But now it went to the
stomach, which it ripped open quickly, and at once
changed to a ravenous, wild creature, as it began
dragging out the intestines until it had secured the
liver and the heart. Then it settled to feeding;
and when it had about finished the performance— I
shot. The panther and leopard are commonly be-
lieved always to spring from ambush upon the
back of their victim ; and while they both do so on
occasion, the more usual method of the panther is
to seize by the throat at the end of a quick, short
rush. The leopard follows the popular theory
more often because it preys largely upon goats, the
small deer and young pigs, whose necks may be
crushed between its jaws. To dislocate the neck
of larger prey it must take hold of the throat and
have the aid of its fore paws with which to take

JUNGLE HUNTER 267

hold of the victim's shoulder. Many of the hun-
ters I have met, and some of the authors I have
read, appear to consider the black leopard a dis-
tinct species; but it is simply a freak cub of the
ordinary spotted leopard, just as the silver and the
black fox are freaks of the common red. In a
litter from a red vixen I have seen a silver among
red pups; and I met a man in the jungle where
lower Siam meets the Malay Peninsula who had
found a black among the spotted leopard's cubs.
Upon the latter, however, the spots are never
very clearly defined until they become older. In
other experiences of leopard and panther hunting
throughout Malaya I came to enjoy it even more
than the style of hunting there made necessary
for tiger. The panther, which is a larger edition
of the leopard, is not so strong, or so formidable
an opponent in a fight, but is much more active
than a tiger and is aroused more easily and is
bolder in its attack. Then, too, its tree-climbing
habits make it both dangerous and elusive. In
some respects, it is the more interesting and sport-
ing animal to stalk, though, of course, as a trophy
it is not valued like the tiger, nor has it the majesty
of his Royal Stripes, or the tremendous onslaught
when the attack is driven home.

My leopard measured five feet six inches from
the tip of its nose to the end of its tail, and was

268 UDA PRANG

the only black leopard that I killed— the only one,
in fact, that I saw; it was unusual good fortune
indeed, for they are somewhat rare— at least to
secure. I noticed, after I got its pelt off, that in
the sun it had a kind of watered silk appearance as
a result of the deeper black of the spots, which,
though invisible, were really there just the same.
The jungle we now worked into was different
from any I had seen. It was very dense, and yet
now and again we came to comparatively open
places, which in the. centre usually had a kind of
mound, from two to three feet in height, sometimes
six or eight, and sometimes as much as twenty feet
in diameter. These mounds were circular and
composed of an interlacing of timber and vines and
creepers ; they looked like nothing so much as rub-
bish heaps left after the surrounding soil had
washed away. Another novel sight was a tree with
base standing clear of the soil, and roots spreading
hither and thither exposed to view. Sometimes
the tree base was a foot and a half above the
ground, as though it had been forced up by its
roots. I found wild bananas, and the natives found
many roots and leaves which they ate with obvious
relish. Many of these roots are used for medic-
inal purposes, and in every native house is always
a stowed away drum filled with roots, leaves and
other nature nostrums for use in case of emergency.

A "REAL LADY" OF THE SIAMESE JUNGLE NEAR THE BURMA LINE.
Dressed for the express purpose of having her photograph taken hy the author.

AT THE HEAD WATERS.

JUNGLE HUNTER 269

There were no noises in this jungle except early in
the morning and late at dusk, when a bird I never
saw called in voice extraordinarily harsh and far
reaching.

Through all the time I was in Sumatra I kept
my eye constantly open for that most marvellously
plumaged bird, the argus pheasant; but though I
once found a small feather, I never saw the bird
itself. Indeed, few have ever seen it in the wild.
They are the shyest and most difficult to approach,,
perhaps, of all living things in the world.

Nearly all the time it rained, but that did not
dampen the activity of the mosquitoes, which raged
persistently in swarms around us. Sometimes
when tracking rhino they buzzed about my head in
such multitudes that I could literally get a handful
at every stroke. I anointed my face with penny-
royal, purchased for the purpose from a wise drug-
gist who, not having ventured away from paved
streets, insisted there was nothing like it to keep
off jungle pests. When not actually hunting, mos-
quitoes and small flies and red ants combined to
make life quite stirring. I used to seek the ruder
sometimes flesh-tearing slap of the jungle brush
against my face and head— it cleared the field of
mosquitoes for the moment— and often I pushed my
way through bushes without using the jungle knife,
simply to brush away the swarms of insects that

270 UDA PRANG

clung to me. Thus attacked by the insects above
and by the red ants below, one was not lacking occu-
pation at any time.

Uda, after all, proved to be a tolerably fair man
in the jungle. He was not so accomplished as his
tales suggested, but, as Malays go, he was a pretty
dependable tracker. Above all he was good-
natured. In fact, all three of my men, Uda, Bilal
and Che, were even-tempered and took the trials
as they came— and they came often— without
getting sulky, and always seemed ready for more.
They were a long way the best jungle men I secured
at any time in the Far East. Neither Bilal nor
Che could speak a word of anything except Malay,
but Bilal was a facile sign talker, and he and I had
many animated conversations through that me-
dium while we were in the jungle. I usually took
him with me in the lead, leaving Uda to round up
Che, or to follow independent tracks. Bilal was
not handsome, but he was strong and ready and
exceptionally good-humored; and his dearest pos-
session was an undershirt he had somewhere got
in trade, and which was especially useful in the
jungle— but he wore it on all occasions. Bilal, so
Uda gave me to understand, was quite an elephant
hunter, his professed method being to trap or to
steal upon the animal when sleeping, and, with a

JUNGLE HUNTER 271

long knife fastened to a stick, to cut its trunk and
then follow until it dropped from loss of blood.

We had followed a great many tracks, and twice
we had heard rhino, but in cover so dense that it
was impossible to see them. One day I came on
elephant tracks, and a broad pathway through the
jungle showed where they had gone, comparatively
recently. Uda and my two men were hot-foot for
following these, but my time limit was drawing
near— and rhino still unfound. Throughout all
these days my men had been very patient ; and Uda,
who said this particular section was much like
Java, where he claimed to have hunted much, now
expressed confidence in our finally getting rhino.
One morning early we got on quite fresh tracks,
which we followed for several hours through very
dense undergrowth, the rhino meanwhile seeking
all the mud holes in the direction of his route. We
travelled in these tracks until noon as swiftly as
we could, and as silently ; and as they continued so
fresh and little more than a breath of air appeared
to be stirring, we went along stealthily, expecting
to come up with the quarry at any time. But it
was nearing five o'clock, with the chill of the ap-
proaching sunset beginning to settle upon the jun-
gle, and still we followed the spoor hopefully—
though unrewarded. Then the tracks led into and

272 UDA PRANG

across one of those mound-containing spaces to
which I have referred.

It occurred to me as a useful thought to get on
top of the mound which happened to be a biggish
one, and make the best survey the lookout per-
mitted of the other side of the space where the
jungle was thinnish. And, by the gods, there,
barely discernible, was the long-sought rhino mov-
ing around like a great hog. Having more con-
fidence in these natives than I had felt in those
elsewhere in Sumatra, I had given my .50 to Bilal,
who was directly at my heels— Uda and Che had
not yet come up to us— and I carried my 12-bore.
The rhino was perhaps not over twenty yards away,
yet I could see him very indistinctly, and I feared
to manoeuvre for a better position lest he get my
wind and move away into the denser jungle, where
to view him at even ten yards would be an unusual
opportunity; so taking the best sight I could get
as he squashed about, heading somewhat in my
direction, I put the contents of both barrels, one
after the other, as quickly as I could pull the trig-
gers, just behind of his shoulder and ranging back.
There was a tremendous commotion as he disap-
peared, so quickly as to astonish me, with a crash
into the jungle. Standing on the mound I could
feel a very little wind and note that it was blowing
across my position from east to west, and, as the

JUNGLE HUNTER 273

rhino made off to the southwest, I felt sure he
would cross my wind and that if he did he would
be likely to charge. It seemed at the moment to
be my best chance of another shot, for of course I
could not begin to get through the thick jungle
at the pace he was going, and would have been left
far behind had I attempted to follow. So I held
my position, awaiting developments— knowing I
could track him later, if nothing interesting hap-
pened in the immediate future.

Meanwhile I could not determine his exact loca-
tion, but while immediately after the report he
seemed to be going away, in a few moments it
appeared to me he was coming toward the open
space. Meantime I was endeavoring to get the
cartridges out of the 12-bore, which had a defec-
tive ejector, and, as I was fingering with this, the
rhino broke from the jungle, coming directly
toward me, charging truly up-wind. It was not
over forty feet from where he broke out of the jun-
gle to where I stood on the mound, the latter being
perhaps twenty feet in diameter, and the rhino
came on without hesitation and without noise ex-
cept that made by his feet and huge bulk, his head
held straight out, not lowered like a bull, and with
his little eye squinting savagely. I had hastily
handed the 12-bore over to Bilal, taking the .50,
when the rhino broke from the jungle, and as he

274 UDA PRANG

came up on to the mound, I fired twice for that
wicked eye (the eye of a charging rhino is a pretty
small mark, perhaps you may know) , once making
a slight superficial wound on the forehead, and
again sending the ball into the fleshy part of the
fore shoulder. Neither shot made any impression
on the rhino, which kept coming.

By now he was not more than ten feet from me,
I should say, and I had just pumped another shell
into the barrel, when suddenly I was thrown off
my feet and over the side of the mound. As I went
into the air, I expected every second to feel the
rhino's horn in my side; but I held on to my rifle
(which, curiously, did not go off although at full
cock) and, when I fell, scrambled to my feet as
quickly as I could. The rhino had crossed the
mound and was running towards the jungle with
apparently no more thought of me than if I had
not stood in his path a few seconds before. It did
not take me long to put a ball at the base of his
ear, and he dropped like a stone— without a sound.

He had but a single horn on the lower part of
the nose, four inches in height, and a kind of knob
where had been, or was to be, another above it.
The usual Indian rhino, including the smaller
Malay, has one horn, but some of the Sumatra
variety have two.

It was an experience rather conclusive on the

JUNGLE HUNTER 275

question of the rhino charging by scent rather than
by sight. He charged straight toward me up-wind,
and when I dropped off the mound, to the south, I
was thrown off his scent. Either he lost sight of
me, as could easily have happened, or he is not
governed by sight— for he never swerved from his
path. I found both 12-bore bullets in his hind
quarters ; the .50 ball had gone in behind the right
ear, and into the left jaw.

The rhino had stepped, as he drew near, upon
one end of a long, small log on the other end of
which I stood ; and thus he teetered me out of his
path.

No doubt it was a lucky teeter for me.

CHAPTER XI
THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

THE tiger stirs imagination as does no other
beast of the earth. When the superstitious
native of the Far East refers to the dreaded
cholera, he speaks awesomely of " the sickness ";
and when the craven-hearted Bengali of India,
with hushed breath and deprecatory gesture, tells
of man or bullock carried off in the night by tiger,
he alludes to the marauder deferentially as " the
animal." For the tiger is a personage in the
Orient to whom the fearful build propitiatory
shrines, and whose influence upon the people of
the soil is as mysterious as it is potent. The
stealth of the great cat's approach, the deliberate
savagery of its attack, its swift force, its sudden
coming and going— like visitations of lightning-
make compelling appeal to the impressionable na-
ture of the Indian who fills his jungle with fan-
ciful deities to safeguard his path and to divide
his tributes. It may be only a little raised plat-
form—bearing a soiled, fluttering rag, or a crudely
carved, or painted, or even plain stone set up in
a clearing under some tree ; but no native traveller

276

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 277

passes without adding his mite or raising his voice
in supplication to the gods that stand between him
and the conjured terrors of the silent, fearsome
jungle. If hunters would have success the offer-
ing must be a goat, or a bullock that has, perhaps,
outlived its usefulness ; to neglect such sacrifice is
to forfeit protection in favor of the tiger. On
the Brahmapootra I fell among people that even
deified the beast in itself; and on the Jamna I
heard of a resident " man-eater " which none
could kill because it bore the spirit of a one-time
victim who directed its attacks and warned it
against unfriendly hunters. I heard here of a
tigress with forty-five human lives to her credit.
Over all the Far East the trails of the tiger are
many and devious; but despite notorious reputa-
tion and an annual murder record of some length,
it is not the unavoidable domestic necessity of
foreign India as many, who have never visited that
wonderland of color and human interest, appear
to think. Indeed only a small percentage of resi-
dent white men ever see either a tiger on a snake
outside the zoo, for man-eaters do not invade Eng-
lish houses, and the fox terrier and the mongoose
keep the immediate premises free of snakes. Of
the bare-footed and bare-legged jungle-living na-
tives, however, it is a different story. They pay
the toll. Yet is the native fashioned on such

278 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

strange lines that though he dies in large numbers
from attacks of poisonous snakes, he avoids killing
the cobra, the most deadly viper of them all.

Year by year records are published of the de-
struction of human and cattle life by the wild
beasts and snakes of British India. Last year
24,576 human beings and 96,226 cattle were killed,
and of the people 21,827 deaths were attributed
to snakes, while of the cattle, 86,000 were killed
by wild beasts— panthers being charged with 40,000
and tigers with 30,000 of this total; snakes ac-
counted for 16,000. And this is but a trifling per-
centage of the actual annual mortality, as it ex-
cludes the feudatory states, with their about 700,-
000 square miles and 60,000,000 inhabitants, where
no records are obtainable. Nor do the fatalities
grow materially less notwithstanding the efforts
of sportsmen and rewards by government, because
the development of roads and railways as the jun-
gle is reclaimed for agriculture means continuous
invasion of the snake and tiger infested territory.

Last year 1,285 tigers, 4,370 panthers and leop-
ards, 2,000 bears, and 2,086 wolves were killed ; of
snakes, the real scourge of India, no record is pos-
sible, and, unfortunately, comparatively few are
destroyed. However deplorable and costly is the
taking of human and cattle life, the descent upon
promising crops by deer and pigs and monkeys

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 279

would be even more serious to India and more ex-
pensive to the natives were it not for the tiger,
panther and leopard. This formidable trio of the
cat family practically police agricultural India
where it pushes into the jungle, and make it pos-
sible for the poor native to exist through culti-
vation of his fields. So after all, it is a question
whether, speaking very broadly, tigers are not
more beneficial than harmful. Undoubtedly the
depredations of the tiger are over-estimated, be-
cause he is so feared that wherever he prowls
invariable panic spreads widely to his discredit.
On India's last year's death list, 2,649 are credited
to wild beasts, and while all of these are laid up
against the tiger, panthers and wolves, especially
panthers, should be charged with a very consid-
erable share. The fact is that the panther and
leopard, which, except as to size, are about alike in
spotted pelt and temper, are as much under-esti-
mated as the tiger is over-estimated. The smaller
leopard devotes itself more largely to goats and
pigs and monkeys, while the panther attacks deer,
gaur, cattle and man— for the panther also, on occa-
sions, becomes a "man-eater," and when he does he
is a fury, insatiable. Panthers are bolder in attack,
more active and more generally vicious than tigers ;
yet they inspire nothing like such awe among the
natives. Indeed, I have seen natives rally to the

280 THE TEAIL OF THE TIGER

defence of a dog, of which leopards are particu-
larly fond, when, had the intruder been a tiger, they
would have been paralyzed into inaction from very
fear. Based on my experience, I consider panther
hunting quite as dangerous as tiger, up to a certain
point, and that point is actual close conflict. The
panther is the quicker to charge because of shorter
temper and less caution ; and he is less apt to bluff.
But the charge home of the tiger is incomparably
overwhelming. There is no turning it aside. It
may have false starts and move with studied care,
but when it does come nothing human can with-
stand it.

While their pelts differentiate slightly in mark-
ings and in length of fur according to habitat, there
is, I believe, no scientific classification of tigers
other than that given to the single species, Felis
tigris; although that mighty hunter, Doctor Wil-
liam Lord Smith, who spent 1903-04 hunting in
Corea, Java and Persia, tells me he thinks he can
establish a sub-species. Be that as it may develop,
at this writing the tiger family is really one, from
the heavy-furred Siberian, to the Chinese, Corean,
Malayan, Indian, and Persian, which latter Dr.
Smith says does the family no credit in the matter
of courage. The Chinese and Corean are the same
and both fighters; the Indian and Malayan are
practically identical, and the most beautifully

< 1

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 281

marked as well as the most ferocious. So far as
known, Siberian, Chinese, Corean and Persian
tigers prey on deer, cattle, pigs, goats, dogs, ac-
cording to locality and opportunity. I'have not
heard of a habitual man-eater among any of these
members of the tiger family. But the Indian,
which is, also the Malayan, is divided according to
its predatory habit into three classes :

(1) Cattle killers.

(2) Game killers, and

(3) Man-eaters.

The cattle killer is the largest, and the most pow-
erful of the three, but the least to be feared by
man. He is, in fact, by way of being sociable, prone
to take up his abode in the jungle nearby a settle-
ment where, on terms of easy friendliness with the
village people, he lives and levies tribute of a cow
or bullock from every three to five days, accord-
ing to the size and condition of the victim. Some-
times if disturbed in his stalk or at the killing,
he increases the number, apparently out of pure
wantonness of spirit, as a warning that he must be
left alone under penalty of death. I have heard
of tigers killing in this way as many as eight or
ten animals, one after the other, and in each such
case to come to my personal knowledge the natives
have attributed the depredation to a particular
tiger that had been interrupted in its cattle killing

282 THE TEAIL OF THE TIGER

during the formation of its habits in early youth.
It is passing strange how tigers are given indi-
viduality in the hill districts of India, where the
natives tremble at the mere mention of the terrible
name.

The cattle killer is not a wide ranger unless
hunted. Usually he confines his work to few vil-
lages, taking toll of them with impartiality and
with regularity, and killing about seventy bullocks
a year, of an average value of $8 to $10 a head;
for it is to be remembered that the tiger usually
gets the least valuable, the stray or the weakly cast
adrift after outliving its usefulness. The more
valuable are not so often raided, because in India
cattle are very carefully herded.

The game killer is usually lighter, always the
most active of the three, keeps himself well in the
jungle, especially in the hill districts, and away
from villages and men, except when on a deer or
pig trail that carries him to cultivated fields. Thus
the game killer ranges widely through the jungle,
and is the one less often encountered by the
sportsman.

Whether or not tigers hunt by scent is a question
that has caused much discussion at one time or
another, and while there can be no doubt that their
sense of smell is less keen than that of deer, ele-
phant, rhino, or the various species of gaur, yet

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 283

that it is well developed has often been proved by
the winding of sportsmen sitting up on a platform
over a kill. I have had such personal experience
three times. There is no evidence, however, of a
tiger hunting on the trail of its prey with nose to
the scent like the wolf, or any of the dog family;
and it is true, also, that very largely the tiger and
others of the cat family lie in wait for their vic-
tims, or stalk upon them at familiar haunts or
feeding ground. Once as I hunted seladang in
Siam, I glimpsed the stern of a tiger plunging
into the jungle at my side; and found the well-
defined squarish pugs of a big male that had lain
in ambush perhaps for the very animal whose
tracks I followed. I had passed within ten feet
of the tiger, which evidently was not looking for
two-legged game.

On attack the tiger seizes by the throat with its
powerful jaws and by the shoulders with its claw-
armored fore paw. After a swift rush it kills
with this grip by twisting its victim's neck until
broken, and it is so strong that it can almost always
bring down the gaur cow, though often beaten off
by the bull whose neck is too massive and whose
shoulders are too powerful to be wrenched. At
such times the tiger resorts to subterfuge by crawl-
ing head on, to invite a rush which it as repeatedly
evades, awaiting its chance to emasculate the bull

284 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

"by a swift attack from the rear. Such, when deal-
ing with tigers is the favorite method also of wild
dogs, which are swift and hunt both by sight and
scent, never leaving the trail once it is entered
upon. They never make a frontal attack, or lay
themselves liable to the hoof or paw of what they
are pursuing, but tirelessly follow, awaiting oppor-
tunity to swiftly overwhelm by numbers, or, in the
case of tiger, to leave the beast emasculated and to
slow death. I heard of tigers killed by these dogs
in a scuffle, but never came upon an authenticated
case, and in the absence of such proof, must doubt
it. So also do I question the reported instances
of a boar successfully sustaining the attack of a
tiger, though a fine old boar that was laid low
after a gallant fight, by a pig-sticking company of
which I was a member, had deep fang marks at the
back of the head and on the chest, unmistakably
made by a tiger.

When the tiger fails to seize the throat, it pur-
sues and hamstrings the bullock whose body it
then drags to a retired spot, where after sunset it
will feast— invariably, on the hind quarters first,
the thighs being an especial delicacy and often
eaten in the first night. Its first meal is usually
an orgy, at the close of which the tiger seeks the
nearest seclusion to doze off that " well filled feel-
ing "; thereafter it eats day or night as inclined

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 285

until the carcass is finished, drinking largely of
water between and immediately following meals.
Water and shade are the two needs of well-regu-
lated tiger life.

The " man-eater " is the jungle nightmare of
India, and numerous are the theories to account
for its abnormal appetite. Commonly it is said
to be an old tiger which has found game too difficult
to bring down, or a sickly tiger which has resorted
to man-killing in its weakness as the easier method.
The consensus of opinion among experienced hun-
ters and observers is, however, that a man-eater is
an ex-cattle killer which in conflict with herders,
who are often quite brave in the defence of their
cattle, has discovered how much less work it is to
kill man than cattle— for the cattle killer is usually
fat and lazy. Nothing has been found, so far as
I have discovered, to suggest appetite for human
flesh as the impelling motive, or that man-eaters
reject all flesh not human, or that the cubs of a
man-eating tigress inherit the man-killing propen-
sity. Rather is it a case of contempt for man bred
of familiarity, and more often the lust lays hold
of the tigress, very likely because in foraging for
her cubs (as she does until they begin to hunt for
themselves at seven months) and in their defence,
she has come more frequently in contact with man ;
or it may be because the female is more numerous

286 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

than the male, or because she is by nature the
slyer and more vicious. Certainly she is a fiend
incarnate when every second year she gives birth
to cubs, usually two, which do not move about with
her until six weeks old; and no doubt her dispo-
sition is not improved by the necessity of conceal-
ing the youngsters from the tiger who else would
devour them.

It is a curious and unexpected development that
the cattle killer, turned man-eater, ceases to be
indifferent to man's presence and becomes cow-
ardly. Yet on occasion it is bold beyond all record
of other animals.

I came to a hamlet in northwestern Bengal,
where a journeying ryot (farmer) at the very edge
of a settlement, in broad daylight, was bumped off
his scared bullock and pounced upon and carried
off by a tigress. In the little settlement of Teen
Pehan, to the west of the Ganges, I saw a mother
whose five-year-old boy had been snatched up in
the full noon of day while at play not fifty feet
from where she bathed in a nearby stream. In
Sumatra I saw the palms and the soles and the
distorted face— all that remained of a fourteen-
year-old girl who had gone forth in the early morn
to collect herbs in the more or less open jungle
almost within sight of her father's house on the
river. One of my hunting party in lower Burma

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 287

was the brother of a Karen, who had been struck
down and carried away as he built a little temple
in the jungle just beside his padi field. In the
Malay Peninsula, just on the outskirts of Batu
Gaja, a Tamil woman, carrying her babe on her
hip, was mauled and her babe killed while making
a short cut to her house through a small piece of
open jungle. Such cases might be multiplied by
other observers to show the occasional boldness of
the man-eater; but as a rule it chooses a seques-
tered spot for its attack, and is, because of its
acquired skulking nature, the most difficult to hunt
of all tigers.

Other popular misconceptions give the tiger
extraordinary leaping ability. It does not, as
habitually painted, leap upon the back of its vic-
tim to crunch the vertebrae of the neck. It may
do so occasionally on small game. I have seen
panther springing on the little barking deer, but
the usual tiger method is a stealthy stalk followed
by a swift rush and seizure of the victim's throat.

It does not leap from twenty-five to one hundred
feet, as we frequently read. Twelve feet is nearer
the average of its jumps when chasing game, and
there is no record of its jumping streams of over
sixteen to eighteen feet in width. It is a bold
swimmer, and a frequent wader.

288 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGEE

It does not give up pursuit of its quarry on fail-
ure of the first attack.

It does not deliver bone-crushing blows with its
fore paws, like bruin, although it does give blows
that lacerate the flesh.

It does not roar like a lion.

It does not kill by blood letting, but by dislo-
cating the neck.

It can climb a tree, but rarely does so.

There is also much exaggeration concerning size
and weight. A tiger that measures ten feet from
the tip of its nose to the end of its tail is a big
one, and above the average, which is about nine
and a half feet. Of course there are exceptions,
as in all animal kind, but the majority of eleven
and twelve foot tiger stories are fiction. I was
unable during six months' hunting to find definite
account of one even eleven feet in length. I did
hear of several ranging from ten feet to ten feet
six inches, and one of ten feet eight inches. So
also with the weight, which is commonly written
down at from 400 to 500 pounds, whereas the aver-
age will run from 300 to 375 pounds, the latter
being a good one and the former figure more near
the average.

The manner of hunting tigers varies according
to locality and conditions ; and in India alone sev-
eral methods obtain:

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 289

Driving the tiger out of the long grass of Bengal
before a line of elephants to a previously selected
open spot where the gunners, also on elephants,
are stationed.

Driving it out before a line of native beaters
through the jungle to a given open place where the
gunner is stationed up a tree near where the tiger
is expected to break cover.

Awaiting it on a platform (" mechan ") erected
within thirty to fifty feet of a tied up live bullock
or goat; or near the un-eaten carcass of the tiger's
kill to which it will return.

Walking it up before beaters; i. e., shooting it
on foot.

Natives also drive the tiger before a long line of
beaters into widely stretched nets which are then
closed and surrounded by fires and by men armed
with spears and guns. In Java this method is
elaborated into a " rampok," which includes free-
ing a trapped tiger within a large circle of several
rows deep made by men armed with spears. The
" game " is gradually to narrow the circle until
the charging and desperate beast is closed in by a
wall of sharp steel points which finally despatch
him. It is not a glorious game. Poison and
spring guns and traps are also used by natives
throughout the Orient to rid themselves of a man-
eater.

290 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

In the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, lower Burma
and southern Siam, the jungle is too dense and con-
tinuous to permit of beating up tigers with a line
of elephants. In fact, as compared with India,
almost no tiger hunting is done in these countries,
and that little consists of sitting up over a kill, or,
in the dry season, over a water hole. The latter is
a favorite method of Chinamen who hunt tigers
for the skin and for the whiskers which, like the
horn of the rhino, are largely valued on account
of certain occult influences they are supposed to
exert in compounding medical charms. But in
none of this Far Eastern section are the natives
hunters by inclination, and not enough hunting is
done by the handful of resident whites to replace
ignorance with skill. Besides, the average native
is not in sympathy with hunting ; he has no stomach
for the game; so that pursuit of the tiger in this
part of the world is done under extremely difficult
conditions, and with no great measure of success.
In sections of Corea, and on parts of the Chinese
coast, however, Chinamen, armed with great, three-
tined pitchfork-like spears, hunt out the cave-
dwelling tiger and become not only expert but
brave and dependable. And this tiger is fully as
formidable as the one of India, requiring of the
sportsman both nerve and courage.

Hunting from the back of an elephant has no ele-

THE TRAIL OP THE TIGER 291

ment whatever of danger for anyone except the
mahout (driver) when the tiger charges the ele-
phant's head; at such times the mahout's seat
astride the elephant's neck just behind the great
ears becomes untenable if the attacking beast is
not quickly killed by the guns above in the howdah.
It is the method pursued by the native rajahs of
India, high officials, and visitors who want to kill
a tiger regardless of cost— and can afford the price.
And it is the most luxurious, expensive and easiest
way of gratifying the tiger-killing impulse. On
such a hunt from thirty to one hundred or even,
more elephants may be employed, and as ele-
phants are worth each from $400 to $2,000, and
cost about $1.00 a day for keep alone, an idea may
be formed of the hire of such an expedition— not
to mention its intrinsic value. Then there are the
mahouts and beaters and camp makers and water
carriers and personal servants, to number from
seventy-five to three hundred according to the size
and distinction of the expedition.

The howdah in which the hunter rides and from
which he shoots, is a wood and cane affair resting
on two round long pads placed lengthwise either
side of the elephant's backbone, and firmly lashed
in place by ropes passing under the elephant's
neck, belly and tail. The hunters draw lots for
position and when they have been stationed—

292 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

sometimes as much as one hundred yards apart,
according to the country— other elephants bearing
only a pad and their mahouts, beat the jungle
towards the sportsmen in the howdahs. The chief
excitement in this kind of hunting centres around
the question of who will get the tiger, for in a
country possible to such extended drives, there is
no certainty as to the precise point the beast will
break cover, and getting a shot is therefore a mat-
ter of individual luck. Sometimes, when the tiger
does not break cover, the howdah-bearing elephants
close in upon the piece of jungle in which the
quarry lies concealed, and then there is more
" doing " and some fun. But for the most part,
standing on the back of an elephant inside a how-
dah behind an armory of guns, is not particularly
stirring and does not appeal to the sportsman who
has ever experienced the thrill of stalking.

Shooting rhinoceros from a howdah, however,
if not more dangerous, at least averages higher in
diversion, because in close cover elephants hold a
rhino always in great respect and frequently in
much fear on account of its obstinate advance and
well understood tendency to gore legs and stomachs
that obstruct its path. Therefore a rhino in long
grass at close quarters means a good bit of scur-
rying around and at times it means a run-away by
an elephant that has become panic-stricken at the

§ ■■-»

THE TEAIL OF THE TIGER 293

sharp whiffing, sniffing, and the swaying grass that
mark the charging rhino. If trees happen to be
plentiful in the vicinity such a run-away is really
dangerous to the occupants of the howdah. Once
I had such an experience and I hope never to have
another so uncomfortable. Luckily there were no
trees, but several shallow, narrow gullies into
which the elephant scrambled with great haste ; the
howdah meanwhile rocking like a cockle shell in
a sea way. I was as a pea within a vigorously
shaken rattle. That the howdah stayed on the
elephant's back is recommendation enough of the
strength of the ropes and the skill of the lashing.
Walking up a tiger with beaters can not be done
in a long grass country and should be attempted
anywhere only by those of experience ; aside from
the danger, there are a hundred chances of failure
by doing the wrong thing at the right time. A
tiger shows extraordinary intelligence in discern-
ing the silent, waiting sportsman up a tree in the
foreground, from the harmless, though noisy tom-
toming beaters at his rear, and will often break
back through the line, unless continuous skill and
care are exercised. So a beat should never begin
too near the tiger once he has been located, as he
may go unseen straight out of the country at once.
Some tigers show immediately; others not until
the last moment; and, as with other animals, no

294 THE TEAIL OF THE TIGER

two tigers act the same. Incidentally, no tiger
shows so quickly as the panther. To know the
ground thoroughly, therefore, is an absolute essen-
tial to successful beating; not only to know the
cover to be driven, but the possible outlets to the
covers nearby. My failure to get a tiger in half a
dozen such tries is explained by just that lack of
knowledge which I never could find in the natives
upon whom I had to depend, and never could stop
long enough in one locality to acquire myself.
Where natives are as familiar with the tiger as
they are in India, and know the ground, the
chances are immeasurably enhanced, and success
should and will come to the experienced hunter
who can await such conditions. If your tiger
breaks cover directly in front of you, hold your
fire ; if possible let him get abreast of your position,
or past it, before you press the trigger. Other-
wise he is apt to break back among your beaters,
and may kill one of them; may destroy their cour-
age in themselves and their confidence in you,
which is very serious.

Sitting up over a kill is the most frequent habit
of Malaya, and the most infrequent of success, as
compared with India, because of inexpertness in
building the " mechan," and in tying up the bul-
lock or goat, which should be placed in a quiet place,
several hundred yards from any cover where it

THE TEAIL OF THE TIGER 295

will be possible for the tiger to lie up during the
day, after he has taken the bait. This will enable
you, when the kill has been made, to build your
platform without fear of disturbing the tiger, as
is often the case and the cause of his failure to
return. Of course it must be located down wind
from the bait, and back from the tiger's probable
line of approach when such is possible of discern-
ment. The mechan may be what size you will, but
should be no larger than necessary— say 6x3, or
even ljx4, and must be made of tough material
that will not creak, with a screen of leaves that will
not dry up quickly to crackle at an inauspicious
instant. It ought to be about fifteen feet above
ground, or twenty, if you can equally as well build
one so high, to lessen the chance of being scented.
Mechans vary from such simple workmanlike plat-
forms to ones bearing nearly all the comforts of
home. - An Anglo-Indian whom I knew as an inde-
fatigable devotee of this kind of shooting, used to
build his mechan with great care and furnish it
with mattress, pillows, rug, water bottle and read-
ing matter. Whether the platform be simple or
elaborate, however, take no one into it with you;
twice I lost good opportunities of scoring through
my servant's clearing his throat. The tiger does
not usually look up, unless his attention is at-
tracted by a noise, but the slightest movement

296 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

catches his exquisitely sensitive ear, and when they
have been hunted tigers become so wary as to
be well-nigh impossible of circumvention. Get to
your platform by four in the afternoon, for be-
tween that hour and half after eight is the most
likely time of his coming, though, as a matter of
fact, he may and does appear at any hour of the
night. All nicely man-made rules and regulations
are violated by this quarry.

To walk up a tiger is the most dangerous form
of sport, but to the man with the heart for it— far
and away the most enjoyable. Like other pur-
suits of the venturesome, this one should not be
attempted by the inexperienced or by those that
can not keep cool under nerve-trying conditions;
and in common with all hazardous games, expe-
rience robs this one of some of its f ormidability.
Experience should spell caution as well as skill,
and a man having both will know enough never
on foot to track a tiger into long grass, or to
approach in very close cover. A tiger seeks to
conceal himself, and on discovery is moved, in my
judgment, by the spirit of self-defence against
what he believes to be an attack, rather than by
the single desire to kill; though whatever the im-
pelling spirit may be, the hunter's position is none
the less eased, for the tiger in such jungle can
usually move quicker than a man can handle his

THE TKAIL OF THE TIGEE 297

gun. For that reason never approach cover that
can hide a tiger until it has been explored, and
make it a rule to believe every piece of this kind
of cover does hold a tiger until you have proved
that it does not. Tiger hunting in any form is
dangerous business, and following a wounded one
should depend entirely on the nature of the jungle
into which the beast has retreated. If the cover
is dense— keep away until you are re-inforced and
even then don't venture to drive him out unless
you have a body of spearmen that will stand firm ;
unlike the valiant boar, a tiger will not, as a rule,
charge a party that is bunched and holding its
ground. Nor under ordinary circumstances is an
unwounded tiger apt to charge unless you stand
in his only avenue of escape. Tiger shooting, in
a word, is so variable and always so dangerous that
without a companion of suitable temperament and
experience the average hunter should not engage
in walking up the quarry ; and not then unless he
carries a level head. To the man so constructed
that he can not keep cool I say with all emphasis—
don't go tiger hunting. An excellent aid to keep-
ing cool is a double barrel rifle ; and a maxim worth
remembering is never to fire your last cartridge at
a retreating tiger, because if you wound him he is
likely to change his mind about running away—
and a tiger coming your way, uttering his short,

298 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

coughing roars, is about as unnerving and dan-
gerous an experience as a hunter can have.

Not every tiger hunt is rewarded with a tiger.
Except for my friend, Dr. Smith— and English
army officers of India who are out at every report
—I know none that has done more actual hunting
for tiger within a given period than I— and I have
yet to secure my first trophy, though I wounded
three, in the course of six months' uninterrupted
industry in Sumatra, Malay Peninsula, Siam,
lower Burma and India, during which time I sat
up over goats and bullocks; watched over a kill
from a mechan; waited up a tree for a tiger to
break cover in front of beaters, and walked him up.
At first it was partly inexperience on my part,
and then native ignorance and lack of coopera-
tion; lastly it was hollow-pointed bullets, and
always it was lack of time; for getting a tiger is
after all a question of time and opportunity, other
things being equal. You may go out two dozen
times, as I did, without carrying home a scalp, or
you may score the first time, as has been done from
a howdah.

My first tiger hunt developed from a deer hunt
on the coast of the Malay Peninsula, which I
joined to please my Mohammedan host, Aboo Din,
who had just brought me back from a successful
boar shoot he had organized for me with great

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 299

reluctance— for the disciple of Mohammed holds
no intercourse with pigs. Now although the Malay
is not a hunter, some of them are quite devoted to
running deer with dogs, and a few of the better
class keep packs for the purpose, with a huntsman,
who is a kind of witch doctor called " pawang,"
with many fields of activity. I found pawangs
that looked after crops, pawangs that spirited
away sickness, and pawangs that insured success-
ful deer hunting. As a rule only the sultans or
rajahs afford pawangs; but Din, though neither
sultan nor rajah, was a native of influence and
wealth, and there was not much doing in the Malay
Peninsula that he was not into, from deer chasing
up to horse racing. He was very proud of his pack
which was in fact famous in the neighborhood.

When we reached the cover where the dogs were
to be turned in for deer, we halted, while the pa-
wang delivered himself of an incantation to assure
success, and when a deer was killed the carcass
remained untouched until the pawang again fell
into fanatical frenzy as the hunters gathered
around. Aboo explained the final ceremony as
necessary to deliver the spirit of the deer into
Mohammed's safe keeping; otherwise it would for-
ever haunt and afflict the man who had killed it.
Several days we successfully snap-shot deer, as
they raced across more or less open stretches from

300 THE TEAIL OF THE TIGER

one patch of jungle to another, when one noon the
dogs suddenly broke into a loudly distressful
chorus which Aboo declared could only mean that
they had run into a tiger. As we turned cautious
steps towards the howling and yapping it sub-
sided and soon we came to three badly mauled and
whining members of the scattered pack which we
could hear beating hasty retreat in many direc-
tions. "We moved carefully, although the jungle
was fairly open and the dogs' back tracks easily
followed in the soft soil. The ground was well cut
up at the scene of the brief and apparently one-
sided conflict; blood showed that something had
been doing, while the plainly printed oval pugs
of a tigress indicated who had been doing it. We
followed these pugs with the utmost deliberation
until they led out of that piece of jungle to skirt
another and finally enter the lower end of a ravine,
by which time it was dark. Next morning at day-
light, we picked up the trail again at the point
where it led into cover of unusual density in the
shallow ravine. I suggested that Aboo put the
dogs and men in here while we took position at the
upper end of the draw just below where it ended
in higher ground. A good bit of urging was nec-
essary to get the dogs into the cover and much
encouragement to keep them moving, but the Ma-
lays, armed only with the parang (jungle knife),

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 301

yelled and shouted and threshed the jungle with
stout bamboo poles sharpened at one end into
a short tough point, as though hugely enjoying
themselves. It was an hour before the beaters
approached to within about one hundred yards of
us, and as Aboo watched the lower bank of the
gully and I the upper, twice we thought we saw
the yellowish head poking its way through the
jungle above us. We felt sure it would break
cover on the upper bank at the sky line. Sud-
denly as we watched intently, the sun burst forth
brilliantly over the hill, shining full in our eyes,
and at that miserable moment out came the tigress
from the jungle straight into the bewildering
glare. 'Twas an impossible shot, but my first op-
portunity at such game, which must have been my
excuse for firing. I missed the mark by feet I sup-
pose; the tigress at all events vanished instanter
over the hill, and though several hours we tracked
her, finally we lost all trail and had to give it up
greatly disappointed.

A tiger that has once hesitated on its charge is
not likely to charge home. Once I had an expe-
rience to corroborate this. Near a native settle-
ment on the west bank of the Ganges I had been for
several days without success walking up a tiger in
the hills. Then followed other days of even no sign,
and finally a day when one broke cover in front

302 THE TRAIL OP THE TIGER

of beaters, about seventy-five yards from where
I sat in position up a tree. He was a regal sight
as he came out silently, slowly— stopping, with half
his body still uncovered, while, with raised paw,
like a cat, he cautiously surveyed the field. The
picture was so enjoyable, for the moment, 1 did not
think of shooting, or, in my inexperience, realize
that at any instant he might disappear. And so it
was— for suddenly, with a spring and a turn to one
side he was gone into the jungle again ; but I had
awakened from my trance with his first move and
as he vanished put in a shot which scored because
I saw him switch around and bite his stern as the
cover closed upon him. The piece of jungle into
which he had retreated was dense at the edges, but
opened up some just beyond, and we made our way
on the tracks slowly and carefully, one of the
beaters having a little mongrel fox terrier type of
dog that went forward on the trail with unex-
pected courage. We were a long time before get-
ting to a very dense piece where we hesitated,
while part of the men and the dog went off to one
side with a view to making a survey of the close
cover from another point. As they worked off I
moved forward a little in an endeavor to find a
better position, from which to look ahead. I had
got but a short distance and where I could not see
six feet ahead, when I was halted by a sudden

PUP JBt
*

■Kg ■ ft#W

r mm

HI ' iv ■

Ik Jl

1 ^

Q u

O &
E

THE TRAIL OP THE TIGER 303

growling and a heart-stopping, short, coughing
roar. It was the first time I had heard it— and
I freely confess— it well-nigh froze my blood. I
knew it was a tiger ; I could plainly hear it coming ;
and as the jerky roar grew nearer and nearer, I
stood there having sensations— I do assure you.
But I stood, for I realized how useless would be
an attempt to escape by running; I thought I
would have a better chance for my life if I faced
the music.

With my rifle raised and at full cock I stood
waiting, waiting, and just at the instant I expected
the terrifying thing to burst upon me from out the
jungle that nerve-racking roar ceased, and was fol-
lowed by stillness quite as dreadful, for I did not
know what it might not portend. I pictured the
tiger stalking noiselessly around me, looking for
the best place from which to make his final rush.
The day wasn't so hot, but the perspiration rolled
from me pretty freely just about that time. Then
at last came the relief of a noise which seemed
going from me. It sounded as though the tiger
was retreating. And that is precisely what he was
doing. He went out on the unguarded side of the
cover— out of my life forever, so far as I know,
but not without having made a deep impression
upon me ; to this day I can hear that tiger coming.
Sitting up " on a platform for tiger with a

304 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

tied-up bullock nearby, as bait, does not commend
itself to me as sport ; it is too much like bear bait-
ing, in which no sportsman should engage. Such
methods are only excusable when an animal's pred-
atory nature has put it in the vermin class, to be
exterminated one way or another. And sitting
up does not assure tiger by any means, even
though it be over the beast's own kill. My at-
tempts were all failures. Three times I was
winded, the direction of the breeze changing at sun-
down, and my platform being only eight feet above
ground; another time I fired in the dim uncer-
tain light of a cloud-covered moon, and missed;
twice my servant's cough warned the tiger. On
another occasion the tiger came directly under my
platform from the rear. I could hear it sniffing
and the firm tread on the rustling leaves, which
once heard is always remembered. For minutes it
stood silent and I dared not move to try for a look
lest it take alarm. I even feared it might hear my
heart thumping above its head. Then, a twig
cracked in the stillness ; and again and for eternity,
it seemed— dead silence. So long I sat cramped
that one foot went to sleep, and my discomfort was
extreme. At last daylight— but no tiger. It had
vanished, perhaps at the cracking of the twig, as
suddenly as it had come.
None the less sitting up has compensations, even

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 305

though a tiger be not one of them. Really I found
the experience full of interest. Sunset in such
country is the most delightful hour of the tropical
twenty-four, for it is in the cool of evening that
refreshment comes after the super-heated day, and
you hear jungle sounds, and see jungle life of
which you never before knew. After a time the
moon looks forth, and by and by, as its soft light
spreads, the trees stand forth, darkly, sharply sil-
houetted against the sky, and all the jungle takes
on new and strangely picturesque beauty. One
evening, as I sat over the kill of a tiger — I had
the luck to watch the antics of two jackals stealing
a meal. Well they knew whose kill they nosed,
and every movement suggested terror at the risk.
One would circle the opening, head stuck out and
every nerve obviously on edge while the other
snatched a morsel from the dead bullock ; then the
other guarded while the erstwhile sentinel grabbed
a mouthful and swallowed it unchewed— neither
ever resting an instant. So they continued for
many minutes while they secured a very respect-
able meal, and grew a bit careless for once one
paused a second at the carcass to take more than
a passing grab, when the other, with tail between
legs, back arched and head extended down and out
to the full length of its neck, rushed it with such

a grin on its face as made me wish to kill it then
20

306 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

and there. Suddenly, with eyes searching the
jungle on one side, they fell to whimpering and
twittering and dancing on their feet as though in
mortal terror of an impending calamity— then like
a flash they were gone. I confidently expected to
see a tiger appear, but none came, though I watched
patiently and intently throughout the long night.

My most serious experience with a tiger hap-
pened in Sumatra. Uda Prang and I were re-
turning from a successful rhinoceros hunt, and
came one night to a settlement of half a dozen
houses, where the growing of the sago plant and
the cutting of rattan to sell Chinese traders, made
up the industrial life of the inhabitants. We found
the little settlement in a state of great agitation
and mourning, for only the night before a young
girl had been killed by a tiger or panther, they knew
not which, as she gathered herbs not a quarter of
a mile away from her home. It was evening when
we arrived, but on the morning following, early,
we were taken out to where the tragedy had oc-
curred, and a bloody bit of dress and the palms of
the child's hands and soles of her feet indicated
that the beast had made its ghastly feast on the
spot. The pug marks seemed to me rather small
for a tiger, but Uda said it was a tiger and not a
panther.

Back from the river and behind the open fields

THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER 307

where the jungle had been reclaimed for sago, were
two sugar-loaf -shaped hills of independent, uneven
tops, but joined at the base by a ridge-like back-
bone, which was fairly free of jungle though other-
wise the hills were rather closely covered. For two
days we hunted the tiger's tracks, feeling fairly
confident of eventual success as this happened to
be one of a few cultivated patches widely separated
on this stretch of the river, and as crops attract
deer and pigs, so pigs and deer attract tigers.
And at last we did find the trail of this tiger where
it led into the larger of the two hills. That night,
by a happy bit of luck, two canoes loaded with
rattan for the Chinamen down river, rested at the
settlement, and we persuaded the four Malay boat-
men to stop over and help us. So next day at day-
light we set out sixteen strong, carrying bamboo
sticks for jungle beating, three drums for noise
and spears for defense ; it was an absurdly inade-
quate line, but it represented the population of a
one-hundred-mile radius. We started the men in
on the larger hill, where we had found the tracks,
to beat towards me on the smaller hill where I took
position commanding the comparatively uncov-
ered connecting ridge. And we posted two men
in the fields to note if the tiger left the isolated
hills. What with their jungle threshing and
shouting and vigorous, unceasing drum, drum-

308 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

ming, the beaters altogether made quite a noise
and as after an hour or more it neared me I
thought I caught a glimpse of the tiger skulking
along down low on the side of the backbone,
where the growth was thick— making towards my
hill. It could in this way pass my position unseen,
and fearful that it might escape from the un-
guarded side of the small hill, I made my way to
Uda Prang who forthwith ordered the men over
to the far side of the smaller hill which the tiger
had entered and which I had just left— to beat back
and thus turn and drive it again across the ridge
and on to the larger hill from which it had origi-
nally started.

As the beaters began their yelling and smashing,
Jin Abu and I started to climb to an abrupt shelf-
like bench on the larger hill, which overlooked the
backbone. The hill was fairly steep and the close
cover made moving laborious with frequent check-
ing. Several times we were distressed with im-
patience at being delayed by clinging thorn-cov-
ered growths. A bit winded we neared the site we
had chosen from which to shoot the tiger as it
came back over the ridge. Thoughts of what I
would do with the pelt ran in my head— and then
we were startled by a growl followed by a mut-
tered edition of the coughing roar I knew well by

THE TRAIL OP THE TIGER 309

this time, and there, not more. than six or eight
feet away, and above us, was the tiger we thought
was on the other hill. He had crossed back and was
now watching us, body crouched, chin close to its
fore paws, eyes glaring menacingly. It was the
surprise of my hunting career, and withal a most
disturbing situation, for my rifle (50-calibre) hung
from my left shoulder. I felt that a spring was
imminent, and it seemed that almost with thought
of it, the spring came, but not before I had swung
my rifle into position, and fired, full into the beast's
face, dropping flat instantly with the same intui-
tiveness which closes the eyelid against flying dan-
ger. Uda Prang was not so quick in dropping
and, as the tiger went over our heads it reached
him, on the shoulders in passing, tearing the flesh
severely with its claws. It kept on down the steep
hill breaking cover, and plunging into the jungle,
across the fields, where for three days we tracked
it. At first we found blood but it did not last
long, indicating a superficial head wound, and after
a time the pug prints were entirely lost on firm soil.

So the little girl was not avenged after all, but
I received a practical lesson in the untrustworthi-
ness of hollow-pointed bullets on dangerous game.

Thus the tiger's trail, and the tiger. To none
are accredited such human tragedies; to none so

310 THE TRAIL OF THE TIGER

much of ferocity and cunning and cruelty and
power. But it is royal game ! the kind to fix upon
you that fascination which lies in the pursuit of
quarry, having a minimum of the man-fear with
which brute nature is possessed.

BOOKS OF TRAVEL, ADVENTURE AND DESCRIPTION

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

GENERAL WORKS

Baedeker's Guide Books
Murray's Guide Books

List on application
List on application

Explorers and Travellers. By General A. \V. Greely, U. S. A.

Illustrated. i2mo. $1.50.
Three Years of Arctic Service. By General A. W. Greely, U. S. A.

Illustrated. 8vo. $5.00.
The Exploration of the World. By Jules Verne. I. Famous

Travels and Travellers. II. The Great Navigators. III. The

Explorers of the Nineteenth Century. 3 vols. Illustrated. 8vo.

Each $2.50.
Around the World on a Bicycle. I. From San Francisco to

Teheran. II. From Teheran to Yokohama. By Thomas

Stevens. Illustrated. 2 vols. 8vo. $5.00.
My Early Travels in America and Asia. By Henry M. Stanley.

Illustrated. 2 vols. i2mo. $3.00.
Two Years in the Jungle. By Wm. F. Hornaday. Illustrated.

8vo. $2.50.
Among Cannibals. By Carl Lumholtz. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.
Wild Men and Wild Beasts. By Gordon Cumming. Illustrated.

i2mo. $1.50.
Stanford's Compendiums of Geography and Travel (based on

Helwald's " Die Erde und Ihre Volker"). Africa, 2 vols.,

$11.00; Asia, 2 vols., $11.00; Australasia, 2 vols., $11.00; Europe,

2 vols., $11.00; North America, 2 vols., $11.00; Central and South

America, 2 vols., $11.00.

THE FAR EAST

The Middle Kingdom. By S. Wells Williams, D.D., LL.D.

Illustrated. Royal 8vo. 2 vols. $9.00.
Things Chinese. By J. D. Ball. 8vo. Net $4.00.
Dai Nippon, the Britain of the East. By Henry Dyer. Illustrated.

8vo. Net $3.50.
In the Uttermost East. By C. H. Hawes. Illustrated. 8vo. Net

$4.50.
Manchuria. By Alexander Hosie. Illustrated. 8vo. Net $2.50.
The Religions of Japan. By Wm. Elliot Griffis. i2mo. $2.00.
Corea: The Hermit Nation. By Wm. Elliot Griffis. 8vo. $2.50.
Korea. By Angus Hamilton. Illustrated. i2mo. Net $1.50.
Central Asia and Tibet. By Sven Hedin. Illustrated. 2 vols. 8vo.

Net $10.50.
Across Coveted Lands. By A. Henry Savage Landor. Illustrated.

2 vols. 8vo. Net $7.50.
China and the Allies. By A. Henry Savage Landor. Illustrated.

2 vols. 8vo. Net $7.50.

The Peoples and Politics of the Far East. By Henry Norman.

Illustrated. 8vo. $4.00.
Lotus Time in Japan. By Henry T. Finck. Illustrated. 8vo.

Si. 75-
Manchuria and Korea. By H. J. Whigham. 8vo. Net $2.00.

By F. H. Sawyer. Illustrated.

By Albert Sonnichsen.

The Inhabitants of the Philippines.
8vo. Net $4.00.

Ten Months a Captive Among Filipinos.
Illustrated. 8vo. $2.00.

Yesterdays in the Philippines. By Joseph Earle Stevens. Illus-
trated. i2mo. $1.50.

The Persian Problem. By H. J. Whigham. Illustrated. 8vo. Net

Japan in Our Day. By Bayard Taylor. Illustrated. i2mo. $1.25.
The Philippine Islands. By John Foreman, F.R.G.S. Illustrated.

8vo. $5.00.
South Sea Idyls. By Charles W. Stoddard. i2mo. $1.50.
The Caroline Islands. By F. W. Christian. Illustrated. 8vo.

$4.00.

By Henry M. Field. Illustrated. 8vo.

Our Western Archipelago.

$2.00.
Through Hidden Shensi.

8vo. Net $2.00.
A History of China. By S.

torical Chapters from '

By Francis H. Nichols. Illustrated.

Wells Williams, D.D. Being the His-
"The Middle Kingdom," with a chapter
narrating recent events to 1897. 8vo. $2.00.
Things Japanese. Being notes on various subjects connected with
Japan. By B. H. Chamberlain. Revised and Enlarged Edi-
tion. 8vo. Net $4.00.
Ten Thousand Miles in Persia; or, Eight Years in Iran. By P. M.
Sykes. Illustrated. 8vo. Net $6.00.

ASIA

Central Asia. By Bayard Taylor. Illustrated. i2mo. $1.25.
Innermost Asia. By R. P. Cobbold. Illustrated. 8vo. $5.00.
The Balkans from Within. By Reginald Wyon. Illustrated. 8vo.

Net $4.00.
Travels in Arabia. By Bayard Taylor. Illustrated. i2mo. $1.25.
Siam, the Land of the White Elephant. By Bayard Taylor.

Illustrated. i2mo. $1.25.
From Egypt to Japan. By Henry M. Field. 8vo. $2.00.
Climbing the Himalaya and Other Mountain Ranges. By J. W.

Collie. Illustrated. 8vo. Net $5.00.
In the Himalayas. By C. F. Gordon Cumming. Illustrated. 8vo.

Net $3.50.
In Scripture Lands. By Edward L. Wilson. Illustrated. i2mo.

$1.50.
Palestine. A Handbook. By A. Henderson. i2mo. Net 75c.
Among the Holy Hills. By Henry M. Field. 8vo. $1.50.
Two Years in Palestine' and Syria. By Margaret Thomas.

Illustrated. 8vo. $5.00.

EUROPE

Sport in the Alps. By W. A. Baillie-Grohman. Illustrated. 8vo.

$5.00.
From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn. By Henry M.

Field. 8vo. $2.00.
Across Russia. By Charles A. Stoddard. Illustrated. i2mo. $1.50.
All the Russias. By Henry Norman. Illustrated. 8vo. Net $4.00.
Through the Dolomites from Venice to Toblach. By A. Robertson.

Illustrated. i2mo. Net $3.00.
The Book of Sir Marco Polo, the Venetian. Translated and Edited

by Sir Henry Yule. Illustrated. 2 vols. 8vo. Net $16.00.
In the Hebrides. By C. F. Gordon Cumming. Illustrated. 8vo.

Net $3.50.
Army Life in Russia. By Major-General F. V. Greene, U. S. A.

i2mo. $1.25.
A Short History of Russia. By Mary Platt Parmele. i2mo.

$1.00.
The Index Guide to Travel and Art Study in Europe. By Lafayette

C. Loomis. Illustrated. i6mo. $3.00.
Spain. The Story of a Journey. By Josef Israels. Illustrated.

8vo. $5.00.
Italy To-Day. By B. King and T. O'Key. 8vo. Net $3.00.
Gibraltar. By Henry M. Field. Illustrated. 410. $2.00.
Old Spain and New Spain. By Henry M. Field. 8vo. $1.50.
The Greek Islands. By Henry M. Field. Illustrated. 8vo. $1.50.
Italian Backgrounds. By Edith Wharton. Illustrated. 8vo. Net

$2.50.
Spanish Cities. By Charles A. Stoddard. Illustrated. i2mo. $1.50.
Vacation Days in Greece. By Rufus B. Richardson. Illustrated.

8vo. Net $2.00.
The Edge of the Orient. By Robert Howard Russell. Illustrated.

i2mo. $2.00.
Afloat and Ashore on the Mediterranean. By Lee Meriwether.

Illustrated. i2mo. $1.50.

NORTH AMERICA

Granite Crags. California and the Yosemite. By C. F. Gordon

Cumming. Illustrated. 8vo. Net $3 50.

Blackfoot Lodge Tales. By George Bird Grinnell. 8vo. $1.75.

Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales. By George Bird Grinnell.
Illustrated. 8vo. $1.75.

In the Klondyke. By Frederick Palmer. Illustrated. i2mo. $1.50.

Wonders of the Yellowstone. By James Richardson. Illustrated.
121T10. $1.50.

Beyond the Rockies. By Charles A. Stoddard. Illustrated.
i2mo. $1.50.

On the Border with Crook. By Captain John G. Bourke. Illus-
trated. 8vo. $2.50.

The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona. By Captain John G.
Bourke. Illustrated. 8vo. $5.00.

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. By Clarence King. i2mo.

S1.50.
A Tramp Across the Continent. Bv Charles F. Lummis. i2mo.

$1.25.

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

Travels Amongst the Great Andes of the Equator. By Edward
Whymper. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.

Tropical America. By Isaac N. Ford. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.00.

The Highest Andes. By E. A. Fitz-Gerald, F.R.G.S. Illustrated.
8vo. Net $6.00.

Fifteen Years' Sport and Life in the Hunting Grounds of 'Western
America and British Columbia. By W. A. Baillie-Grohman.
Illustrated. 8vo. Net $5.00.

Camps in the Rockies. By W. A. Baillie-Grohman. i2mo. $1.25.

Color Studies and A Mexican Campaign. By Thomas A. Janvier.
i2mo. $1.00.

The Mexican Guide. By Thomas A. Janvier. Net $2.50.

Unknown Mexico. By Carl Lumholtz. Illustrated. 8vo. 2 vols.
Net $12.00.

The Land of Poco Tiempo. By Charles F. Lummis. Illustrated.
8vo. $2.50.

A Naturalist in the Guianas. By Eugene Andre. Illustrated.
8vo. Net $3.50.

Down the Islands. A Cruise to the Caribbees. By William
Agnew Paton. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.50.

The Butterfly Hunters in the Caribbees. By Dr. Eugene Murray-
Aaron. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.00.

Cruising Among the Caribbees. By Charles A. Stoddard. Illus-
trated. i2mo. $1.50.

The Porto Rico of To-day. By Albert G. Robinson. Illustrated.
i2mo. $1.50.

AFRICA

In Darkest Africa. By Henry M. Stanley. Illustrated. 2 vols. 8vo.

S7.50. .
How I Found Livingstone. By Henry M. Stanley. Illustrated.

8vo. $3.50.
My Dark Companions. By Henry M. Stanley. Illustrated. 8vo.

$2.00.
Travels in South Africa. By Bayard Taylor. Illustrated. 12010.

$1.25.
The Lake Region of Central Africa. By Bayard Taylor. Illus-
trated. i2mo. $1.25.
Fetichism in West Africa. By Rev. Robert Hamill Nassau.

Illustrated. 8vo. Net $2.50.
By Nile and Euphrates. By H. V. Geere. Illustrated. 8vo. Net

S3-5o.
On the Desert. By Henry M. Field. 8vo. $2.00.
The Barbary Coast. By Henry M. Field. Illustrated. 8vo. $2.00.

RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT

TO— ■+► 202 Main Library

LOAN PERIOD 1
— HOME USE

2 3

5 6

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS

Renewals and recharges may be made « days prior to due date

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

OCT 25 IMS

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 1 /83 BERKELEY, CA 94720

L ®! /

I i

11,11 \\\\\\\m

^mmmmmn

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Jungle trails and jungle people; travel, adventure and observation in the Far East"

See other formats