was related to me by a Selangor Malay:—
“There was once a Selangor man named Haji Batu, or the Petrified Pilgrim, who
got this name from the fact that the first joints of all the fingers of one hand had
been turned into stone. This happened in the following manner. In the old days
when men went voyaging in sailing vessels, he determined to visit Mecca, and
accordingly set sail. After sailing for about two months they drifted out of their
course for some ten or fifteen days, and then came to a part of the sea where
there were floating trunks of trees, together with rice-straw (batang padi) and all
manner of flotsam. Yet again they drifted for seven days, and upon the seventh
night Haji Batu dreamed a dream. In this dream one who wore the pilgrim’s garb
appeared to him, and warned him to carry on his person a hammer and seven
nails, and when he came to a tree which would be the Pauh Janggi he was to
drive the first of the nails into its stem and cling thereto. Next day the ship
reached the great whirlpool which is called the Navel of the Seas,^14 and while
the ship was being sucked into the eddy close to the tree and engulfed, Haji Batu
managed to drive the first nail home, and clung to it as the ship went down. After
a brief interval he endeavoured to drive in the second nail, somewhat higher up
the stem than the first (why Haji Batu could not climb without the aid of nails
history does not relate), and drawing himself up by it, drove in the third. Thus
progressing, by the time he had driven in all the seven nails he had reached the
top of the tree, when he discovered among the branches a nest of young rocs.
Here he rested, and having again been advised in a dream, he waited. On the
following day, when the parent roc had returned and was engaged in feeding its
young with an elephant which it had brought for the purpose, he bound himself
to its feathers with his girdle, and was carried in this manner many hundreds of
miles to the westward, where, upon the roc’s nearing the ground, he let himself
go, and thus dropping to the earth, fell into a swoon. On recovering
consciousness he walked on till he came to a house, where he asked for and
obtained some refreshment. On his departure he was advised to go westward,
and so proceeded for a long distance until he arrived at a beautifully clear pool in
an open plain, around which were to be seen many stone figures of human
beings. The appearance of these stone figures rendering him suspicious, he
refrained from drinking the water, and dipped into it merely the tips of his
fingers, which became immediately petrified. Proceeding he met a vast number
of wild animals—pigs, deer, and elephants—which were fleeing from the pursuit
of a beast of no great size indeed, but with fiery red fur. He therefore prudently