shallow indeed they are used as tracks, men wading up them for miles and miles.
A river-bed is a path ready cleared through the forests, and, to the Sĕmang,[3]
Sâkai,[4] and jungle-bred Malay, it is Nature's macadamized road. More often
the unnavigable streams serve as guides to the traveller in the dense jungles, the
tracks running up their banks, crossing and recrossing them at frequent intervals.
One of these paths, which leads from Trĕnggânu to Kĕlantan, crosses the same
river no less than thirty times in about six miles, and, in most places, the fords
are well above a tall man's knee. The stream is followed until a ka-naik—or
taking-off place—is reached, and, leaving it, the traveller crosses a low range of
hills, and presently strikes the banks of a stream, which belongs to another river
basin. A path, similar to the one which he has just left, leads down this stream,
and by following it he will eventually reach inhabited country. No man need
ever lose himself in a Malay jungle. He can never have any difficulty in finding
running water, and this, if followed down, means a river, and a river presupposes
a village sooner or later. In the same way, a knowledge of the localities in which
the rivers of a country rise, and a rough idea of the directions in which they flow,
are all the geographical data which are required in order to enable you to find
your way, unaided, into any portion of that, or the adjoining States which you
may desire to visit. This is the secret of travelling through Malay jungles, in
places where the white man's roads are still far to seek, and where the natives are
content to move slowly, as their fathers did before them.
The Malay States on the East of the Peninsula are Sĕnggôra, Pĕtâni, Jambe,
Jâring, Râman, Lĕgeh, Kĕlantan, Trĕnggânu, Pahang, and Johor.
Sĕnggôra possesses the doubtful privilege of being ruled by a Siamese Official,
who is appointed from Bangkok, as the phrase goes, to kin—or eat—the
surrounding district.
The next four States are usually spoken of collectively as Pĕtâni, by Europeans,
though the territory which really bears that name is of insignificant importance
and area, the jurisdiction of its Râja only extending up the Pĕtâni river as far as
Jambe. It is said that when the Râja of Pĕtâni and the ruler of the latter State had
a difference of opinion, the former was obliged to send to Kĕlantan for his
drinking water, since he could not trust his neighbour to refrain from poisoning
the supply, which flows from Jambe through his kingdom. Uneasy indeed must
lie the head which wears the crown of Pĕtâni!
All the States, as far down the coast as Lĕgeh, are under the protection of the
Siamese Government. Kĕlantan and Trĕnggânu still claim to be independent,