It was twilight when we neared the welcome kampong. We had sent a runner
ahead to notify the punghulo of our arrival, and as we finished our struggle with
the last thorny rattan, and tripped over the last rubber-vine, we could hear the
shouting of men and the barking of dogs. Evidently we were expected.
The kampong might have been any other in the kingdom, and the little old
weazened punghulo, who came bowing and smiling forward, might have been at
the head of any one of a hundred other kampongs,—they were all so much alike.
A half-dozen attap bungalows, built under a cocoanut grove, all facing toward a
central plaza; a score of dogs for each bungalow; a flock of featherless fowls
scratching and wallowing beneath them, and a bevy of half-naked children
playing with a rattan ball within the light of a central fire,—made up the details
of a little picture of Malayan home life that had become very familiar to me
within the last three years.
Our servants at once set about preparing supper before the fire, while we for
politeness’ sake compounded a mouthful of betel-nut and syrah leaf from the
punghulo’s state box.
The next morning we set out for our twenty miles’ tramp, along a narrow jungle
path, accompanied by some ten natives of the village whom my companion had
retained to cut a path for us up the mountain. It was a long, tiresome journey,
and we were heartily glad when it was ended, and we were encamped on the
rocky banks of a fern-hid stream.
Twice during our day’s march had we crossed deep, ragged depressions in the
earth, which were overgrown with a jungle that seemed to be coequal in age with
the surrounding trees. We did not pause to examine them, although our natives
pointed them out with the expressive word mas (gold). We promised to do that at
a later date. On the border of the creek I found some gold-bearing rock, and
while the Tuan Hakim was engaged in securing some superb specimens of the
great atlas moth, I sat down and crushed some fragments of it, and obtained
enough gold to satisfy me that the rock would run four ounces to the ton.
It was a beautiful night. We lay under our mosquito netting, and gazed up
through the interlacing branches of the trees at the star-strewn sky, and smoked
our manilas in weary content. The long, full “coo-ee” of the stealthy argus
pheasant sounded at intervals in distant parts of the forest. It might have been the