Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra85861922roya).pdf/193

 my legs. After ten o'clock our route took us up a very sharp incline and we had to pull ourselves up by roots. Some hornets (pĕnyĕngat) attacked us and caused a stampede. One found Clifford's nose and in a few minutes it was like a full-blown rose.

At 11.30 we reached the summit of Bukit Lada, which forms the divide between the Pertang on the Pahang side and the ulu Kemaman of Trengganu. According to the aneroid the altitude was only 700 ft., but judging by our exertions I suggested that some correction was required. We then descended the other side to the Sungai Besar and on lower again to the Sungai Babi, which in turn brought us to the Sungai Pertang, where we camped for the night. It is a fair sized stream; but we were above the bamboo country and so could not make rafts.

. The path became a game track about five feet high through the jungle, following the course of the river down. We crossed and recrossed it no less than twenty-three times; by the afternoon the water was waist high; it was rather chilly work and still more so when it started to rain. We therefore stopped to camp.

To get the palm leaf (bertan) collected and made into an atap as quickly as possible we had a competition, the Kuantan Malays and the Sakai versus Clifford's servant from Pekan and mine, a Malay from Perak. The latter won easily. (I heard recently that this Perak Malay rose to be a District Officer under the Siamese in Kelantan, where eventually he died). We were cold and wet until Clifford remembered that it was the anniversary of his wedding-day and we sampled the brandy.

We found bamboos a little way below us, with which we made our rafts. Wan Ismail and all our men except six were then sent home early next morning by the way we had come.

. Rafting down the river was a very pleasant change. The Pertang is a beautiful river with great deep pools, in which shafts of slate protrude, huge ngram trees overhanging the water. Our troubles however soon began. We struck a log-jam consisting of great trees piled twenty feet high and some hundred feet long, brought down by floods. Most of them seemed to have been there some time. The rock in the river here seemed to be granite (possibly Tembiling schist). The rafts had to be dragged over this; many bamboos were split in the process and had to be replaced. Just below we came to the Tekal River and we camped for the night at the junction of the two rivers.

. The Tekal was a fine stream here, made the more imposing by a big rapid known as the "Jeram Jerami." This gave me my first taste of shooting rapids, and an exciting game it is too, when no one with you knows the rapids! This particular rapid ended in a steepish drop, which tilled the rafts almost upon end. However we negotiated it successfully. As we