Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/125

 THE INNER APARTMENT

F YOU go up the Pahang River for a hundred and eighty miles, you come to a spot where the stream divides itself into two main branches, and where the name "Pahang" dies an ignominious death in a small ditch which debouches at their point of junction. The river on your left is the Jělai, and that on your right is the Těmběling. If you go up the latter, you presently come to big flights of rapids, a few gambir plantations, and a great many of the very best ruffians in the Malay Peninsula, most of whom, a quarter of a century ago, were rather particular friends of my own. If, on the other hand, you follow the Jelai up its course, past Kuâla Lĭpis, where the river of that name falls into it on its right bank, and on and on and on, you come at fast to the wild Sâkai country where, in my time, the Malayan language was still unknown, and where the horizon of the aboriginal tribes was formed by the impenetrable jungle shutting down on the far side of a slender stream, and was further narrowed by the limitations of intellects that were unable to conceive an arithmetical idea higher than the numeral three. Before you run your nose into these uncleanly places, however, you pass through a district spattered with Malay habitations; and if you turn off up the Tĕlang