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The trail led through the brushwood, in which the dead buffalo lay, and thence into a belt of jungle which edged the river bank a few hundred yards above Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh's village, and extended up-stream to Kuâla Chin Lâma, a distance of half a dozen miles. The tiger turned up-stream when this jungle was reached, and half a mile higher up he came out upon a slender wood-path.
If you follow the Jĕlai up past Kuâla Lĭpis, where the river of the latter name falls into it on its right bank, and on, and on, and on, you come to the Sâkai country, where the Malay language is still unknown, and where the horizon of the people is formed by the impenetrable jungle that shuts down on the other side of a slender stream, and is further narrowed by the limitations of an intellect which cannot conceive an arithmetical idea higher than the numeral three.
The controleur courteously provided for my use the government's steamship Sophia, which in six hours approached within easy distance of the kampong. My party consisted of Ah Sewey, a young Chinese photographer from Singapore whom I had engaged for developing plates and films, also Chonggat, a Sarawak Dayak who had had his training at the museum of Kuala Lampur in the Malay Peninsula.
Another on which we embarked somewhat later seemed to have come down from the days of Noah and the ark. But British steamers, however old and small, are clean and safe. You "get there" all the same. On our way to Rangoon our first stop was at Port Swetterham, from which we motored twenty-seven miles to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the Federated Malay States federated under the British Crown.
Wan Bong had started up the Jĕlai on his triumphal progress, and it was important that no news should reach him, that might cause him to stay the dispersal of his men. So Che’ Jahya's fate was sealed. About the second day after Wan Bong's departure for Bûkit Bĕtong, Che’ Jahya was seated in the cool interior of his house at Kuâla Âtok, on the Tĕmbĕling River.
After packing my collections I again set out for Sampit with the intention of revisiting Sembulo by another route, proceeding by prahu up the Kuala Sampit as far as possible, and then marching overland to the lake. The controleur was absent, but his native clerk and the kapala together got me the prahus and the men, such as the place afforded.
I can think only of the vanishing of the entire fauna and flora of many districts which I have seen as a direct result of this commercial activity. One leaves Port Swettenham on the west coast of Selangor, and for the hour's run to Kuala Lumpur sees hardly anything but vast radiating lines of spindling rubber trees, all underbrush cleared, all native growths vanished.
Fleets of smacks leave the villages for the spots along the shore where fish are most plentiful, and for eight months in the year these men live and sleep in their boats. The town of Kuâla Trĕnggânu, however, is the headquarters of the fishing trade, as indeed it is of all the commercial enterprise on this side of the Peninsula.
In the Katingan language the word lauk means creature; an additional word, earth, water, or air, as the case may be, signifying whether an animal, a bird, or a fish is meant. Having accomplished in a short time as much as could be expected, we returned to Kuala Samba, and from there, in the first week of January, started southward in our big prahu.
Next day the three recalcitrant Chiefs left Pĕkan for their homes in the interior, and, a day or two later, To’ Gâjah, by the Bĕndăhâra's order, followed them in pursuit. His instructions were to kill all three without further questionings, should he chance to overtake them before they reached their homes at Kuâla Tĕmbĕling.
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