THE JOHORE SURVEY. 173 



as Messrs. Page and fche writer having stayed over tlie 

 period wliicli the completion of the survey was expected to 

 take, desired to return to Enghmd. 



At twenty-nine miles a bad swamp was met with, over 

 which a corduroy or faggot-bundle road had to be completed 

 before any progress could be made, the ponies which the 

 southern division had hitherto been able to use having to 

 be discarded at that point. It must not be supposed that 

 the survey was executed with the ease that the written 

 record might lead one to suppose. Among the incidents 

 of the survey are included disaffection and strikes among 

 the jungle-cutters, great heat, heavy rains, laborious work 

 through inconceivably thick jungle and undergrowth, and 

 excessive weariness, besides the depressing effect 'of the 

 gloom and solitude of the jungle, and the eternal drip, 

 drip, drip, by day and by night, of water from the trees, 

 arising from the condensation of the heavy and malarious 

 jungle mists. 



The engineers' camps, like most other inhabited structures 

 in the Peninsula, were built upon piles. For, owing to the 

 presence of malaria, it is necessary, in order to avoid the 

 effects of the teluric poison to which malaria is due, to raise 

 the dwelling several feet above the ground. A night spent 

 on the ground in the jungle of Johore, like a night spent in 

 the Terai of India, would probably prove fatal in its con- 

 sequences. 



The Chinese boys who accompanied the southern division 

 proved most faithful, and were in every way excellent serv- 

 ants. The jungle-cutters, after they began to understand 

 that their pay was certain and that they would be properly 

 dealt with, and, moreover, that their places might be taken 

 by others, did their work in a fairly satisfactory way. 



Many of the chain-men and jungle-cutters proved them- 



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