70 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 



possible to the hook near the loop, taking great care 

 not to impede the pivotal action of the loop. At the 

 two extremities of the hook he tied the bait on with a 

 much finer fibre, and tied it so that, while the meat 

 could not slip and uncover the hook, yet at a sudden 

 jerk on the main line the slender bands would snap, 

 and the hook-point and shank-point would start from 

 the protecting covering and stand ready to pierce any 

 part of the crocodile's gullet that they might touch. 



It did not take him long to bait the four hooks he 

 had brought, and he was then ready to make a start. In 

 the meantime I had explained the reason of my having 

 sent for him. Taiping, the town in which we were, is 

 the capital of the leading native state of the Malay 

 Peninsula, and is happy in the possession of a beautiful 

 public garden and an ornamental lake. Until they 

 were made, their site had been a wilderness of aban- 

 doned mine-holes and spoil-banks. The Chinese method 

 of winning alluvial tin ore (the mineral on which the 

 source of the wealth of Perak at present depends) is 

 to open an enormous pit and to bodily remove the 

 earth from it until the substratum that carries the tin 

 ore is exposed. When the mine is worked out and 

 abandoned, there is left a hole which may vary from 

 twenty to sixty feet in depth, and which, in excep- 

 tional cases, may extend for half a mile in length and 

 a hundred yards or more in breadth ; and beside this 

 gigantic excavation, which in the rainy climate of the 

 Peninsula quickly fills to the brim with water, there 

 are mounds of corresponding extent where the over- 

 burden has been taken out and deposited. To form 

 the Taiping lake a series of such abandoned mines 



