248 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



tuba fishing of one of the rivers. Tuba is a small 

 wild plant, whose roots contain a vegetable poison 

 that has an extraordinary effect upon fish ; and tuba 

 fishing is one of the recognised national pastimes of 

 the Malay Peninsula and of Sarawak. Many a great 

 river is tuba-ed annually on so extensive a scale that 

 at the end of the day one might well believe that it 

 had been depleted of fish. Yet the succeeding year 

 shows no diminution either in the size of the fish or 

 in their numbers. 



At Ahman's suggestion I sent for Pawang Duhamat, 

 a recognised expert in all matters relating to tuba and 

 tuba fishing. When he came he gave his opinion in 

 favour of the Blat river as being the most suitable, in 

 its present condition of water, for our object, and said 

 that he had in his house, stored and ready for use, the 

 quantity of tuba root that we should require, about 

 ten hundredweight. 



I bought the root from him, and, when he had 

 selected an auspicious day for the fishing, issued invi- 

 tations to the chiefs, and proclaimed to the district at 

 large that on that date I should tuba the Blat river. 



A few days before the appointed day Pawang 

 Duhamat and Ahman collected four or five Malays, 

 unpaid volunteers, and paddled away up river to make 

 the preliminary arrangements. They took with them 

 a few measures of rice from my store-room, but for the 

 rest depended upon such fish as they could catch, and 

 upon an old gun which I had lent Ahman, nominally 

 as a protection against tigers, but really to enable him 

 to get some jungle-fowl and imperial pigeon. Their 

 object was to erect a barricade across the river at the 



