A WERE-TIGER. 269 



on the banks only accentuated the sense of the over- 

 powering dominion and vastness of the all-encompass- 

 ing forest. Its mastery held us, and our conversation 

 for the most part turned upon its inhabitants, both 

 animal and supernatural. Thus we came to the 

 discussion of were -tigers, which are in the Malay 

 Peninsula the counterpart of the were -wolves of 

 Europe. That were-tigers exist no Malay doubts; 

 and the popular belief is that the men from the dis- 

 trict of Korinchi in Sumatra have the power of 

 assuming the form of a tiger at will, and that in this 

 guise they range the forest, hunting the wild game 

 and occasionally killing mankind. 



The Korinchi men, who are mostly pedlars of 

 cloths, naturally resent the imputation, and contend 

 that it is only some of the men of Chenaku, a sub- 

 district of Korinchi, who have this unholy power. 

 But as the contention admits the existence of the 

 power amongst certain of the suspected class, the 

 Malays of the Peninsula are only strengthened in 

 their opinion, and believe the charge to be true of 

 all Korinchis. To'Kaya told me of a village where, 

 for some months, the fowls had been harried by a 

 tiger or panther, both of which are known to the 

 Malays by the same generic term, and where one 

 day a Korinchi man lying sick with fever in the 

 house of the headman, who had had pity on him, had 

 vomited quantities of undigested chickens' feathers. 

 I, in my turn, told him a story that I had heard in 

 the reaches near the source of the Slim river. There, 

 in an isolated hill-padi clearing, lived a Malay, his 

 wife, and their two children, young boys of the age 



