THE LIGHTS OF CHANGE AT AS AH. Ill 



women that roam the forest to suck the blood of 

 men; the Voice-Folk whom all can hear and none 

 may see, every kind of spirit lived on Changkat 

 Asah. The mass of stone that forms its highest 

 point was said to be a bilek hantu, " a spirit's room." 

 The Malays believed that this formless mass took 

 shape at night; and men have told me that the 

 lights in this meeting -room of the spirits might 

 occasionally be seen from the plain below. 



Some twenty years ago the Trigonometrical Survey 

 Department wished to have the summit of the hill 

 cleared for an observation station, and, as might be 

 expected, experienced the greatest difficulty in get- 

 ting any Malay to take up the contract. Finally a 

 foreigner from Sumatra a man named Baginda 

 Sutan was induced by the high price offered to 

 undertake the work. He persuaded some other 

 foreigners from the states of Kedah and Kelantan 

 to join him, and at first they climbed the hill every 

 morning to their work and returned before dusk. 

 But they thus lost half their day's work, and after 

 a while Baginda Sutan asked them if they were 

 prepared to sleep on the hill. This, though he made 

 light of the local reputation of the hill, and pointed 

 out that hitherto they had met with no supernatural 

 obstacles, they absolutely refused to do. As no 

 promises of higher pay would move them, Baginda 

 Sutan decided to shame them into compliance, and 

 announced his intention of staying on the hill the 

 next night by himself. He felt confident that after 

 a night or two, when nothing had happened, his men 

 would be encouraged by his example, and that they 



