112 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



would all sleep on the hill, and be able to put in 

 a full day's work. The next day, therefore, when the 

 Malays returned down the hill in the afternoon, 

 Baginda Sutan chaffed them cheerily for a lot of 

 cowards, and remained behind hard at work felling 

 a tree. When the men returned next morning they 

 found only a raving lunatic. 



The contract not unnaturally terminated abruptly, 

 and when, some years later, I came to Tanjong Malim, 

 the Trigonometrical Survey Department was still 

 without a station on Changkat Asah. I saw Baginda 

 Sutan once by chance in a Malay house, and thus 

 heard the story of his fate. The poor man, who had 

 once been a flourishing energetic petty contractor, was 

 in a state of absolute idiotcy ; and never since the 

 day that his terrified men had conducted him down 

 the hill, had he been able to give any account of 

 what he had experienced. 



Soon after my arrival an officer named B. was sent 

 by the Survey Department to put up a station on 

 Changkat Asah. He employed Javanese coolies, and 

 at first lived with me, climbing the hill daily with 

 his men until they had put up a shanty for him and 

 another for themselves. He then went to live on 

 the hill while superintending the clearing of the site 

 and the erection of the station, and the fact of his 

 being a white man gave his men sufficient confidence 

 to follow him. Two or three days later he tottered 

 into my house. Never have I seen a man in such 

 a state of absolute collapse. Ghastly white, as if all 

 the blood had been drained from him, with shaking 

 hands and trembling mouth, he told me his story. 



