A FISH-DRIVE. 147 



men into the forest with sights of gorgeous palaces 

 and lovely female forms, and promises of feasts and 

 delights, and leaves them when morn appears fainting 

 or dying in some gloomy thicket close by the scene of 

 the night's phantom pleasures. 



The river ran by the door of Alang Abdullah's 

 small house, and at the back of his holding lay the 

 great forest ; and the Jins were no farther away than 

 either the forest or the river. 



The old man was a pawang, and was skilled both 

 in the casting out of devils when a sick person had 

 to be treated for some malady, and in the propitia- 

 tion of spirits when any enterprise or excursion had 

 to be undertaken. 



But the old order was changing; the hajis and 

 the immigrant Arab sheikhs looked with disfavour 

 upon his incantations, and they instructed the boys 

 who attended the Koran classes to have nothing to 

 do with his heathen superstitions. 



In every way the country was not now as it had 

 been. In his youth foot-paths and elephant-tracks 

 had (other than the rivers) been the only means of 

 communication between village and village. Then 

 the British had come into the country, and bridle- 

 paths and agricultural roads had soon taken the 

 place of the native tracks. Later came the "great 

 roads " with their metalled surfaces and iron bridges, 

 and now there was a " way of the fire carriages." 

 All had been change and progress. It had affected 

 even his river, the great Perak river. He well re- 

 membered the institution of the Government ferry, 

 when the first bridle-path had reached the river's 



