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A WERE-TIGER 



SOME years ago I was travelling on a somewhat 

 delicate mission in one of the petty sultanates of the 

 Malay Peninsula that lie to the north of the federated 

 states administered under British protection. The 

 state is a long narrow strip of land lying on the east 

 coast, and is traversed by a number of rivers that 

 run parallel to one another from their source in the 

 main range of the peninsula to the China Sea. The 

 area of the district watered by each of these rivers is 

 perhaps 500 square miles, of which at least 495 are 

 forest. At the mouth of every river a few hundred 

 Malays collect and make a living by fishing ; while, 

 scattered up and down the stream, separated from 

 one another by distances varying from one to five 

 miles, are small clearings containing ten, twenty, or 

 even fifty families, who are dependent upon an annual 

 crop of padi and the collection of various forest pro- 

 ducts, such as rubber, gutta, and rattans. As against 

 the rest of mankind, the Malays say that the land is 

 theirs ; but no one knows better than themselves 

 that the real lord and master of the country is the 

 forest. Each clearing has been hacked out of the 

 primeval forest with infinite trouble ; the period of its 



