CHAPTER V 

 HUMAN TREE-DWELLERS 



FOR two days, through the jungle tangle of 

 interior Malay, I had been on fresh rhinoc- 

 eros tracks. Originally I had found some in 

 Perak, only to lose them, and now I found myself 

 on others approaching the limits of the up-country 

 section. Perak is the most important, as it is the 

 most northerly, of the four Federated (British 

 protected) States of the Malay Peninsula. It is 

 also the most mountainous— and the wettest. They 

 told me at Telok Anson, where the coasting steamer 

 dropped me, that Perak has no true rainy season ; 

 but some months are wetter than others, and I had 

 chosen the wettest, it seemed. 



Approaching from the west coast, Perak offers 

 an entrancing view— the irregular clearings hacked 

 for settlement out of the jungle, their dark trop- 

 ical edging, the hills in the immediate background, 

 and farther away the Tongkal Range, which helps 

 to give Malay its mountainous backbone— all 

 wooded to the very top. The State has half a 

 dozen peaks over 5,000 feet high, and I had left 

 one of these, Gunong (Mount) Lalang, on the west, 



as I bore northeasterly across the head waters of 



in 



