IN THE SWAMPS 165 



upon. Yet one creature finds this foul place con- 

 genial. Back from tidewater, along streams with 

 low, closely covered mud banks, breeds the hideous 

 crocodile in numbers perhaps not excelled else- 

 where in the Far East. And in the sea-washed 

 bottom between the haunts of the crocodile and the 

 last mangroves, the Malay fisherman, knee deep, 

 explores for mussels daily ; and nightly as well, for 

 it is in the " noon of the night," as the Malays 

 poetically call midnight, when the tide is high and 

 the moon is full, that he likes best to venture upon 

 his coast waters. It is then, too, that as he paddles 

 his canoe to the sea, he must keep a sharp lookout, 

 for crocodiles lurk in dark turnings under the low 

 banks. 



Malay coast villages offer little architectural 

 variation, but a divergence in human types such as 

 may not be seen elsewhere on earth. Kuala Maur, 

 where I disembarked, bears no especial distinction 

 in this respect ; but as I started from the town with 

 Cheeta, my Tamil servant, on a ten-mile drive to 

 Aboo Din, it seemed as if never outside of Singa- 

 pore had I beheld so many nationalities in a single 

 community. It was kaleidoscopic; it is the daily 

 scene. Here lumbers a great, complaining two- 

 wheeled cart drawn by sluggish-moving, humped- 

 shouldered bullocks; there goes a narrow, high- 

 bodied wagon pulled by a single water buffalo that 



