ch. in.] River Travel. 35 



what I could have imagined to be possible. During my 

 whole sojourn in the East I never saw them again in 

 anything like such numbers. The moon arose about 

 eight o'clock, revealing more distinctly the gradual nar- 

 rowing of the river, the vegetation of which appeared 

 to be very luxuriant, towering far above our heads. We 

 could recognise the tufted leaves and tall stems of a 

 slender- growing pandan, standing out clear and dark 

 against the sky, and here and there the tall dead trunk 

 of a giant tree added to the weird beauty of a scene, in 

 which the lack of accurate knowledge left much to the 

 imagination. 



Our solitary Chinese boatman dipped his oars with the 

 same easy swing as at starting ; and about nine o'clock 

 he finished a stiff pull of nine or ten miles by running 

 our boat into the little creek at Kanka Kaladi, he having 

 kept ahead of the Malays, who paddled the other boat, 

 all the way. On our arrival, all the Chinese who live 

 here were abed ; so we hauled our craft up to a boat- 

 house at the head of the creek, and got all our things 

 into the loft overhead, and having spread our rugs, and 

 lighted our lamp, we turned in for the night. Before we 

 fell asleep some of the people, who had been disturbed 

 by our arrival, came to have a look at us, and did their 

 best to keep us awake by talking most of the night. 



We awoke the next morning just before sunrise, and 

 soon prepared our breakfast of soup and biscuit. We 

 had a stroll around the village, which was entirely occu- 

 pied by Chinese settlers. The houses were of wood, 

 thatched with palm-leaves, and most of them were sur- 

 rounded with fruit-trees and cocoa-nut palms. We tried 

 to hire coolies, to carry some of our luggage on to tin- 

 next village, Kanka Ah Tong, where we were to rest for 

 the night, starting for the summit to-morrow. Infor- 



d 2 



