HUNTING IX THE INTERIOR OF SELANGORE. 315 



this dark find damp mass of vegetation, and it made me shudder to 

 think of attempting to go through it. Surely, I thought, we will 

 not attempt to hunt in such forest as that. 



Six miles from the river, we came to another police station, 

 Kooboo Ladah, where we halted to wait for the baggage to come 

 up. Two miles farther on we reached the end of the road,* where 

 we found a gang of government coolies waiting to carry our lug- 

 gage the remainder of the distance. Without these men, whose 

 services were thoughtfully supplied by Captain Douglas, we should 

 have been obliged to pay a ruinously exorbitant price for coolie 

 hire, almost as much as our baggage was worth. 



For the remainder of the way, we had only a very rough bridle 

 path through hilly jungle and across many muddy little streams. 

 At the twelfth mile we passed the Sungei Batu police station, very 

 prettily situated in a highly romantic spot. 



After passing two or three clearings, we reached the top of a 

 long, steep hill, and, at its foot, Kwala Lumpor lay before us, on 

 the opposite bank of the river Klang, here reduced in size to a 

 narrow but deep creek. A sampan came across to ferry us over, 

 while our ponies swam beside it, and at 5 p.m. we were at our rest- 

 ing place for the night. 



All along the river bank, the houses of the Malays stand in a 

 solid row on piles ten feet high, directly over the swift and muddy 

 current. The houses elsewhere throughout the town are walled 

 with mud, and very steeply roofed with attaps (shingles made of 

 nipa-palm leaves), so that a view of the town from any side dis- 

 closes very little except high, brown roofs slanting steeply up. In 

 the centre of the town is a large market where fruits, vegetables, 

 meats and various abominations of Chinese cookery are sold. The 

 vegetables are sweet potatoes, yams of various kinds, beans, melons, 

 cucumbers, radishes, Chinese cabbage, onions, egg-plant and 

 "lady's fingers." The fruits were the durian, mangosteen, pine- 

 apple, banana, and plantain, oranges (of foreign gi-owth), limes, 

 " papayah," and other small kinds not known by English names. 



In the centre of the market-place are a lot of gambling-tables, 

 which, a Httle later in the evening, were crowded with Chinamen 

 earnestly engaged in the noble pastime of "fighting the tiger." 

 The principal streets are lined with Chinese shops, and are uni- 

 formly clean and tidily kept. The streets inhabited by the Malays 



• This road was completed soon after to Kwala Lumpor. 



