HUNTIIiG IX THE INTERIOR OF SELANGORE. 321 



armed with a double rifle canying the same cartridge, good enough 

 for deer, but very Hght for elephants. 



The trail led us through thick forest for a while, but very soon 

 entered a clearer tract and passed through the very gTOve of du- 

 rian trees we had visited the day before. Our Malay friends, the 

 durian gatherers, hailed our warhke appearance with delight, and 

 gathered in an excited group around the ruins of their pole plat- 

 form, which the rascally elephants had torn down with their trunks 

 just before daybreak. They pulled it down as a sort of elephan- 

 tine joke on the Malays, just to show them they had not built 

 beyond their reach. The Malays, however, regarded it as any- 

 thing but a joke to be compelled to quit their platform, climb 

 up into the tree-tops and sit there for several hours in a badly 

 scared condition. No wonder they begged us to shoot all the 

 beasts, one by one, which we solemnly promised to do. 



Within the next hour, the trail led us up and down thi'ough the 

 more open jungle, four times across the river, and for some dis- 

 tance along its pebbly banks. At one time, nearly an hour was 

 ' lost in tiying to cany the trail across a stretch of hard, bare ground, 

 where it got inextricably mixed with a number of other trails made 

 by elephants which had fed about at random, DisiDcrsing, we 

 searched carefuUy, scrutinizing every broken twig and blade of 

 grass in our eflbrt to find the direction finally taken by the herd. 

 At last we found where our elephants had marched off into the 

 gi'assy jungle along an old trail for some distance. No wonder we 

 were at fault. 



At this juncture up came the Jacoons. " You vagabonds," ex- 

 claimed ]\Ir. Syers in Malay, " why didn't you come up an hour ago 

 and save us all this trouble ? " 



" The white gentlemen walked so fast we thought we woidd 

 never come up with them," they answered very frankly. 



The trail then led straight away for a tract of low, swampy for- 

 est, and the character of the jungle changed entu-ely. Near the 

 edge of the swamp huge, spreading clumps of thorny palms grew 

 in great abundance, and rendered our progress difficult and pain- 

 ful Strangely enough, however, the farther we got into the 

 swamp the thinner became the undergrowth, until presently it 

 almost entirely disappeared, and in its stead we found uprooted 

 trees, decayed tree-trunks, dead branches, and gnarled surface-roots. 

 The trail had disappeared entirely under a foot of water, save when 

 it crossed a bit of dry ground. We were wading along in water 

 21 



