NA TURE 



\J\'OV. 12, 188; 



and Mucuna. I saw very little that was new to me, but 

 there was no time for any search. At forty miles we 

 came to the River Lint, which at one time had a great 

 reputation for its gold mines. Two Europeans have started 

 to prospect the locality. We met with them on our 

 return. They had found traces of very extensive work- 

 ings in former times, but the whole are quite abandoned. 

 The country around is hilly, and the banks of the river 

 are beautifully picturesque. Scarcely any natives live in 

 the vicinity. 



We passed many small tributaries to the right and left. 

 and at ninety-one miles, or eight days, from Pekan passed 

 the Semanten; a large affluent coming from the west. 

 Our course had been west hitherto, but now turned 

 to the north-west. Our progress was but slow. We 

 had hired a second boat, and both had to be urged 

 against a strong current by means of long poles — 

 the usual mode of up-stream progress in the Malaysia. 

 One seldom averages more than a mile an hour in this 

 way. 



At about 130 miles we passed the Tomoleng, a large 

 stream to the right. It was up this, I believe, that Baron 

 Maclay passed in 1875. The river to the left is called 

 the Jelis -or Jelai. Between the two there is a very 

 small stream which is called the Pahang. In Cameron's 

 map the Jelai is marked as the Pahang, but the natives 

 do not call it so. The Jelis is still a line river, with fewer 

 sandbanks, and I think a deeper bed. Fifty miles further 

 we reached the Lipis. Where we left the Jelis it was 

 still an important stream at least 200 yards wide. The 

 Lipis is also a good stream, half the width of the former. 

 We only went about ten miles up it, and at that distance 

 or less caine to Punjom, a large village, the second in 

 importance to Pekan. We found that the cholera had 

 just visited the place, and carried oft' half the inhabitants, 

 and we found subsequently that several other villages had 

 been visited, or were actually suffering from this terrible 

 epidemic. 



About three miles from Punjom is a celebrated gold 

 mine at a village called Jelai, which has been worked for 

 centuries. The formation is just like what is seen in the 

 auriferous districts of Australia — that is to say, highly 

 inclined slate schists and sandstones with quartz lodes 

 containing the gold. The mines, I am told, have been 

 worked in succession by Siamese, Malays, and Chinese. 

 At present about thirty Chinese are employed, with a few 

 Malays, who wash the sands for gold dust. The locality 

 is very curious, from the evident antiquity of the work- 

 ings. An enormous quantity of material has been 

 quarried away, and shafts have been sunk in the solid 

 rock. Subsequently the rock has been removed, leaving 

 traces of the shafts on the faces of the quarries. It seems 

 as if the miners had found gold in the alluvium, and 

 then had removed the rock in searching for more. The 

 lodes were scarcely touched, probably being too hard. 

 But just beside the lodes the casing with some pockets of 

 pyrites have been taken out in small quantities and are 

 still worked. Doubtless these ores are rich, but a small 

 quantity of free gold dust is all that these mmers get. 



The ground for acres around is covered with refuse 

 heaps, and after each rainfall the native women and 

 children maybe seen searching for specks of gold in the 

 sand. There is a good deal of iron pyrites in the heaps, 

 and as this gradually decomposes, the gold is liberated 

 in the form of fine dust. The mine is about to be worked 

 by a European company. 



I returned from Punjom down the Pahang as far as the 

 Semanten, and ascended that river almost due west for 

 about 50 miles. It then forks into the Karau (W.N.W.) 

 and the Brentong (S.W.). As the latter was a series of 

 rapids we changed our boats for small canoes. The water 

 is very deep in places, but shallow at the rapids, where it 

 fails over barriers of beautiful black marble with white 

 veins, or over slate rocks, highly inclined and much 



jointed. It took us a whole day to ascend about 15 miles, 

 as there was a fresh in the stream. This made the work 

 of poling up the rapids diflicult and exciting. After the 

 first few miles we saw no habitations, but we met small 

 bamboo rafts carrying down ingots of tin from the village 

 of Brentong. The river flows in a channel about 50 yards 

 wide, through a dense forest echoing with the cry of the 

 large black siamang or gibbon monkey {Hylobaics syn- 

 dactylus ?). Occasionally we heard the peculiar warning 

 shriek, as I may call it, of the wild aboriginal Sakei. 



We left our canoes at the junction of a mountain 

 torrent called the Dua. Here we camped one night, and 

 then crossed to the sources of the stream, passing over 

 several high mountain spurs from the main divide. In 

 the mountains we found a few Malays washing stream tin 

 from a shallow, coarse gravel. This consisted of broken 

 Palaeozoic slates and sandstones. We visited two or three 

 mines of this kind in various places in the ranges. 

 Travelling was very difficult, because of the undergrowth 

 amid a fine forest of Dipterocarpus, oak, chestnut figs. 

 Dammar, Fagrsa, &c., with much Bertam palm (Hugues- 

 sonia). Tracesof tigers and elephants numerous. Game 

 plentiful. In the river a very large barbel and a smaller 

 one abundant {Barbus biirmanicus and Kolus ?), both 

 tasteless fishes and full of bones. We found also an eel- 

 like voracious fish, which I took to be Ophioccphalus 

 niumpe/lcs, excellent eating, but uncommon. 1 have 

 found the same fishes in all the mountain rivers of the 

 Malay peninsula. 



We returned direct to Pekau from the Sungei Dua, 

 having spent about five weeks in the boats. Throughout 

 we found the people aftable and courteous, not timid of 

 strangers, though some of them had never previously 

 seen white men. Their only medium of exchange is a 

 tin coinage, shaped for the most part like an old-fashioned 

 square inkstand. They objected to receive the smaller 

 silver coin of the Straits Settlements, but would take an 

 empty bottle or a meat or biscuit tin in exchange for a 

 fowl, and fruit such as bananas, cocoa-nuts, mangostems, 

 and papaws, besides tapioca, maize, and brinjals. 



We saw a few slaves, who seemed to be Sakeis or 

 Africans. The whole population of the State can scarcely 

 be 50,000, of which probably not 500 are Chinese. 



About half way between the dividing range and the sea 

 there is a belt of detached conical steep mountains 1500 to 

 2000 feet high. From the specimens of rock abutting on 

 the River Pahang I judge these hills to be volcanic, and 

 to consist of trachytic and felspathic rocks. I also found 

 in the bed of the stream isolated patches of andesite, 

 felsite, molaphyre, and limestone. In respect to the vol- 

 canic rocks the eastern side of the Malay peninsula differs 

 much from the western. J. E. Tenlson-Wood 



Singapore, August 28 



P.S. — I have just seen in a number of Nature, pub- 

 lished in the early part of this year, a letter from Mr. 

 L. Wray, jun., correcting what he considers certain mis- 

 takes of mine. It is due to your readers to state that I 

 do not accept any of these corrections. During the long 

 period that I have spent in exploring in these regions, 

 Mr. Wray travelled with me for about a fortnight. I 

 should like to repeat that I have never seen on the Malay 

 peninsula any sign of upheaval or subsidence. The 

 instance Mr. Wray refers to at Matang obviously admits 

 of a very different interpretation. 



THE CRETACEOUS FLORAS OF CANADA ' 



Geological Relations of the Floras 



T N a memoir published in the first volume of the 



■'■ Transactions of this Society I have given a table 



of the Cretaceous formations of the western North- 



' By Sir William Dasvson, F.R.S., &c. From advance sheets of a memoir 

 to appear in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. 



