SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



289 



IX THE MALAY PENINSULA. 



By Lieutenant Stanley S. Flower. 



(Communicated by Sir William H. Flower, K.C.B., F.R.S.) 



(Continued from page 266.) 



(~\S landing, we found the jungle was only quite a 

 ^^^ strip along the water's edge, and outside that 

 was an open maidan and good walking. The 

 Elephant Mountain was in front of us, a curious 

 hill, rising straight up from the level plain on every 

 side, and no other mountains near it. From first 

 impressions I thought it would be basalt, but found 

 it was limestone, with a good deal of hematite in 

 lumps in it. At the foot of the mountain we found 

 a great array of men and boys ready for us, with 

 torches of attap-leaves, about the size and appear- 

 ance of a fascine. Then we went up by a rough, 

 steep, rocky path In places a bamboo staging had 

 been erected on the face of the rock, without which 

 it would have been difficult to ascend. We passed a 

 small cave with quantities of bats in it, and then 

 got to a point where the path began to descend 

 again. From this point we got a good view over 

 the land, and could trace the courses of the rivers 

 by the belt of forest which followed each bank : the 

 horizon was closed by various lofty mountains, the 

 only one I knew being Kedah Peak, between us and 

 Penang. After going down some way we turned to 

 the right and went up again and entered a precipi- 

 tous-sided valley on the side of the mountain. 

 Here, studded over the rocks, were very pretty 

 little flowers and ferns galore. This valley would 

 have been a ad de sac, but at the end was the 

 entrance of the cave. We went in and found 

 ourselves in a vast vaulted chamber, ornamented 

 in the grandest fashion with stalactites and kindred 

 limestone productions. The party waited here 

 a bit, till someone pointed up, and there, on a 

 ledge of rock, between us and daylight, stood, as 

 a sort of silhouette, an old man leaning on a stick, 

 as if a freak of the limestone. Then the figure 

 vanished, and soon amongst us appeared a very old 

 man in a tattered rug with a sort of peaked hood to 

 it and a long staff. He went off, walking along 

 the floor, which sloped down, and we all followed. 

 The torches being lit, daylight was soon left behind 

 and we scrambled down a tunnel as if going to the 

 infernal regions. Sometimes we were on the level, 

 sometimes on steep inclines, sometimes stepping 

 on level terraces of limestone, sometimes slipping 

 over rounded bosses of smooth hematite. The 

 caves are wonderful, I do not remember having 

 seen such big ones before, such immense chambers, 

 domes, vaults, galleries, and such wonderful stalac- 

 tites, stalagmites and columns. As we walked 

 along it was a most weird scene, like something in a 



play or pantomime on a grand scale, the dusky 

 Malays with their great smoking torches which 

 they had to keep swinging to and fro and beating 

 against the floor and walls to keep them burning. 

 We had with us some port fires which we used 

 from time to time, and they helped to show the 

 great height and elaborate ceilings and cave-roofs 

 better than the flickering native torches. Except 

 for one little stream we passed, these caves seemed 

 quite dry and devoid of animal life. At length 

 daylight gleamed ahead, and we entered a cavern 

 of the vastest proportions ; it is most difficult to 

 say how large it was, but to give some idea I 

 should say 200 feet to 400 feet high. Soon our 

 advance was stopped by the floor of the cave 

 ending abruptly in a precipice over which a few of 

 the great torches were thrown, that we might hear 

 them thud down at the bottom. This great 

 chamber was a lovely sight, as opposite us, across 

 the great gulf, was an opening to the outer air, 

 fringed and curtained with ferns and delicate 

 green hanging-plants through which the sun's rays 

 poured. 



Then two Malays let a wire-rope ladder down 

 over the cliff, and part of our party, including 

 myself, descended to }*et lower regions ; the others, 

 however, stopped above. I confess I did not like 

 the look of the descent when starting it, but am 

 very glad I went, as it was really all right, and led 

 us to the most interesting part of the caves. Down 

 below it was all damp and muddy, and we got into 

 one great cellar where no daylight can ever 

 penetrate. There we heard countless bats squeak- 

 ing and flying about. I was wondering what thev 

 could find to live on, when the light fell on the wall 

 and I found in the cave were thousands of a very 

 curious-looking cricket, also a great many very large 

 spiders. We left the cave by a steep ascent up a 

 rocky "chimney" and then entered one where 

 there were curious stalactite columns ; all rounded 

 knobs about the size of a man's head, so that the 

 roof seemed as though supported on pillars of skulls 

 with ice-cream poured over them. In the passage 

 beyond this, in the dark, to our surprise, we found a 

 man, the same old hermit we met and waited for at 

 the entrance. We then went along a very narrow 

 gallery with him and suddenly emerged into 

 daylight in a door-like hole in the face of a cliff, 

 the same cliff we had descended by the rope ladder, 

 which one of the Malays climbed on to and then 

 swung to us, as we were a yard or so to one side 



