A TRIP TO GUNONG BENOM. 3 
a load of botanical drying paper, my kit and bedding, rice and 
salt fish for the men and flour and fowls for me started off in 
good time. The first half of the day’s march was easy, the 
rest up Bukit Numbih and down the other side was hard work 
for men carrying very inconveniently shaped pieces of angle 
iron. We camped ona tributary of the Klui which is a tribu- 
tary of the Dong. The camp was atan elevation of about 
1800 feet: Next day Che Musa with one man went back to 
Raub for more rice and food stores with instructions to hire 
men to bring them to Wan Puatih’s. The rest of us went on to 
the camp which Che Musa had previously made. Here we found 
a good ‘pondok’ and the 8 tins of rice and half the beacon. 
This camp was on another tributary of the Klui and also about 
1800 feet high. The march was a short one. The day after 
I sent back 19 men to Wan Putih’s to bring on the additional 
stores for which Che Musa had gone together with the balance 
of the beacon tools and with the rest of the men I went on to 
the foot of the Gunong, crossing Bukit Palas on the way. We 
stopped for the night at a point a little over 3100 feet high and 
as this was (so Che Musa had told me) the last place on the 
way up where water could be got and as the weather was dis- 
tinctly unsettled (it had rained every day since we started) I 
set the men to work to build a good shelter. 
On the third day ten men went back to the previous camp 
to bring on rice, whilst Iwent to Che Musa’s clearing at the 
presumed top of the Gunong. To my surprise I found it to be 
only about 5000 feet high instead of 6800 as it should have 
been. As however the clearing was small and faced Raub 
it was impossible to make out the exact position. Next day I 
went up again with all the coolies left and started clearing and 
- building a camp, and on the 7th it became obvious that the hill 
which Che Musa had thought to to the Gunong itself was really 
a subordinate one three miles away and separated from it by 
at least five deep valleys. After some consideration I decided 
to fix the beacon where I was. Looking for the true Gunong 
with a party of 40 men to feed was obviously out of the 
question and as the hill on which I was commanded a view 
of a large number of the main range trigonometrical stations 
and also much of the Gali and Dong Valleys invisible from the 
R. A. Soe., No. 39, 1903. 
