THE KXDAF AND ITS TRTBTJTATIIES, 105 



(wood-cutting knife). Having placed his knife conveniently, the 



man went to sleep again, but before the night was past, he was 

 again disturbed in the same way : this time he got hold of his 

 parang in time to make a cut at the reptile through the awning 

 of his boat, over which he saw it making its escape, and when day- 

 light came he found traces of blood about the gash he had made in 

 the awning. My own experience was as follows : On the evening 

 of our arrival at Kenalau, I was lying in the middle of the boat just 

 dozing off, while two or three of the men were discussing their rice 

 forward: all of a sudden I heard in my sleep cries of " /'Jar, titan, 

 idar " (" a snake, Sir, a snake !") repeated with increasing energy, 

 till I thought I was being pursued by some huge serpent, and 

 awaked finding myself running into the middle of the men's rice : 

 on enquiring what it was, the youth who had cried out said that 

 happening to look in my direction he had seen a large snake on the 

 horizontal support of the awning within a yard of my face swaying 

 to and fro. looking alternately at the lamp which was hanging at 

 my feet, and at me, (my spectacles, which no doubt reflected the lamp, 

 probably attracted his attention), and the youth was then so horror- 

 stricken that he could do nothing but shriek at me, thinking every 

 moment I should be attacked: while he was telling me this, one 

 of the others went at the beast with his parang, but was too late 

 to get near it. When Che Musa came on board and heard of this, 

 lie was quite excited, said at once that it was a water python 

 (which recalled the story he had told me three days before) and 

 had the boat moved a little further up the stream where the river 

 was a little more open. 



At Meletir, we found a good-sized ddda lung ( x ) hut. Here we 

 decided to put up for the night, as we wanted a clear day to get 

 to the simpei and return. The next morning, half an hours rapid 

 walking through very wet jungle, full of swamps and slippery roots, 

 brought us to a small shallow stream about six feet wide flowing 

 through rdsau 1tlius( 2 ) (a small graceful variety of the rdsau which 

 grows so abundantly in the Johor river) ; this was called the Pang- 

 gong and issued from a swamp which was described by the Jahlins 



( T ) " Dada lang," breast of a kite: i.e., a half-roof or "lean-to." 

 (■) "Tikus," rat. is commonly used to indicate a small variety of 

 anything. 



