A JOURNEY ON FOOT TO THE PATANI FRONTIER. jas 
and tree he met with. Burton ( Pilgrimage to El Medinah and 
Meccah ) mentions the ingenuity shown by the Bedouins in dis- 
tinguishing between places the most similar, and says that it is the 
result of a high organisation of the perceptive faculties, perfected 
by the practice of observing a recurrence of landscape features few 
in number and varying but little among themselves. The same 
faculty is to be found among Malays. They name localities after 
little peculiarities, hardly recognisable except by a practised eye ; 
and on a frequented route, even through forest or on a river, the 
names often follow each other in such rapid succession that the 
traveller puts up his note book in despair. 
We reached at about 2 p.m. a spot near the top of the pass 
which seemed by the presence of a rude hut and traces of fires for 
cooking purposes, to be the usual halting place on this route. 
The Ijuk, diminished to the proportions of a little mountain 
stream, is here seen for the last time. Beyond lies the ridge 
which marks the watershed. As the men came up, one after 
another, several lagging behind, and all more or less knocked up, it 
became evident that it would be unwise to attempt to push on to 
Tampan in one day as we had hoped to do. The approach of rain 
decided me to camp where we were for the night. A second hut 
was hastily improvised and roofed with a waterproof sheet. We 
were hardly under cover when the rain came down in torrents and 
all annoyance at the delay vanished before the reflection that our 
discomfort would have been increased tenfold if we had gone on. 
Rest and food had an exhilarating effect upon the men, who 
huddled together under the scanty shelter of the huts and enliven- 
ed the evening by relating all sorts of adventures, the point of the 
stories generally being the perfidy of Perak Malays, or the iniquity 
of Malay Rajas. Some were going to Perak for the first time, 
others were old acquaintances and had travelled with me frequent- 
ly before. ‘To some of them the fame of former exploits had at- 
tached nicknames by which they were known to friends and ad- 
mirers. Mar Lincuin or Slippery Mat was one of these, but 
whether he had earned his title in eluding private enemies or 
escaping from the officers of justice, I cannot say. Another was 
Mar Sarexn Lima Puloh (fifty) and this was the history of his nick- 
name. He and some of his neighbours had a dispute once upon a 
