20 A JOURNEY ON FOOT TO THE PATANI FRONTIER. 
disposed. He informed us that Raja Muda Yusur was at Chigar 
Gala organising fishing operations on a large scale. 
March 30th. After four days of incessant tramping sable 
jungle, it was a relief on getting up in the morning to remember 
that there was to be no march to-day. Some of the men set to 
work to improve our temporary quarters. The steps leading down 
to the river were rendered safe, and a bamboo bedstead for myself 
was constructed under the direction of Penghulu Satam. Indoors 
letters were written for transmission to Kwala Kangsa under the 
charge of men of the Mandheling garrison, who were waiting below 
in a long canoe. Mine were to Jet the persons most concerned in 
the success of the expedition know that we had reached the Perak 
river, but the Haji’s correspondence was much more practical, 
being in fact an order for sugar, tobacco, opium, and other delica- 
cies of which the chief caterer stood in need. This was a day of 
visits. Datoh Amar, the Penghulu of Tampan, was the first to 
arrive and made himself acceptable by bringing a buffalo and some 
rice, which he presented to me. Most of the Malays of this part 
of Perak are Patani men, and are honest, quiet, and fairly indus- 
trious. Some have been settled here for generations, others are 
recent immigrants from the other side of the border. They dislike 
the Perak Malays, by whom they have been systematically oppressed 
and misgoverned. Datoh Amar and his Patani brethren had some 
experience of the acquisitive propensities of Perak Chiefs while 
IsMAIL was encamped in this neighbourhood, and he groaned as he 
related the exactions of the Sultan’s followers. 
I had been making enquiries on the previous day for guides to 
the Patani frontier, and to-day when most of the men were occupied 
in the interesting task of cutting up and distributing buffalo meat, 
JaH Desau mysteriously introduced aman who was willing, he said, 
to take me to Maharaja Leta’s retreat. 
Etam was a thorough specimen of the Malay freebooter. Ac- 
cording to his own account of himself he had made several parts of 
the country too hot to hold him, and he spoke of the crimes he had 
committed with a modesty and candour hardly to be expected from 
one who so evidently excelled in his own particular line. He was 
a big man, darker than the average Malay, with a thick moustache 
