A JOURNEY ON FOOT TO THE PATANI FRONTIER. val 
and a strong Patani accent. He was naked from the waist upwards, 
but for a handkerchief knotted round his head, and he deposited a 
musket outside the door as he entered with a glance round to make 
sure that the avenger of blood was not one of the company. Then 
we proceeded to business. Eram had lately been up to the Patani 
frontier, and now informed me that since the date of my last in- 
formation Maharaja Lexa had shifted his quarters from Kwala Piah 
to a place called Banai, further up the river, and had now probably 
crossed the frontier. Nothing could be finally settled at once, so 
Eram was left to ponder for another day over his own plan for the 
capture of Lexa, which was simply to le in wait for him, and to 
shoot him with three golden bullets which a confiding Englishman 
was to furnish for the purpose. Other visitors soon thronged the 
bamboo floor, for the news of the white man’s arrival had evidently 
spread rapidly. Datoh Tun Leta Seria (commonly called Tou Tty), 
the headman of Lunggong, a neighbouring village, and an old 
Malay from Tumulung with the Siamese title of Mengkong, were 
the chief of these. The latter wore a striped silk jacket, which, in 
virtue of his official position, he had received on the occasion of 
some festivity in Siamese territory, where changes of raiment are 
still bestowed on those “whom the king delighteth to honour.” 
Another visitor who deserves mention was lputT, a Burmese, who 
gave the following account of himself :—-Thirty years before, he had 
sailed from Rangoon in a native craft bound for Penang. She was 
driven out of her course in a storm and was wrecked on the coast 
of Perak, where Iput and one or two companions landed. They 
wandered for ten days without falling in with a habitation, and had 
to support life as well as they could on such leaves and fruit as the 
forest supplies. When they were almost dead from exhaustion 
and fatigue they reached the district of Kinta, and were kindly 
received by the natives. There, in process of time, the narrator 
married a daughter of the soil and adopted her country and religion. 
He had not seen a white man since he had left Rangoon thirty 
years before. He said that he had forgotten his native language 
but bared his legs, and showed his tattooing in evidence of his 
Burmese birth. 
That evening was enlivened by a second visit from the Meng- 
